Isaac's Storm (44 page)

"The
only
hope
we
have,"
Muat
said,
at
the
time,
"is
that
my
daughter
may
have
been
picked
up
here
and
is
not
yet
in
a
condition
to
tell."

In
the
absence
of
a
body,
there
was
always
hope.
Isaac
continued
his
search.
But
as
conditions
worsened
—
as
fears
of
disease
grew
and
as
more
and
more
corpses
turned
up
(among
them
Anna
Muat's)
—
the
hunt
for
miracles
and
bodies
became
more
complicated.
Hope
receded,
and
simple
emptiness
took
its
place.

DAILY
JOURNAL
Tuesday,
September
11
I.M.
Cline,
Local
Forecast
Official,
still
unable
for
duty.
 

EVERY
DAY,
THE
editors
of
the
Galveston
News
removed
a
few
people
from
the
list
of
the
dead
and
placed
them
on
a
much
shorter
list
titled
"Not
Dead."
Misreporting
had
become
a
problem.
The
Tribune
ran
a
short
item
under
the
headline
"Be
Careful,"
which
urged
anyone
reporting
a
death
to
make
certain
the
victim
really
had
expired.
"Several
names
were
turned
in
as
dead
and
the
parties
were
very
much
alive."

The
list
of
the
dead
grew
longer
and
longer.
There
were
so
many
bodies
that
disposal
became
the
top
priority
of
the
city's
Relief
Committee,
which
now
governed
the
city
and
had
appointed
subcomittees
to
manage
burial,
finance,
hospitals,
and
other
tasks.
On
Monday
the
burial
committee
resolved
to
begin
burying
the
bodies
at
sea.
All
day
long,
fire
wagons,
hearses,
and
cargo
drays
hauled
stacks
of
bodies
to
the
city's
wharf,
where
crews
loaded
them
onto
an
open
barge.
The
city's
racial
harmony
began
to
erode.
Soldiers
rounded
up
fifty
black
men
at
gunpoint
and
forced
them
onto
the
barge,
promising
whiskey
to
help
make
the
task
of
loading,
weighting,
and
dumping
the
bodies
more
tolerable.

The
day
was
hot.
The
barge
was
moored
near
the
Pensacola,
whose
crewmen
stood
at
the
rail
and
watched
intendy
despite
the
grotesque
images
and
smells.
Workers
threw
the
bodies
into
the
hold
with
little
regard
for
modesty,
until
the
bodies
formed
a
tangle
of
swollen
buttocks
and
rigid
limbs.
One
body
stood
out.
It
was
long
and
slender
and
wrapped
ever
so
carefully
in
white
linen.
Someone
had
laid
it
on
a
portion
of
the
deck
that
kept
it
raised
above
the
other
corpses,
where
it
gleamed
in
the
bright
sun
like
a
statue
of
white
marble.

By
late
afternoon,
the
barge
contained
seven
hundred
corpses.
A
steam
tugboat
towed
the
barge
to
the
designated
burial
ground
eighteen
miles
out
in
the
Gulf,
but
it
arrived
well
after
nightfall
and
the
darkness
made
it
impossible
for
the
crew
to
work.
They
spent
the
night
among
arms
and
legs
brought
back
to
life
by
the
gende
rocking
of
the
sea.
Dead
hands
clawed
for
the
moon.

At
dawn
the
men
began
attaching
weights
to
the
bodies
—
anything
that
would
sink.
Portions
of
rail.
Sash
weights
from
windows.
They
worked
quickly.
Too
quickly,
apparendy,
for
by
the
end
of
the
day
bodies
began
returning
to
Galveston.
The
sea
drove
scores
of
them
back
onto
the
city's
beaches.
Some
had
weights
attached;
some
did
not.

The
burial
committee
found
its
choices
limited.
The
morgues
were
already
full,
burial
at
sea
clearly
had
not
worked,
and
decomposition
was
making
tbe
bodies
hard
to
handle.
The
whole
business
of
carting
corpses
through
the
streets
of
the
city
was
itself
taking
a
toll.
"It
was
realized,"
wrote
Clarence
Ousley,
of
the
Tribune,
"that
health,
even
the
sanity
of
people
in
the
streets,
forbade
the
ghosdy
parade
of
carts
to
the
wharf,
and
the
only
course
was
to
bury
or
burn
on
the
spot."

The
fires
began
almost
at
once
and
for
Isaac
and
thousands
of
other
survivors
the
quest
to
find
the
bodies
of
loved
ones
became
nearly
impossible.
The
scent
of
burning
hair
and
flesh,
the
latter
like
burnt
sugar,
suffused
the
air.
Phillip
Gordie
Tipp's
crew,
managing
a
pyre
at
25th
and
Avenue
O1/2,
burned
five
hundred
corpses.
The
city's
lifesaving
squad,
led
by
Capt.
William
A.
Hutchings,
superintendent
of
tbe
Eighth
U.S.
Life-Saving
District,
found
and
buried
181
bodies,
and
stumbled
across
an
occupied
coffin
that
had
been
shipped
to
the
Levy
livery
company
from
New
Orleans
the
day
of
the
storm.
They
buried
it
too.

The
dead
gangs
worked
thirty-minute
shifts,
and
in
between
were
allowed
all
the
whiskey
they
needed
to
keep
going.
"The
stench
from
dead
people
and
animals
was
so
great
that
tbey
couldn't
work
longer,"
one
witness
said.
They
worked
in
long
sleeves
and
jackets
and
mohair
pants,
but
did
not
let
their
discomfort
show.
They
left
their
noses
exposed.

