Dark Water Rising (24 page)

“If the bodies aren’t moved by sundown, they’ll have to take them out in pieces tomorrow. So they’re barging them eighteen miles out . . . and giving them to the sea.”

The official death count hovers at eight thousand—six thousand lost in Galveston and two thousand on the mainland—but the actual figure can never be known. Historians insist that twelve thousand is more accurate, pointing to the many who quickly left the island without reporting missing family members, and to the families who were washed out to sea, leaving no one alive to do the reporting. Then there were some, like the Braedens, who had no bodies to bury and found themselves unwilling to give up hope and report their loved ones dead.

By daybreak Sunday morning, September 9, 1900, even as families all over Galveston waded from damaged homes for their first glimpse of the ravaged city, the mighty storm continued its destructive, two-hundred-mile-wide path, devastating dozens of Texas towns and sweeping into Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, and beyond. Six loggers were killed on the Eau Claire River in Wisconsin. Hurricane-force winds lashed Chicago and Buffalo, downing telegraph lines and halting communication across the whole Midwest.

Houses and buildings left standing . . . tilted crazily, and many lay tumbled topsy-turvy, kicked over like toy blocks.

The storm moved across Michigan and the Canadian
province of Ontario, destroying a million-dollar fruit crop ready for harvest, then sent the steamer
John B. Lyon
and the schooner
Dundee
to the bottom of Lake Erie, along with thirteen men.

By the twelfth of September, four full days after Galveston’s destruction, the storm gained strength again as it approached the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Prince Edward Island reported eight small fishing schooners and thirty-eight men lost, and off Newfoundland, eighty-two schooners were sunk or driven ashore, another hundred damaged, and seventy-five men were missing. The fishing fleet of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon lost nine schooners and 120 men, leaving fifty children without fathers.

Everywhere we looked, we saw men . . . picking up bodies.

The storm that ravaged Galveston had left behind much more than wreckage and mud and death. It had left a challenge.

On September 13, the mighty storm finally surged northeastward across the North Atlantic Ocean, curved over the top of the world, and is believed to have disappeared above Siberia.

Back in Galveston, not a single life or business had been left unchanged, but even before the dead were at rest, men gathered in storm-damaged buildings to discuss how to rebuild their great city and find a way to prevent such devastation from happening again.

A proposal to erect a seawall was soon drafted and submitted to the state legislature, and on September 19, 1902, work began. Along six miles of beach, men pounded creosoted pilings forty feet into the sand and formed a concrete barricade sixteen feet thick at the base and seventeen feet above mean low tide. This wall stood behind a barrier of granite boulders that extended twenty-seven feet toward the gulf.

The seawall was completed on July 29, 1904, but that wasn’t enough for the citizens of Galveston. They wanted the city raised to prevent the massive flooding that had taken so many lives, and each property owner agreed to bear a share of the cost. Soon streetcar tracks, fireplugs, water lines, and even trees and shrubs were removed. One by one, more than 2,100 homes, churches, and businesses were jacked up, some as high as thirteen feet, and sand sucked from the floor of the gulf was pumped onto the island to fill in under all the buildings, covering up roads and grass and flowers. During the eight years it took to raise five hundred city blocks, residents were forced to use long wooden
walkways to get to their homes and through town. They suffered immense inconvenience, but with memories of the storm still fresh, there were no complaints. The raising was finished during the summer of 1910, and at last Galvestonians breathed easier.

Since then, the seawall has been extended six times and now covers one-third of Galveston’s gulf beaches, and yet the shadow of the Great Storm remains. You can glimpse it in the historic homes and smell it in their tangled gardens of jasmine and magnolia. You can taste it in the salty gulf breezes and hear it, unfailingly, in the rhythmic rush of waves.

It was time to move on . . .

On September 8, 2000, the city gathered for a centennial tribute to the victims of the Galveston Storm, a ceremony that had been two years in the making.

“Hurricanes haunt,” said Texas native Dan Rather, keynote speaker and now-retired news anchor. “Galveston will never forget what happened here.”

Nor will I.

Marian Hale

R
OCKPORT
, T
EXAS
S
EPTEMBER
2006

Heartfelt appreciation to my talented writing friends Barton Hill, Julie Hannah, Woody Davis, Kay Butzin, and Heather Miller; to my generous and exceptional editor, Reka Simonsen; my treasured and resourceful parents, June and Robert Freeze; my most ingenious adviser, Wendel Hale; my bright and shining children, Allison, Micah, and especially Aliisa, for candid feedback, invaluable suggestions, and unshakable support; and always to the Rockport Writers Group for their magnificent cheers.

And my deepest gratitude to Katherine Vedder Pauls and all the survivors of the 1900 Galveston Storm for providing windows into their enormous personal loss and Herculean efforts to rebuild the great city of Galveston.