Galveston: A History of the Island

Chapter 16

16 SUNDAY MORNING was a scene out of hell, played against a brilliant blue sky and a drowsy sea. At low tide the Gulf seemed as peaceful as a sleeping teenager, spent and unaware of its night of murderous violence. Small groups of people began to appear in the streets, tentative at first, as though they didn't want to disturb anything. Bruised and stunned, wet and chilled to the bone, they stumbled about, trying to assimilate the scope of this tragedy. Those who had stoves and chimneys standing did what they could to cook breakfast. Others looked for dry wood. The entire Island was water-logged and covered with an inch-thick layer offoul-smelling slime. Still others dared to survey the damage. It was worse than anyone imagined-far worse. In the blackest hour no one had conjured up a vision like the one that spread before the survivors this Sunday morning. One-third of the Island was scraped clean, and the other two-thirds battered almost beyond recognition. In the Sunday morning stillness people climbed on top of the debris and looked around. They heard faint cries from people buried alive. At first, their impulse was to attempt rescues, digging with their bare hands or whatever tool they could find, but it was hopeless. No human effort could alter the inevitable or limit the final suffering of those who were trapped and waiting to die. A more urgent concern was aiding the injured and homeless. There wasn't a building on the Island that escaped damage. More than 3,600 houses were totally destroyed, as were hundreds ofbuild- 176 Gary Cartwright ings and institutions. Like an avenging angel on a special mission, the storm had been coldly selective in its choice of targets. Sacred Heart Catholic Church was in ruins, while just across 14th Street the mansion of Walter Gresham had escaped with only damage from the high water. The fourth floor of the Moody Building was gone, sheared away as though by a giant knife. St. Mary's Cathedral was nearly destroyed, but miraculously the tower that Nicholas Clayton built survived, and Mary, Star of the Sea, continued to stand watch. The east wall of the Opera House had collapsed, and the interior was coated with slime the consistency of axle grease. Except for a few scattered bricks, there was no trace of St. Mary's Orphanage. Railroad tracks were buried or twisted into hideous forms, trees uprooted, telephone poles flattened, streets and sidewalks buckled or washed away, wires ripped loose, gas and electric lines ruptured, sewers plugged with vegetable, animal, and human remains. Huge oceangoing ships had tom loose from their ropes and cables and had been swept across the bay and deposited on the mainland. The British steamship Taunton was carried from its anchorage at the mouth of the ship channel to a thirty-foot bank at Cedar Point, twenty-two miles from deep water. Household items, clothing, trade goods, machinery, almost every material possession that wasn't stored higher than fifteen feet was saturated with salt water and scum, and either ruined or badly damaged. Weeks and even months later, bicycles that seemed no worse for the experience suddenly fell apart, rusted from the inside. There were so many bodies that after a while the senses numbed, and the corpses seemed to be merely some sort of demented design. They were heaped together in the streets, strewn across vacant lots, sticking from mounds of wreckage, floating in shallow pools of water, scattered along the beach, bobbing in the filthy backwash of the bay. Most were naked, mutilated, and dashed beyond recognition . They hung like macabre ornaments from trees, trestles, and telephone poles. One observer counted forty-three bodies dangling from the framework of a partially demolished railroad bridge. The horror and the unspeakable suffering of the victims' final moments were often preserved in ghastly frescoes of death. The body of twelve-year-old Scott McCloskey, son of a sea captain, was found with his left arm shattered, his right arm still wrapped protectively around the body of his younger brother. A woman, her long blond hair entangled in barbed wire, reached back in death as though to GALVESTON 177 disengage it. Miles down the beach from the orphans' home, the bodies of a nun and nine children, still tied together with clothesline , lay half-buried in sand and seaweed. For days...