Isaac's Storm

Throughout Friday night and into Saturday morning, the storm continues to batter the Pensacola with what feels like "exploding rain" (137): “All night the ship's steel beams howled like wolves" (138). Even after dawn, visibility often falls to zero, as horizontal rain makes it impossible for Captain Simmons and his crew to keep their eyes open. Simmons orders a sounding, a measurement of the ocean's depth. From this, he estimates that the ship is 115 miles Southeast of Galveston: “The storm seemed to be shoving the Pensacola directly toward the city" (139).

In the morning in Galveston, Isaac and Dr. Young watch as the waves crash over a streetcar trestle. Dr. Young recalls, "I was certain then we were going to have a cyclone" (140). Within moments, he walks to the Western Union office and composes a telegram to his wife who is still abroad a train, advising that she and their children remain in San Antonio during a brief layover there.

A measure of ambiguity surrounds Isaac's response to the early morning swells and waves. After the storm, Isaac will take credit for encouraging 6,000 people on or near the beach to evacuate to higher ground inland, claiming to have effectively saved their lives. However, certain facts on the ground complicate this narrative. Hours after Isaac's trip to the beach, a man named Captain Hix visits the Weather Bureau station and is told that the storm is merely "an innocuous 'offspur'" (140) of the storm that hit Cuba. The man who tells Hix this may or may not be Isaac, but either way it shows Isaac does not communicate whatever concerns he has about the impending storm to his staff. Furthermore, there are no independent eyewitness reports of Isaac riding up and down the beach in his horse-and-cart warning residents to escape to higher ground or evacuate the city altogether, despite his claims to the contrary. Finally, Larson concludes that there simply aren't enough trains or coaches to carry 6,000 people out of the city before such escape routes become impossible.

Combined with Moore and the Central Office's refusal to acknowledge the concerns of their experienced Cuban counterparts, Isaac's ambivalent attitude about the storm leads to a universal lack of worry among Galveston's residents. The newspapers also play a role, spreading the Weather Bureau's lack of concern to the citizenry: “The weather bureau," one paper writes, "had no late advices as to the storm's movements and it may be that the tropical disturbance has changed its course or spent its force before reaching Texas" (143).

When the heavy rain does begin, it is greeted by many with delight, particularly by children who dance in the rising waters and build makeshift rafts. One of these children is seven-year-old Louise Hopkins. With her friend Martha, Louise "played in the yard for as long as the rain let them. It came in fits, and gave them fits. With each fresh squall, they leaped laughing onto the porch. When the rain stopped, they plunged back into the yard. Mud clotted their shoes. Their dresses were soaked. This was heaven" (147).

As the morning draws to a close, some residents begin to worry. Rumors spread that the bathhouses and the streetcar trestle are about to collapse. Many, however, dismiss these rumors as fabrications. Louisa wants to flee her home with her family to higher ground near the center of the island, but when she sends her son August Otto to August's worksite to beg him to leave, the son returns with a message: "Papa says you must be crazy" (153).

At noon, businessmen gather at their favorite downtown lunch spot, Ritter's Café and Saloon. As the men sip cocktails and dine on oysters and steaks, the wind rattles the windows and threatens to blow off tablecloths each time a customer enters through the front door. Suddenly, the wind tears off the roof of the building, causing the second story to collapse onto the first. Five men die instantly, and five more are grievously injured. A waiter goes out to find a doctor and is never seen again, likely the victim of drowning: “Ritter's Café was gone. Men were dead. It was the thing that at last brought fear to Galveston" (159).

Around this same time, two trains attempt to enter Galveston. The first train is forced to stop on the bridge to the island because while the water is still a couple inches below the tracks, the tracks ahead are underwater. By the time a relief train arrives an hour later to take the passengers in the other direction, the water surrounding the train is now eight-to-ten inches above the tracks. The relief train makes it just shy of a depot, forcing men to create a human chain to allow women and children to reach the platform. The first floor of the station is already flooded, but most of the passengers opt to remain in the building because it's sturdy. One passenger, David Benjamin, recalls that despite the chaos around them, nobody is terribly concerned at first: “Galveston apparently took such things in stride. The first 'intimation' of the true extent of the disaster, Benjamin recalled, 'came when the body of a child floated into the station'" (163).

The second train is stranded on a ferry from the Bolivar Peninsula to Galveston Island. Unable to dock in a port on either end of the strait, the ferry captain ultimately gives up near the coast of the peninsula. Eighty-five of the train's 95 passengers choose to stay on the train, believing it strong enough to withstand the wind and water. John H. Poe and nine others abandon it, wading a quarter mile over a flooded plain to a lighthouse. Inside, there are 200 people. Poe and the other nine passengers are the last to enter before the water blocks the entrance. As the floodwaters rise, the refugees inch closer together up the lighthouse's spiral staircase. Marie Berryman Lang, the daughter of the assistant lighthouse keeper can hear artillery fire from the Fort San Jacinto military base on Galveston island: “'It was the poor soldiers,' she learned the next morning, 'crying for help'" (166). Meanwhile, Poe begins to question his decision to abandon the train. Poe survives, while all 85 passengers who remain on the train perish as the wind and water knock it off the tracks.

Around 2:30 p.m., Isaac finally realizes the severity of the storm. It is perhaps then, Larson posits, that Isaac performs his heroic deed of riding up and down the beach warning 6,000 residents on or near the beach to escape to higher ground. By that point, Larson concludes, the streets within three blocks of the beach were utterly impassable by horse and cart. Isaac's and Joseph's accounts of what happens next differ in subtle ways that shed light on their contentious relationship after the storm. From Isaac's perspective, he sends his "assistant" to the Western Union station to deliver an urgent telegram to Moore, "advising him of the terrible situation, and stat[ing] that the city was fast going underwater, that great loss of life must result, and stress[ing] the need for relief" (168). The "assistant" is in fact Joseph. From Joseph's perspective, Isaac tells his brother that half the city is underwater and to relay this fact in the telegram. Joseph recalls, "Had I known the whole picture, I could have altered the message at the time of its filing to read, 'Entire city under water'" (169).

According to Joseph's testimony, the Western Union wires are down and have been for hours. He tries to reach the Houston Western Union office by telephone, but the operator refuses to route his call, stating that there are 4,000 callers ahead of him. Fortunately, Joseph is friends with the manager at the telephone company, Tom Powell, who moves his call to the top of the list based on its urgency: “But why, if Isaac had so widely sounded the alarm, did Joseph have to explain anything at all? And why did the operator refuse his request?" (169).

It takes Isaac two hours to wade through waist-high water and return to his home. On the way, he sees Judson Palmer, the secretary of the local YMCA, and advises him to ride out the storm in his house rather than retreat to the stronger YMCA building. Isaac plans to do the same as both of their houses, Isaac assures Palmer, are strong enough to withstand the storm. In fact, people from all over the beachfront neighborhood seek refuge at Isaac's. When Joseph arrives at the house at 5:30 p.m., an hour after Isaac, there are 50 other people there. Joseph urges them all to evacuate, including the Clines themselves. Isaac insists that they stay.