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

People going by heard a sound which seemed to them like a groan. They stopped to listen and the groan was repeated. They hastily pulled off the debris and there found the old man still alive. It was understood that he was immediately taken to the home of friends at Tenth and Mechanic streets for care and treatment.

This story is the most remarkable instance of preservation of life recorded. The man must have gone through at least a portion of the storm to have been caught in the drift. He must have been above the water line at that point or he would have drowned. Why his groans were not heard before is not understood, unless it be that he laid unconscious until shortly before he was found. What a tenacity of life the man must have had to lie there for a week without food or water buried beneath all that debris.

Pete Brophey, clerk of the corporation court, is lying in a room at the Tremont Hotel suffering from injuries received in the storm. The story he tells of his miraculous escape, like the many others, wonderful, yet terrible, is also one of sorrow, as he lost his aged parents in the storm.

HE TOOK THE AWFUL RISK.

When the storm began to get so ferocious he became frightened. In the evening, just after dark, securing a boat, he started out with his parents to a Mr. Cleveland’s, a neighbor’s house, it being large and the most substantial in the neighborhood. At that time the water was rising rapidly and was being lashed into a perfect fury by the terrific wind. It was a terrible thing to start out in the water under such conditions, but he saw that their house would not stand long, so he took the awful risk. The boat was a small affair, and with three people in it, it was overloaded; nevertheless, with great daring he succeeded in getting his mother and father into it, the former being 62 years of age and the latter 66. It was a terrific risk, but he had to take it. After getting his parents into the boat he started out to his neighbor’s house.

The waters were rushing like mad down the street and whipped the boat around as if it were but a straw. Added to the terrible force of the waters was the terrific wind. They were getting along all right, notwithstanding this, and were making for the house below them, when, just ahead, he saw a man and woman and several children making for the boat. When it came near enough they grasped its sides and begged to be taken in.

It was indeed a trying situation. There he was, with his aged parents with him in a boat already overloaded, with the wind blowing almost a hundred miles an hour and carrying all before it, with the waves dashing everything to pieces and hurling the timbers of the houses against whatever might be in the way, with a force that only the most vivid imagination can picture. It was a terrible ordeal, but like the man that he is, he could not leave those begging parents and crying children without making at least an effort to save them. So, after great difficulty, the woman and children got aboard, and the perilous journey to what they hoped would be a haven of refuge was again begun, or rather it had been going on all the time, as the boat was being carried down on the crest of the waves with frightful velocity.

THE BOAT CAPSIZED.

When almost abreast of the house the boat capsized. Then again Brophey showed his bravery and that he was through and through a hero. Instead of striking out alone for the house he thought of his parents and the drowning family. After much difficulty, after having gone under time and time again in his frantic efforts to save his loved ones and the destitute family, he at last succeeded in getting them into the house.

That place they found filled to overflowing with refugees like themselves. The house was creaking and trembling under the terrible force of the water and wind, and Brophey saw that it would be but a little while before it, too, would have to succumb. So he braced himself in a door and waited for the inevitable. It was but a little while till it came. The house went down and all with it except Brophey, who found himself on top of the water in a gurgling and seething mass of timbers, roofs and other debris. He crawled up on one roof only to have another one thrown like a blanket over him.