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

TIDAL WAVES ON ENGLISH COASTS.

That the coasts of England have been visited by many and disastrous tidal waves there is abundant evidence. In fact, the ocean bar, which surrounds nearly the whole of England and Scotland, is evidence enough that the entire shore line, as it exists to-day, is itself the result of a great submersion, or series of submersions, which ages ago overflowed the old coast, rushed in shore, made new land lines, and, hollowing out between the new line and the old, a new ocean bed, leaving what had been called the coast line to be forever after called the “bar.” The bar is to be found in nearly every port of England, eloquent testimony to the tidal waves of the past. But there is comparatively little of other testimony save such as has been preserved in the records of seaport towns.

One of the greatest cataclysms ever occurring on the British coast was that on the coast of Lincolnshire in 1571. This has been commemorated in verse by Jean Ingelow in the poem entitled “High Tide Off the Coast of Lincolnshire.” The Lincolnshire coast is almost uniformly low and marshy—so low, in fact, at some places that the shore requires the defence of an embankment to save it from the encroachments of the sea.

A sea wall had been built when the great tidal wave of 1571 came, but it appears to have been absolutely useless as a defence of the country and the people of that time.

At the present day the fens of Lincolnshire are defended from the North Sea by some of the finest engineering works in the world, and yet it is much to be doubted whether they would prove effective against such invasions as that which has just overwhelmed Galveston.