“Our wharves will be rebuilt, the sanitary condition of the city will be perfected; streets will be laid with material superior to that destroyed, new vigor and life will enter the community with the work of construction, and the products of the twenty-one States and Territories contiguous will pour through the port of Galveston.
“We have now, through the action of this storm, with all its devastation, thirty feet of water on the bar, making this port the equal, if not the superior, of all others on the American seaboard. The island has stood the wrack of the greatest storm convulsion known in the history of any latitude, and there is no longer a question of the stability of the island’s foundation. If a wind velocity of one hundred and twenty miles an hour and a water volume of fifteen feet in some places upon the island did not have the effect of washing it away, then there is no wash to it.
“Galveston island is still here, and here to stay, and it will be made in a short time the most beautiful and progressive city in the Southwest. This may be esteemed simply a hopeful view, but the conditions existing warrant acceptance of the view to the fullest extent.
“The ‘News’ will not deal with what is needed from a generous public to the thousands of suffering people now left with us. The dead are at rest. There are twenty thousand homeless people here, whose necessities at this time are great indeed. Assistance is needed for them in the immediate future. The great works of material and industrial energy will take care of themselves by the attraction here presented for the profitable employment of capital. We were dazed for a day or two, but there is no gloom here now as to the future. Business has already been resumed.”
PLAN TO PROTECT GALVESTON.
Can the city of Galveston, almost obliterated by the recent storm, be protected from all future assaults by the Gulf?
Colonel Henry M. Robert, United States Corps of Engineers, and divisional engineer of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, who is stationed here at present, says that Galveston can be absolutely protected from every storm by a sea wall built along the Gulf front.
Colonel Robert, during the late spring, while on a visit to Galveston, suggested a comprehensive plan for the improvement, of that harbor, which was hailed by the city and State as solving the problem of the creation of a great port in Galveston Bay. This plan would also afford a great measure of protection to the city from inundation on its northern and southwestern sides should a strong wind from the Gulf pile up the water on the shallow floors of Galveston and West bays.
Colonel Robert’s plan contemplates the construction of a great basin for harbor purposes, as well as for dry docks, to the northwest of the city. The basin would be formed by a retaining wall shutting out Galveston and West bays, and by filling in the parts of the Gulf floor between this retaining wall and the walls or shores of the basin.
The northern retaining wall would follow generally the line of the south jetty, and a deep water channel of twenty-five to thirty feet would be left between the new land and the city of Galveston, connecting the channel formed by the jetties with the inner basin. Pelican Island would be the backbone of the made land, and all of Pelican Flats would be transformed into solid land, to be used for railway and docking purposes.