The Great Galveston Disaster: Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of De
John Stuart Mill · en
This, the first train out of Houston, was to leave early Tuesday
morning. The news of its intended departure spread to all parts of the
country. Hundreds of grief-stricken, bewildered people, nearly crazed
with anxiety for relatives in the storm-swept country, stayed up all
night, with the hope of getting into Galveston. The railroad men let all
that they could possibly stow away in the coaches get on board, telling
them in advance, however, that no one would be able to get from Texas
City to Galveston.
Arriving there with the train was the special photographer of the
newspaper with his camera. When this crowd of men and women reached
Texas City they found no means of riding further.
The only possible way to make the perilous trip was to walk to Virginia
Point, two miles away, and this was across the marsh filled with debris
and bodies from the Galveston wreck. The photographer and the ten other
men attempted the task. They were nearly exhausted when the two miles
were finished. They had taken off their shoes and walked up to their
waists in water. Their feet were bruised. The photographer carefully
kept his camera from coming in contact with the water, however, and got
several graphic views when he reached the place.
The ten men found a skiff that was thrown up the bay by the rush of
water on that fateful Saturday night. They dragged it for many weary
yards, finally getting it into the water, and managed to row to
Huntington Wharf, Galveston, a distance of two miles. Worn out as they
were, they walked to the city, the man with the camera being the first
photographer in from the outside.
His troubles were not over, though. There were hundreds of terrible
scenes to photograph; at every turn there was a graphic picture; but the
people of Galveston, crazed with grief as they were, seemed to think it
a desecration that he was there, and that views of their wrecked town
and their dead should be thus recorded by the camera. They muttered and
they threatened.
The photographer moved from one place to another. He hid himself and
only took a snapshot when he knew he was safe from the scrutiny of the
men and women who thought his work was a mockery of their grief. To show
the real mind of the people it will only be necessary to state that many
newspaper men who have visited all parts of the world as special
correspondents, who have had ingress to courts and Parliament, who have
traveled everywhere there has been news to find, found it impossible to
get into Galveston.
GETTING OUT OF GALVESTON.
Getting out of Galveston, however, is comparatively easy. It was
Wednesday morning when the photographer finally reached Houston,
exhausted and nervous to a degree that made working a torture. He
managed to develop his pictures, and that evening that man rushed
forward the first photographs of actual storm scenes to leave the city.