[RICHARD SPILLANE, editor of the “Galveston Tribune,” was chosen by the Mayor and Citizens’ Committee to seize any vessel in the harbor and make his way as best he could to such point as he could reach, so as to get in touch with the outside world, tell the story of the tragedy and appeal to mankind for help. He crossed the bay during a squall, the little boat in which he sailed being in imminent danger of swamping, having been stove in during the hurricane. He reached Texas City after a perilous trip, then made his way over the flooded prairie to Lamarque, where he found a rail road hand-car. With this hand-car he managed to reach League City, where he met a train coming from Houston to learn what fate had befallen Galveston. On this train he reached Houston, where after sending messages to President McKinley and Governor Sayers, he gave the news in detail to the newspapers of the nation.]

In the world’s great tragedies, that of Galveston stands remarkable. In no other case in history was a disaster met with such courage and fortitude; in no other case in history were the people of the whole world so responsive to the call for help for the helpless.

There prevails a belief that Galveston is subject to severe storms. That is a mistake. There have been heavy blows, and there have been times when the waters of the bay and the Gulf met in the city’s streets, but the storm of September 8, 1900, is without parallel. The best proof of this statement is furnished by the old Spanish charts of three hundred years ago. They contain as landmarks of Galveston Island the sign of three great trees—oaks—that stood three hundred years ago in what is known as Lafitte’s grove, twelve miles down Galveston Island from the city. These oaks withstood the storms of three centuries. They were felled by the fury of the storm of September 8.

The storm of September 8th did not, as has been supposed, come upon the city without warning. The same storm, less ferocious perhaps, had swept along the South Atlantic coast several days before. It had its origin in that breeding place of hurricanes, the West Indies, and, after swirling along the Florida and Carolina shores, doubled on its tracks, entered the Gulf, came racing westward and developing greater strength with each hour, and centered all its energies upon the Texas coast near Galveston.

On September 7th there was official warning of the approach of a severe storm, but no one expected such a tempest as was destined to devastate the city. Such warning as was given was rather addressed to mariners about to go to sea than to those living on shore.

Simultaneously with the approach of the hurricane was a great wind from the north, known locally as a “Norther.” This developed at Galveston about 2 A. M., on September 8th. The approaching hurricane from the east and southeast had been driving a great wall of water toward the shore at Galveston. The tremendous wind storm from the north acted as a counter force or check to the hurricane element.

The north wind blew the water from Galveston Bay on the one side of the city and the storm in the Gulf hurled its battalions of waves upon the beach side of the city.

Early in the day the battle between these two contending forces offered a magnificent spectacle to a student of scenery of nature. As long as the north wind held strong the city was safe. While the winds dashed great volumes of water over the wharves and flooded some streets in the business portion of the city and the waters of the Gulf on the other side of the city encroached upon the streets near the beach there was no particular fear of serious consequences, but about noon the barometer, which had been very low, suddenly began to drop at a rate that presaged a storm of tremendous violence.

Following this came the warning that the wind would, before many hours, change from the north to the southeast and to the fury of the wall of water being driven upon Galveston by the approaching hurricane would be added all the tremendous force of the wind that had previously acted as a partial check to the Gulf storm.

To those who previously had no fear, the certainty that the wind would change came as the first real note of warning. With the first shifting of the wind the waters of the Gulf swept over the city. Houses near the beach began to crumble and collapse, their timbers being picked up by the wind and waves and thrown in a long line of battering rams against the structures. Men, women and children fled from their homes and sought safety in higher portions of the city, or in buildings more strongly built. Some were taken out in boats, some in wagons, some waded through the waters, but the flood rose so rapidly that the approach of night found many hundreds battling in the waters, unable to reach places of safety. The air was full of missiles.

The wind tore slates from roofs and carried them along like wafers. A person struck by one of these, driven with the fearful violence of the storm, was certain to be maimed, if not killed outright. The waves, with each succeeding sweep of the in-rushing tide, brought a greater volume of wreckage as house after house toppled and fell into the waters. So tremendous was the roar of the storm that all other sounds were dwarfed and drowned. During the eight hours from 4 P. M. until midnight, the hurricane raged with a fury greater than words can describe. What height the winds reached will never be known. The wind gauge at the weather bureau recorded an average of 84 miles an hour for five consecutive minutes, and then the instruments were carried away. That was before the storm had become really serious. The belief, as expressed by the observer, that the wind averaged between 110 and 120 miles an hour, is as good information as is obtainable.

Nothing so exemplified the impotency of man as the storm. Massive buildings were crushed like egg shells, great timbers were carried through the air as though they were of no weight, and the winds and the waves swept everything before them until their appetite for destruction was satiated and their force spent.

