The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 373
xiv, 17-536 p. : front., plates ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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DIEI) IN EFFORTS. TO SAVE OTHERS. 3783
agonized people were heard. It was dark and the spray sped in
sheets. Yet it was light enough to see now and then. People in
boats and wading came along. Their houses were gone. Mine
rocked like a cradle, and I felt the end had come." Thus said
another man: "What were your feelings ? " " Nothing but that of
complete resignation. I have read much in books of the tableaux
of the past appearing to the human mind on the eve of man's dissolution.
In no instance have I found that the survivors of this
terrible thing remembered the past. Some were frightened and
simply shrieked and laid hold of anything that would relieve them
from the embraces of the water. Some were frightened and prayed
for mercy. Some were frightened into dumb resignation, partaking
of dumb indifference."
NOBLE DEEDS IN TIME OF DISASTER.
In all great catastrophes I have yet to know of one that some
special act of selfishness and brutality did not occur. There is
hardly a great wreck recorded in which is not depicted the brute
who pushed women from boats or from spars. In all I have heard
of the thousands of incidents connected with this storm, not an
instance of that selfishness which would cause one person to
deprive another of his means of escape has occurred. Thousands
of instances of devotion of husband to wife, of wife to husband, of
child to parent and parent to child can be mentioned.
One poor woman with her child and her father was cast out
into the raging waters. They were separated. Both were in drift
and both believed they went out in the Gulf and returned. The
mother was finally cast upon the drift, and there she was pounded
by the waves and debris until she pulled into a house against
which the drift had lodged. During all that frightful ride she
held to her 8-months-old babe, and when she was on the drift pile
she lay upon her infant and covered it with her body, that it
might escape the blows of the planks. She came out of the ordeal
cut and maimed. But the infant had not a scratch.
Another man took his wife front one house to another by
swimming until he had occupied three. Each fell in its turn, and
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The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times (Book)
This book covers the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the United States' deadliest natural disaster. It includes accounts from survivors and eyewitnesses, and photos of the devastation.
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Lester, Paul. The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times, book, 1900~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth26719/m1/431/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.