Isaac's Storm (48 page)

Isaac
kept
the
ring,
had
it
enlarged,
and
wore
it
himself.
It
was
this
ring
that
gleamed
like
a
beacon
from
his
photographic
portrait.
He
wore
it
also
on
December
31,
1900,
when
Galveston
prepared
to
enter
the
twentieth
century.
The
city
looked
new.
Its
streets
were
clear,
the
pyres
gone.
The
civilized
smoke
of
steamships
now
drifted
over
the
city.
And
the
glad
scents
were
back,
of
coffee
and
fresh
wood,
and
horses.
Music
rang
from
the
restored
Garten
Verein,
and
from
the
banquet
hall
of
the
Tremont
Hotel,
and
the
dance
parlor
of
the
Artillery
Club.
Sad
men
made
love
that
day
in
the
house
across
the
alley.
Beer
flowed
everywhere,
and
there
was
laughter.
Children
ran
along
the
beach
as
their
parents
followed,
anxious
as
always
about
the
sea.
And
then
the
rockets
came,
arcing
over
the
black
water
of
the
Gulf
in
bursts
of
yellow,
red,
and
gold.
Isaac
was
there
with
his
baby
and
Allie
and
Rosemary.
Joseph
was
gone,
in
Puerto
Rico.
There
was
Judson
Palmer,
alone
but
among
friends.
There
was
Louisa,
with
August
senior
and
junior
and
Helen
and
litde
Lanta.
There
was
Mrs.
Hopkins
and
her
children,
and
Andiony
Credo
and
his
children,
Raymond
alive,
Pearl's
arm
nicely
healed.
Voices
came
next,
Isaac's
tenor
merging
with
August's
and
a
thousand
other
voices
over
the
soft
whisper
of
the
sea,
filling
cups
of
kindness
for
old
times
past.
And
then
the
ghosts
came.
They
gathered
silendy
on
the
beach.
Cora
Cline.
Vivian
Credo
and
her
sisters
Irene
and
Minnie
and
her
brother
William.
Little
Lee
Palmer
and
his
mother,
and
of
course,
Youno.
Lost
families
remembered.
Tix,
Popular,
Grief.

That
night,
New
Year's
Eve
1900,
a
piece
of
very
strange
news
flashed
over
the
submarine
cables
from
England.
A
wind
had
risen
so
freakishly
strong
it
had
toppled
one
of
the
great
pillars
of
Stonehenge
that
no
wind
had
budged
for
ten
thousand
years.
The
twentieth
century
had
begun.

The
Storm
 

ON
MONDAY,
SEPTEMBER
10,
Willis
Moore
telegraphed
the
New
York
Evening
World
with
a
report
on
the
hurricane's
travels
after
it
left
Galveston.
The
cyclone,
he
wrote,
"had
lost
its
distinctive
character
as
a
destructive
storm,
and
its
future
energy
will
more
likely
be
expended
in
general
rains
over
the
western
country
rather
than
in
high
winds."

Once
again
Moore
had
let
the
expected
obscure
the
real.
Somewhere
in
the
heavens
over
Oklahoma,
the
storm's
lingering
vortex
entered
the
great
low-pressure
system
then
moving
eastward
across
the
country.
It
rapidly
regained
power
and
roared
north,
much
to
the
dismay
of
A.
I.
Root,
president
of
a
Medina,
Ohio,
company
that
sold
beekeeping
supplies.
As
early
as
Monday
he
watched
his
personal
barometer
begin
to
drop
"in
a
very
unusual
way,"
yet
all
he
saw
from
the
Weather
Bureau
were
telegrams
forecasting
fair
skies
for
Monday
and
Tuesday,
partly
cloudy
conditions
on
Wednesday.
Instead
he
got
a
destructive
windstorm
that
tore
his
company
apart.
He
wrote
to
Moore,
"Now
wasn't
it
a
mistake
that
there
wasn't
anything
said
about
the
big
blow?"

The
Central
Office
countered
that
it
was
not
bureau
policy
to
send
wind
forecasts
to
inland
locations.

The
storm
brought
hurricane-force
winds
to
Chicago
and
Buffalo,
this
even
after
crossing
America's
vast
midriff.
It
killed
six
loggers
trying
to
make
their
way
across
the
Eau
Claire
River
and
nearly
sank
a
Lake
Michigan
steamship.
It
downed
so
many
telegraph
lines
that
communication
throughout
the
Midwest
and
the
northern
tier
of
the
nation
came
to
a
halt.
On
Wednesday
night,
the
storm
savaged
Prince
Edward
Island,
then
burst
into
the
North
Atlantic.
Manhattan,
half
a
continent
south,
received
winds
of
sixty-five
miles
per
hour.

As
thousands
of
men
moved
into
the
countryside
to
replant
telegraph
poles
and
string
fallen
cable,
reports
began
to
emerge
of
shipwrecks
in
the
Atlantic.
The
storm
sank
six
vessels
off
Saint-Pierre,
six
more
in
Pla-centia
Bay,
four
at
Renews
Harbor,
and
drove
forty-two
fishing
boats
aground
in
the
Strait
of
Belle
Isle
between
Newfoundland
and
mainland
Canada.
The
storm
raced
in
a
cold
and
lethal
arc
across
the
top
of
the
world
until
it
fell
at
last
into
Siberia
and
disappeared
from
human
observation.

America
cooled.
The
Cascades
grayed
under
frost.
Snow
fell
on
the
Wasatch
Front
east
of
Salt
Lake
City.
At
Sherman,
Wyoming,
snow
accumulated
to
a
depth
of
thirteen
inches.
From
Chattanooga
to
Brooklyn,
men
and
women
greeted
the
day
with
a
feeling
not
unlike
love.

