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 — John Shaqi
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
The Catholic Orphans’ Home on the beach at the west end of the city went
some time after 5.30 o’clock Saturday evening. Mr. Harry Gray, who lived
in Kinkead subdivision, just beyond the city limits, was compelled to
leave his house at that hour and says the home was standing then. Now
not a vestige of it remains. Eight nuns and all but one of ninety-five
children were lost. This child, a little tot, was found on the north
side of the island in a tree. “I’se been ’seep,” he lisped. “My head was
in de water.”
MR. GRAY’S STORY.
Mr. Gray’s story is interesting. His house fell and he fought his way
out with a wife who was just out of a sick bed. He managed to get to the
next house with her. This was the home of Ed. Hunter. That house went
between 6.30 and 7, and the Hunter family was lost. Mr. Gray caught a
transom, put the arm of his wife through it, and soon found that the
transom belonged to the side of the house, about 20×20 feet in size. It
was nothing but the side of the house made of ordinary siding and
studding. He swung onto this and even now does not understand how it
stood up under them.
All the time he kept telling his wife to hold onto him, and this she
did. Along in the night the raft struck a tree and was swept from under
them. Gray caught a limb with his wife still clinging to him. By this
time he was almost completely exhausted but he managed by a hundred
successive efforts to get his wife into the tree.
A little later a colored man was seen coming through the water. Gray
called to him to take to the lower limbs and not come higher, for he was
afraid the tree with three people on it would be made top-heavy. When
daylight came he took his wife in his arms and told the negro to go
ahead for a house they saw in the distance, for had there been any holes
he wanted to be advised of it before he went into them with his wife,
for it was all he could do to push through the water in his exhausted
condition.
After walking until 10 o’clock he reached the high land in the Denver
resurvey and eventually got to town. Not until yesterday had he
sufficiently recovered from his exhaustion to come onto the streets. He
is cut and bruised in a dozen places. He says the water in Kinkead
addition was ten feet deep.
Robert Park and a party of men came in from Hitchcock Sunday, arriving
that evening. They started in a skiff, and finally reached a prairie,
over which they carried the boat. Finally they reached water again, and
along about noon went alongside the British steamer “Roma,” which was
dragged from her moorings in the roads between the jetties, about seven
miles up the channel and landed in the draw of the county bridge. They
report the steamer in good condition. They got water and food there and
came on across.
A GRUESOME SIGHT.