Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [88]
To: Willis Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau
First news from Galveston just received by train which could get no closer to the bay shore than six miles, where Prairie was strewn with debris and dead bodies. About two hundred corpses counted from train. Large Steamship stranded two miles inland. Nothing could be seen of Galveston. Loss of life and property undoubtedly most appalling. Weather clear and bright here with gentle southeast wind.
G. L. Vaughan
Manager,
Western Union, Houston
GULF OF MEXICO
First Glimpse
THE PENSACOLA DRIFTED in the old seas of the storm throughout Saturday and Saturday night. About dawn, the remains of the anchor caught something in the seabed, and again the ship swung, again her beams and plates began to bind and flex. But the barometer showed a steady rise in pressure. The storm had passed.
Captain Simmons ordered the crew to haul in the stern hawser and the anchor chain-cable, and to restart the engines. He ordered another sounding and found the ship in only eighty feet of water. Given the slope of the seabed, he estimated through dead reckoning that Galveston was now about fifty-five miles to the northwest. The ship had drifted over fifty miles. He set a course back to the city.
About noon on Sunday, Simmons spotted the coast and followed it west, looking for landmarks, but found his view blocked by squalls.
In the afternoon, the clouds began to break and the sea to gleam a rich royal blue. Simmons spotted the Galveston grain elevator, and turned toward it, but as the ship entered the Bolivar channel he and his guests fell silent.
They entered a changed world. Nothing was as it had been when the ship left. “We found a line of breakers where the jetties were, but everything on them washed away, beacons, bay lights, lightship, buoys here and there out of position,” Menard said. “We discovered steamers ashore, the forts and barracks, torpedo casemate all gone, and as we entered we began to see the terrible destruction to the city, and we knew not what news to expect when we landed of our loved ones at home.”
Where buildings had stood they saw great mounds of timber. Whole neighborhoods seemed to have disappeared, and the immense bathhouses were simply gone. Now and then a peculiar scent drifted to the ship from the city, and some aboard recognized it immediately as the odor of putrefaction. But to smell it at this distance—what did that mean?
No one worried much about the loss of physical property, Menard said, “but our anxiety about the loss of life was terrible.”
It was about five o’clock, the evening a lovely summer amber, when Simmons docked the ship at the foot of 23rd Street. Menard and Carroll thanked the captain for his great skill in getting them through the storm, then set off in search of family and friends.
The scent of putrefaction was overpowering.
GALVESTON
Silence
THE TRAIN LEFT Houston at dawn and for the first few miles made easy progress. The grass on the lowlands had been blown flat, the few visible trees stripped of all leaves, but otherwise Col. William Sterett saw little of note. The sky was a pretty mix of clouds and vivid blue, with that washed quality that so often came after a storm. Big dragonflies patrolled the grass.
Sterett, a writer for the Dallas News, had been in the newspaper’s office on Saturday when its telegrapher reported losing all contact with Galveston. That in itself was not surprising. Telegraph lines were always being blown down, but the telegraph companies were adept at fixing breaks quickly and routing telegrams through alternate pathways. Even minor storms caused communication to suffer. What made the silence at Galveston so troubling was its duration. The last telegram had come on Saturday afternoon. Now it was Tuesday morning and the lines were still down.
Wild stories had filled the silence. There was talk, clearly exaggerated, that the storm had submerged the entire city under a dozen feet of water at a cost of a thousand lives. Saturday evening someone in Galveston managed