Ninety-six bodies were buried at Texas City, all but eight of which floated to that place from Galveston. Some were identified, but the great majority were not. State troops were stationed at Texas City and Virginia Point to prevent those who could not give a satisfactory account of themselves from boarding boats bound for Galveston. In burying the dead along the shore of the gulf no coffins were used, the supply being exhausted. There was no time to knock even an ordinary pine box together. Cases were known where people have buried their dead in their yards.
As soon as possible the work of cremating the bodies of the dead began. Vast funeral pyres were erected and the corpses placed thereon, the incineration being under the supervision of the fire department. Matters had come to such a pass that even the casting of bodies into the sea was not only dangerous to those who handled them, but there was the utmost danger in carrying the decomposed, putrefying masses of human flesh through the streets to the barges on the beach. The cemeteries were not fit for burial purposes, and no attempt whatever was made to reach them until the ground was thoroughly dried out. Then the bodies of those buried in private grounds, yards and in the sands along the beach, not only on Galveston Island, but at Virginia Point and Texas City, were removed to the public places of interment, where suitable memorials were set up to mark their last resting places. It might have been deemed unfeeling and even brutal, but the fact was that the bodies of the unidentified victims received small consideration, being handled roughly by the workmen, and thrown into the temporary graves along the beach as though they were animals and not the remains of human beings. No prayers were uttered save in isolated instances, and the poor mangled bodies were consigned to the trench as hurriedly as possible. The burying parties had no time for sentiment, and so accustomed had the workers in the “dead gangs,” as they were named, become to their grewsome task that they even laughed and joked when laying away the corpses.
Special attention was given the wounded. Physicians were on duty all the time, some of them not having been to bed since Friday night longer than an hour at a time. Victims not badly hurt were put aside for those suffering and actually requiring the services of surgeons. There were thousands of them. There were few in Galveston who did not bear the marks of wounds of some sort.
CHAPTER IV.
Thrilling Experiences of People During the Great Storm—Eighty-five Persons Perish by Being Blown from a Train—Adventures of Survivors at Galveston.
The experiences and adventures of those who were in the great and disastrous storm and escaped only after undergoing frightful anxiety, make interesting reading. Those who emerged in safety from the fearful vortex were unusually fortunate, when it is considered that possibly 8,000 persons in Galveston lost their lives and hundreds fell victims to the fury of the hurricane in the territory adjacent to the ill-fated city.
Hon. John H. Poe, member of the Louisiana State Board of Education, and residing at Lake Charles, La., was present when eighty-five passengers on the Gulf & Interstate train which left Beaumont early Saturday morning from Bolivar Point lost their lives. Mr. Poe was one of the passengers on this train and fortunately, together with a few others, sought safety in the lighthouse at Bolivar Point and was saved. The train reached Bolivar about noon and all preparations were made to run the train on the ferryboat preparatory to crossing the bay. But the wind blew so swiftly that the ferry could not make a landing and the conductor of the train, after allowing it to stand on the tracks for a few minutes, started to back it back toward Beaumont. The wind increased so rapidly, coming in from the open sea, that soon the water had reached a level with the bottom of the seats within the cars. It was then that some of the passengers sought safety in the nearby lighthouse, but in spite of all efforts eighty-five passengers were blown away or drowned. The train was entirely wrecked. Some of the killed were from New Orleans, as the train made direct connections with the Southern Pacific train which left New Orleans Friday night.
Those who were saved had to spend over fifty hours in the dismal lighthouse on almost no rations. The experience was one they will remember as one of the most terrible of their whole lives.