A remarkable feature about the storm is the disparity in the depth of water in different portions of the city, and the undoubted fact that the waters subsided on the north side of the city hours before they did on the south side.

These peculiarities are explained by the topography of the island. Broadway, which marks the center, or middle of the city, proper, is on the ridge, from which the land slopes on one side, toward the bay and on the other, toward the Gulf. The waters from the Gulf passed over this ridge and swept on toward the bay during the most furious stages of the storm, but the full energies of wind and water were directed upon that portion of the city between the Gulf and the Broadway Ridge. Of the lives lost in the city, 90 per cent. were in the district named.

How many lives were sacrificed to the Storm King will never be known. The census taken in June showed that Galveston had a population of 38,000. Outside the city limits on Galveston Island there were 1,600 persons living. The dead in the city exceeded 5000. Of the 1600 living outside the city limits, 1200 were lost. This frightful mortality—75 per cent.—outside the city is explained by the fact that most of the people there lived in frail structures and had no places of comparative safety to take refuge in. In the mainland district swept by the storm, at least 100 persons perished. It is safe, therefore, to state that at least 7000 lives were lost.

Of the property damage no estimate can be considered accurate. The estimates range from $25,000,000 to $50,000,000.

Of marvelous escapes from death, of acts of supreme heroism, of devotion and courage beyond parallel, the storm developed many instances. In some cases whole families were blotted out, in others the strong perished and the weak survived. Of the various branches of one family, 42 were killed, while in one household 13 out of a total of 15 were lost.

Such a scene of desolation as met the eyes of the people of Galveston when day dawned Sunday, September 9, has rarely been witnessed on earth. Fifteen hundred acres of the city had been swept clear of every habitation. Every street was choked with ruins, while the sea, not content with tearing away a great strip along the beach front, had piled the wreckage in one great long mass from city end to city end. Beneath these masses of broken buildings, in the streets, in the yards, in fence corners, in cisterns, in the bay, far out across the waters on the mainland shores, everywhere, in fact, were corpses. Galveston was a veritable charnel-house. To bury the dead was a physical impossibility. Added to the horror of so many corpses was the presence of carcasses of thousands of horses, cattle, dogs and other domestic animals.

To a people upon whom such a terrible calamity had been visited, now devolved a duty the like of which a civilized people had never been called to perform. To protect the living the dead had to be gotten rid of with all speed, for with corpses on every side, with carcasses by the thousands, and with a severe tropic sun to hasten decomposition, pestilence in its most terrible form threatened the living if the dead were not removed.

The tumbrels that rumbled over Paris streets with the gruesome burdens that came from Robespierre’s abattoir had little work compared with the carts and wagons of Galveston in the days that followed the awful storm. It was at first determined to bury the dead at sea, but the procession of the dead seemed neverending, and the cargoes that were taken to the deep and cast upon the waters came back with the tides and littered the shores. Then it was decided to burn the dead.

Ye who know not the horror of those days, who took no part in the saddest spectacle that man ever witnessed, may well shed tears of sympathy for those whose human tenement blazed on the funeral pyre in street or avenue, or whose requiem was sung by the waves that had brought death—but shed tears, too, for the brave men who faced this most gruesome duty with a Spartan courage the world has never known before.

The dead past has buried its dead.

For a week Galveston was under martial law. There was no disorder. There was some robbing of the dead by ghouls. This was checked by a punishment swift and sure.

The city rose from its ruins as if by magic. Street after street was cleared of debris. A small army of men worked from early morn until the shadows of night descended, to lift the city from its burden of wreckage. Then, when danger of epidemic seemed passed, attention was turned to commerce. The bay was strewn with stranded vessels. Monster ocean steamers weighing thousands of tons had been picked up like toys, driven across the lowlands, and thrown far from their moorings. One big steamship was hurled through three bridges, another, weighing 4,000 tons, was carried twenty-two miles from deep water, and dashed against a bayou bluff in another county.

The great wharves and warehouses along the bay front were a mass of splintered, broken timbers.

But the mighty energy of man worked wonders. Marvelous to say, under such conditions, a bridge 2? miles long was built across the bay within seven days and Galveston, which had been cut off from the world, was once more in active touch with all the marts of trade and commerce. An undaunted people strove as only an indomitable people can strive, to rehabilitate the city.

The signs of the cripple are still upon the city, but every hour brings nearer the day when the crutches will be thrown away and Galveston, which by nature and by man was chosen as the entrepot for the great West, will rise to a loftier destiny and a more enduring commercial prosperity than seemed possible before she was tried in the crucible of disaster. Longfellow says:

The dark and dreary days were crowded into Galveston’s life with horror unspeakable. It is an inexorable law of nature that after the storm comes the radiance of a glorious sunshine.