Burning
did
not
seem
much
of
an
improvement
over
the
parade
of
corpse-filled
wagons.
The
idea
of
burning
the
bodies
of
men,
women,
and
children
—
especially
children
—
was
jarring.
It
seemed
like
sacrilege.
Cremation
as
a
routine
mortuarial
service
was
itself
a
brand-new
idea
in
America.
In
Galveston
the
fires
were
everywhere.
Emma
Beal
was
ten
at
the
time
of
the
storm,
but
watched
a
dead
gang
burn
bodies
at
37th
and
Avenue
P,
right
near
her
house.
As
one
body
entered
the
fire,
an
arm
shot
up
as
if
pointing
into
the
sky.
Emma
screamed,
but
kept
watching,
and
paid
for
it
with
nightmares
that
left
her
writhing
in
the
dark.

Isaac
Cline
moved
through
an
increasingly
hellish
realm.
He
could
not
escape
the
pyres.
There
was
Phillip
Gordie
Tipp's
fire
at
25th
and
O1/2,
another
at
the
foot
of
Tremont
Street
opposite
the
wharf,
where
several
hundred
bodies
stacked
four
and
five
feet
deep
were
burned
at
once.
Fires
burned
along
the
beach
at
intervals
of
three
hundred
feet.
At
night
the
fires
lit
the
horizon
in
all
directions,
as
if
four
suns
were
about
to
rise.
The
men
tending
the
fires
soon
lost
any
sense
that
they
were
doing
something
extraordinary.
One
survivor
said
the
fires
became
"such
a
usual
spectacle
as
to
create
no
comment."

Rumor
and
apocrypha
supercharged
the
night.
There
was
talk
that
a
second
huge
storm
soon
would
arrive.
Isaac's
bureau
quashed
it.
On
Sunday
night,
September
16,
an
immense
fire
destroyed
the
Merchants
and
Planters
Cotton
Oil
Mill
in
Houston,
lighting
the
sky
to
die
north.
In
Galveston,
where
local
flames
already
rimmed
the
night,
it
seemed
as
if
the
end
of
the
world
had
come.
And
for
William
Marsh
Rice,
the
elderly
New
York
millionaire
who
owned
the
plant,
it
was
indeed
the
end
—
the
hurricane
and
fire
prompted
him
to
begin
preparations
for
transferring
a
large
amount
of
cash
to
Houston
to
begin
reconstruction,
which
in
turn
caused
his
valet
and
an
unscrupulous
lawyer
to
accelerate
their
ongoing
plot
to
poison
him.

Black
men
were
said
to
have
begun
looting
bodies,
chewing
off
fingers
to
gain
access
to
diamond
rings,
then
stuffing
the
fingers
in
their
pockets.
The
nation's
press
took
these
stories
as
truth,
then
pumped
them
full
of
even
more
lurid
details.
On
Thursday,
September
13,
the
Mobile,
Alabama,
Daily
Register
told
its
readers
that
fifty
Negroes
had
been
shot
to
death
in
Galveston.
"The
ghouls,"
the
newspaper
reported,
"were
holding
an
orgie
over
the
dead."

Nothing
of
the
sort
happened,
although
it
is
likely
that
some
theft
by
whites
and
blacks
alike
did
occur.
A
reporter
for
the
Galveston
News
reported
a
rumor
that
seventy-five
looters
had
been
shot
in
the
back,
but
he
was
skeptical.
"Diligent
inquiry
discloses
the
incorrectness
of
this
report."
He
hedged,
however.
If
any
had
been
killed,
he
wrote,
certainly
the
total
could
not
have
exceeded
half
a
dozen.
John
Blagden,
who
survived
the
storm
without
injury,
heard
a
rumor
that
four
men
had
been
shot
on
September
10.
"I
do
not
know
how
true
it
is,"
he
said,
"for
all
kinds
of
rumors
are
afloat
and
many
of
them
false."

A
fog
of
putrefaction
and
human
ash
hung
over
the
city.
The
steamer
Comal
arrived
on
Monday
and
berthed
at
Pier
26,
but
her
captain
was
so
repulsed
by
the
stench,
he
moved
the
ship
down
the
wharf.
The
weather
was
clear
and
bright,
and
hot.
"Fearful
hot,"
one
man
said.
He
estimated
the
temperatures
at
close
to
100.

"Every
day
the
stench
from
rotting
bodies
got
worse,"
Ruby
Credo
said.
"I
could
barely
keep
from
retching,
it
was
so
bad."

ISAAC
READ
THE
News
closely.
Everyone
did.
In
the
days
after
the
storm
it
became
the
city's
main
source
of
information
about
friends
and
relatives.
On
Thursday,
it
looked
like
a
real
newspaper
again.
It
was
back
to
full
size
and
gave
readers
its
first
big
narrative
of
the
storm,
along
with
a
drizzle
of
little
stories,
including
a
report
that
someone's
pet
prairie
dog
had
been
rescued
alive
from
a
dresser
drawer.
The
paper
also
ran
a
list
of
telegrams
that
had
accumulated
at
the
Western
Union
office
on
the
Strand,
undelivered
because
so
many
recipients
and
messenger
boys
were
dead,
and
because
3,600
homes
had
disappeared.
The
list
of
telegrams
had
five
hundred
names.

On
Friday
the
News
ran
its
first
advertising
since
the
storm.
Companies
reassured
customers
they
would
not
jack
up
prices
to
take
advantage
of
the
disaster.
A
store
called
The
Peoples
offered
goods
at
manufacturers'
cost.
Friday's
death
list
wrapped
around
an
ad
for
the
Collier
Packet
Company,
which
offered
coffeepots,
cups,
clotheslines,
brooms,
rakes,
shovels,
nails,
lanterns,
lamps,
and
soap,
and
promised,
"Positively
no
advance
in
prices."
An
ad
for
H.
Mosle
and
Company
offered
Tidal
Wave
Flour
at
one
dollar
a
sack.