All along the Texas Coast, the inhabitants always have worried about hurricanes and they have plenty of reason. Whole settlements have been destroyed by wind and wave. One case deserves special mention. After the middle of the century, there had been a thriving town named Indianola in the coastal region southwest of Galveston. The town gave promise then of being the principal competitor of the island city for the commerce of the State of Texas. But in September, 1875, a West Indian hurricane took a slow westward course through the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, and struck the Coast near Indianola. Vicious winds prostrated the buildings while enormous waves swept through the streets, drowning a large share of the population.
Courageous citizens rebuilt the town and for more than ten years it prospered. Then in August, 1886, a bigger hurricane ravaged the town and the countryside and literally wiped the place out of existence. The survivors deserted the site and after a few days nothing was left to mark the spot except sand, bushes and the wrecks of houses and carriages, a litter of personal property, and a great many dead animals. After the hurricane of 1875, the Signal Corps had established a weather station at Indianola, and in the storm of 1886 the building fell in, overturning a lamp in the office and setting fire to the fallen timbers. The observer tried to escape but was drowned in the street.
Both of these hurricanes caused much damage at Galveston, for the island was caught in the dangerous sector on the right of the center in both cases. And it was natural that when, on September 8, 1900, the winds began to increase and the tide rose above the ordinary marks at Galveston, the citizens became alarmed, expecting a repetition of the big blows of 1875 and 1886, which were still being mentioned in August and September every year when the Gulf became rough and gusty northeast winds tugged at the palm trees and oleanders.
But on September 8 the wind kept on rising and the tide crept above any previous records. The weather observers feared the worst and dispatched a telegram to Washington, telling about the heavy storm swells flooding the lower parts of the city and adding, “Such high water with opposing winds never seen before.” It was not altogether unexpected. Beginning on September 4, the hurricane had been tracked across Cuba and into the Gulf toward the Texas Coast, but this rise of the sea was more than the observers had bargained for.
By noon, the wind and sea were much worse, the fall of the barometer was ominous, and the Signal Corps observers, two brothers named Isaac and Joe Cline, took turns going out to the beach and reporting to Washington. At 4:00 P.M., all communications failed. Isaac found the water waist deep around his home and the wreckage of beach homes battered by waves was flying through the streets. At 6:30, Joe, who had come to the south end of the city to view the Gulf, joined his brother and found the water neck deep in the streets and roofs of houses and timbers flying overhead after being tossed into the air by giant waves. As the peril grew, fifty neighbors gathered for refuge in the Cline home because it was stronger than others in that part of the city.
At 6:30, in the weather office, one of the assistant observers, Joe Blagden, looked first at the steep downward curve on the recording barometer and then noted that the wind register had failed as the gale rose to one hundred miles an hour. To repair the gauge, he climbed to the roof and crawled out, holding on tightly in the gusts and edging forward in the lulls. Reaching the instrument support, he saw that the wind gauge had been blown away, so he crawled down from the roof, after taking one brief, horrified look over the stricken city.
There was no longer any island—just buildings protruding from the Gulf, with the mainland miles away. Down the street filled with surging water, the spire of a church bent in the wind and then let go as the tower collapsed. The side of a brick building crumbled. As each terrible gust held sway for a few moments, the air was full of debris. The top story of a brick building was sheared off. The scene was like that caused by the destructive blasts at the center of a tornado but, instead of the minute or two of the twister, it lasted for hours. Darkness, under low racing storm clouds, swiftly closed over the city in the deafening roar of giant winds and the crash of broken buildings. The frightened observers saw that the right front sector of the hurricane was bearing down on the island.
Out at the beach, block after block of houses, high-raised to keep them above the tide marks of previous storms, had been swept into the center of the city and were being used as battering rams to destroy succeeding blocks, until a great pile of wreckage held against the mountainous waves. After an hour or two that seemed like an eternity, the hurricane center began crossing the western end of the island, and the city on the eastern end was swept by enormous seas which brought the water level to twenty feet behind the dam of wrecked houses. Everything floated, many frame buildings, or what was left of them, being carried out into the Gulf.
The Cline house disintegrated and more than thirty people in it drowned, among them Isaac’s wife. The others drifted on wreckage, rising and falling with huge waves and trying desperately to hold timbers between them and the wind, to ward off flying boards, slate, and shingles. One woman, seeing her home was giving way to the wind and going down in the water, fastened her baby to the roof by hammering a big nail through one of his wrists. He survived. How many drowned or were killed in that awful night was never known. The estimates finally rose above six thousand. Doubt about the number was due to the presence of many summer visitors at the beaches and, besides, there was no accurate check on the missing, partly because the cemetery was washed out and the recently buried dead were confused with the bodies of storm victims. The aftermath was horrible beyond description.
Galveston had been on the right edge of the hurricane center. If the city had been equally close to the center on the left side, the destruction of wind and waves would have been bad, but nothing like that actually experienced. On the left side—that is, left when looking forward along the line of progress—the tide would have fallen rapidly as the center passed and the gales would have lacked the peak velocities so damaging to brick buildings and other structures which had withstood previous hurricanes. Here was a sharp challenge to the storm hunters. To tell in advance how devastating the hurricane might be, they would have to be able to predict its path with sufficient accuracy to say with some assurance whether the center would pass to the left or right of a coastal city.