Galveston
 

GALVESTON
COUNTED
ITS
dead.
The
city
conducted
a
census
and
in
October
reported
a
tally
of
3,406
confirmed
deaths.
Eight
of
the
city's
twelve
wards
had
lost
10
percent
or
more
of
their
residents.
The
storm
killed
21
percent
of
the
Twelfth
Ward,
19
percent
of
the
Tenth.
The
Galveston
News
published
its
final
death
roster
on
October
7,
and
listed
4,263
names.
Early
in
1901,
the
Morrison
and
Fourmy
Company,
which
published
the
city
directory,
conducted
its
own
canvass
and
found
an
overall
loss
in
population
of
8,124.
Two
thousand
of
these
had
simply
moved
from
the
city,
the
company
believed.
That
left
6,000
dead.
Informal
estimates
placed
the
toll
at
8,000,
even
10,000,
not
including
the
several
thousand
deaths
that
occurred
in
low-lying
towns
on
the
mainland.
No
one
knew
how
many
bodies
still
rested
in
the
sea.
"Many
people,"
one
survivor
noted,
"would
not
eat
fish,
shrimp,
or
crabs
for
several
years."

The
city
fathers
vowed
to
rebuild.
They
created
an
elaborate
exhibit
for
the
World's
Fair
of
1904
to
tell
the
world
of
the
city's
great
plans
to
build
a
seawall
and
behind
it
a
shining
new
Galveston.
The
Galveston
Flood
concession
quickly
became
one
of
the
most
popular
exhibits
at
the
fair.
An
artificial
wave
machine
threw
a
tidal
wave
across
a
tableau
of
Galveston.
The
sun
rose
upon
a
ruined
city.
Night
fell.
The
new
day
saw
the
ruin
replaced
by
a
great
gleaming
metropolis
protected
from
the
sea
by
a
giant
wall.

This
time
Galveston
built
the
wall.
It
rose
seventeen
feet
above
the
beach,
and
stood
behind
an
advance
barrier
of
granite
boulders
twenty-seven
feet
in
width.
McClure's
Magazine
called
it
"one
of
the
greatest
engineering
works
of
modern
times."
But
the
city's
engineers,
among
them
Colonel
Robert,
knew
a
seawall
alone
was
not
enough.
They
raised
the
altitude
of
the
entire
city.
In
a
monumental
effort,
legions
of
workmen
using
manual
screw
jacks
lifted
two
thousand
buildings,
even
a
cathedral,
then
filled
the
resulting
canyon
with
eleven
million
pounds
of
fill.
The
task,
completed
in
1910,
had
an
unintended
benefit:
It
ensured
that
all
corpses
still
buried
within
the
city
remained
well
interred.

There
were
moments
of
brightness.
The
city
built
a
grand
new
opera
house
to
replace
the
one
destroyed
in
the
storm.
Al
Jolson
came.
So
did
Sarah
Bernhardt
and
Anna
Pavlova.
To
signal
the
city's
faith
in
itself,
several
of
its
leading
citizens
built
an
immense
new
hotel,
the
Galvez,
right
inside
the
seawall,
as
if
taunting
the
Gulf
with
the
city's
new
resolve.
Galveston's
Relief
Committee
evolved
into
a
new
form
of
city
government,
in
which
the
mayor
became,
in
effect,
chairman
of
a
board
of
elected
commissioners
who
each
managed
a
different
city
function.
Reformers
saw
it
as
a
way
of
defeating
Tammany-style
politics,
which
tended
to
concentrate
power
in
the
hands
of
a
single
boss.
Hundreds
of
cities
across
the
country
adopted
the
form.
It
caused
Harvard's
president,
Charles
Eliot,
to
proclaim
the
dawn
of
"a
brighter
day"
for
America.
"We
have
got
down
very
low
in
regard
to
our
municipal
governments,
and
we
have
got
dark
days
here
now,
but
we
can
see
a
light
breaking,
and
one
of
the
lights
broke
in
Galveston."

But
the
great
hurricane
—
call
it
Isaac's
Storm
—
had
struck
with
abysmal
bad
timing.
Just
four
months
later,
an
event
occurred
nearby
that
changed
the
history
of
the
nation,
arguably
the
world.
The
ranchers
of
Beaumont,
Texas,
had
long
heard
how
gas
and
greasy
water
sometimes
bubbled
to
the
surface
of
a
strange
knoll
in
the
prairie
outside
town.
A
few
men
hunted
oil
there
and
gave
up,
but
others
followed,
drawn
by
the
stories.
On
January
10,1901,
a
crew
working
for
an
Italian
immigrant
named
Antonio
Francisco
Lucich,
self-named
Tony
Lucas,
ran
for
their
lives
as
thunder
roared
from
their
drill
tower.
Oil
had
already
made
a
few
fortunes
in
America,
but
this
was
different.
The
place
was
Spindletop.
Lucas
had
punctured
a
vast
underground
basin
of
oil.
The
rig
spouted
America's
new
gold
—
but
showered
the
wealth
on
Houston,
not
Galveston.

As
Galveston
grieved
and
struggled
to
regain
the
world's
confidence,
Houston
dredged
Buffalo
Bayou.
Houston
was
inland,
therefore
safer,
and
it
was
closer
to
the
big
cross-country
rail
corridors.
Oil
eclipsed
cotton.
Great
ships
in
black,
red,
and
white
glided
quietly
past
Galveston,
bound
for
the
wharves
of
Buffalo
Bayou.

A
silence
settled
over
Galveston.
Its
population
stopped
growing.
It
acquired
all
the
sorrows
of
modern
urban
life,
but
none
of
the
density
and
vibrance.
It
became
a
beach
town
for
Houston.