Galveston had been on the right edge of the hurricane center. If the city had been equally close to the center on the left side, the destruction of wind and waves would have been bad, but nothing like that actually experienced. On the left side—that is, left when looking forward along the line of progress—the tide would have fallen rapidly as the center passed and the gales would have lacked the peak velocities so damaging to brick buildings and other structures which had withstood previous hurricanes. Here was a sharp challenge to the storm hunters. To tell in advance how devastating the hurricane might be, they would have to be able to predict its path with sufficient accuracy to say with some assurance whether the center would pass to the left or right of a coastal city. This case shows how hard it was to make predictions without radio. During the approach of the Galveston hurricane, the storm hunters knew the position of its center only when it crossed Cuba and again when it struck the Texas Coast. While it was in the Gulf, weather reports from coastal points indicated that there was a hurricane outside, moving westward, but the winds, clouds, tides, and waves at those points would have been about the same with a big storm far out over the water as with a small storm close to land. Soon after the Galveston disaster there was a growing hope that wireless messages from ships at sea would provide this vital information in time for adequate warnings. Progress in the use of wireless at sea really was fast, although it seemed very slow to the storm hunters at the time. The first ocean-weather report to the Weather Bureau was received from the Steamship _New York_, in the western Atlantic, on December 3, 1905. It was not until August 26, 1909, that a vessel at sea reported from the inside of a hurricane. It was the Steamship _Cartago_, near the Coast of Yucatan. The master estimated the winds at one hundred miles an hour. This big storm struck the Mexican Coast on August 28, drowned fifteen hundred people and created alarming tides and very rough seas all along the Texas Coast. Thousands of people at Galveston and at many other points between there and Brownsville stood on the Gulf front and watched the tremendous waves breaking on the beaches. Gradually the number of weather reports by radio increased and the work of the storm hunters improved. World War I and enemy submarines stopped the messages from ships temporarily, but after 1919 weather maps were extended over the oceans. Other countries co-operated in the exchange of messages and the centers of storms were spotted, even when far out of range of the nearest coast or island. Cautionary warnings were sent to vessels in the line of advance. By this means, the service of the storm hunters was of extreme value in the safety of life and property afloat as well as on shore.