Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [109]
The sea never looked so lovely, and so deadly.
I HAVE TRIED to keep these notes as concise as possible. Where a citation refers to a document used only once, a full description of the document follows immediately. In all other cases, the citation refers to a more complete bibliographic reference in the Sources section.
Telegram
1 Do you hear: Telegram, National Archives. General Correspondence.
The Beach: September 8, 1900
1 Not everyone found Galveston a fairy land of wealth and gleaming streets. The sixteenth-century Spanish called it the Isla de Malhado, the “Isle of Misfortune.” Yellow fever scourged the place in 1867 and prompted Amelia Barr, a resident whose husband and two sons died in the outbreak, to call it the “city of dreadful death.” On the hottest days, she wrote, the city’s tropical climate could be unbearable. “An hour or two of pouring, beating, tropical rain, and then an hour or two of such awful heat and baleful sunshine, as the language … has no words to describe.” The port thrived, but at the expense of global goodwill. The Galveston Wharf Company held such monopolistic control over the wharves that the company became known from New York to Liverpool as the Octopus of the Gulf. Gen. P. H. Sheridan took the occasion of a visit to Galveston to issue one of the most infamous geographical slanders of all time. “If I owned Texas and hell,” he said, “I’d rent out Texas and live in hell.” 3. He taught Sunday school: First Baptist Church.
2 He paid cash: Giles Mercantile Agency reference book.
3 “I suppose there is not”: National Archives. Inspection Reports, Galveston, November 1893.
4 A New Orleans photographer: Photograph. Isaac Cline. Louisiana State Museum. Whitesell Collection. Accession No. 1981.83.198.
5 It was a time: McCullough, Path, 247.
6 She was pregnant: Isaac Cline, Monthly Weather Review, Sept. 1900.
7 Temperatures in Galveston: Daily Journal.
8 For the first time: “The Incredible Shrinking Glacier.”
9 A correspondent for: “The Galveston Horror.”
10 In a pamphlet: In Ousley, Appendix. See also Immigrants Guide to Western Texas. Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad. Galveston, 1876. “It is A FABLE, generally believed in the North, that Texas is a land of snakes, tarantulas, scorpions, fleas and mosquitoes …” 103.
11 On Sundays: Isaac never actually says he and his family visited Murdoch’s and the Pagoda on Sundays, but given their proximity to his house, the communal character of the time—and the absence of television—it is all but certain that the Clines did so. Bathhouse details: Fire Insurance Map.
12 An electric wire: Picturesque Galveston, 10.
13 The thudding: Cline, Isaac, “Special Report,” 372.
14 Isaac woke: Ibid., 372; also, Cline, Storms, 93; Cline, “Cyclones,” 13; Cline, “Century,” 26; Cline, Joseph, Heavens, 49.
15 Joseph too: Cline, Joseph, Heavens, 49.
16 For days, however: Weems, 8–12. But see, especially, National Archives: Weather Bureau. General Correspondence. Sept. 7, 1900, William B. Stockman to Col. H. H. C. Dunwoody, summarizing reports on the storm’s early character and track. Box 1475.
17 The bureau had long banned: Whitnah, 215.
18 With most of the block: Fire Insurance Map.
19 At the corner: Photograph. 2502 Avenue Q. Rosenberg Library. Street File: Avenue Q. Also, Fire Insurance Map.
20 Dr. Samuel O. Young: Young account, Storm of 1900 Collection. Subject File. Rosenberg Library.
21 To her, palms and live oak: Rollfing, 1: 1. Louisa’s autobiographical account of her migration to America and her subsequent life would make warm, revelatory reading for any student of the immigrant experience.
22 In the summer of 1900: Mason, 54–56.
23 Josiah: Gregg Gregg, 101.
24 The New York Herald: Eisenhour, 1.
25 On Friday, September 7, Isaac had read: In no document does Isaac Cline actually say he read the census report in the Galveston News, but it was the biggest local news story of the day. Isaac most certainly