The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

ONE LONE HOUSE STANDING.

“We were caught in Houston in the storm, and Sunday morning as soon as the storm abated we resolved to get to our families and friends in Galveston, if such a thing was possible. A party of twelve of us left Houston on a Southern Pacific train. We got as far as Seabrook and there we found everything washed away, and dead bodies here and there. One lone house was standing. Clear Creek bridge had been washed away and the railroad track was turned over. We went back to Houston and waited there till 4.40 P. M., and took the Galveston, Houston and Henderson regular train and succeeded in getting as far as Lamarque.

“The whole country was under water, but we decided to get to Galveston any way that night. We pulled out towards Virginia Point, wading in water up to our necks, some times swimming. At one place it got so deep that we got a lot of drift together and constructed a sort of a raft and ferried over the places. I was about to forget to tell you that one of our party was a woman, a Miss Beach. She had a sick sister in Galveston at the infirmary and she had determined to get to her if possible. That brave and fearless women kept up with the men wading and swimming, and while others lagged and some dropped out along the way, she never once faltered, and I have never before seen her equal for courage and determination.

“There were six of us when we got to Virginia Point, others had turned out toward Texas City. We got as near to Virginia Point as we could, we found three railroad engines there, one of them turned over. There were some cars scattered along the track and in one caboose were some injured people. A portion of our party stopped there to do what they could for them.

“We found dead bodies all along the track, three and four in a bunch, all women and children with perhaps the single exception of one man. These bodies were strewn from the Point to Texas City and they were there by the hundreds, it seemed to me—bodies of people who had been washed and blown across the bay from Galveston. Some of the people who had made that terrible trip across the bay, driven by the force of the wind and the waves, were yet alive.

“There were all sorts of debris and wreckage piled up and washing along the mainland; furniture of every description, heavy iron, frames of pianos, fine plush-covered furniture—everything was there to be seen. The remains of cattle and horses and chickens were there in heaps and piles, drifting boxcars had been driven three miles from their original positions and turned over and blown about.