Mighty Day (Wasn't That a Mighty Storm)

DESCRIPTION: The story of the Galveston tidal wave. Despite evacuation efforts, many die on land and at sea. Chorus something like, "Wasn't that a mighty day/storm, when the storm winds struck/swept the town."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1934
KEYWORDS: storm disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Sep 8, 1900 - Galveston hurricane and flood. Some 6000 die
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Botkin-TreasuryOfSouthernFolklore, p. 728, "Wasn't That a Mighty Storm!" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 53, "Mighty Day" (1 text)
DT, MIGHTDAY
Roud #12206
RECORDINGS:
"Sin-Killer" Griffin & congregation, "Wasn't That a Mighty Storm" (AFS 185 B2, 1934; on LC10)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Wasn't That a Mighty Time (Galveston Flood)" (subject, floating lyrics)
cf. "Galveston Storm" (subject)
NOTES [3021 words]: This song shares many of its lyrics, and even some musical elements, with "Wasn't That a Mighty Time (Galveston Flood)." It is quite likely that the two have common roots. The "feel" of the resulting songs is so different, however, that I list them as separate pieces.
The "popular" version, as recorded by the Chad Mitchell trio, reportedly was touched up somewhat by Bob Gibson. - RBW
In the LC version... the chorus is: "Wasn't that a mighty storm/Wasn't that a mighty storm, great water/Wasn't that a mighty storm/That blew the people away." - PJS
For a possible spiritual source, see Anna Kranz Odum, "Some Negro Folk Songs from Tennessee," in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 27, No. 105 (Jul-Sep 1914 (available online by JSTOR)), "Wasn't That a Mighty Day" #20 p. 264 (1 text); the chorus is ("Wasn't that a mighty day"(3x) "When Jesus Christ was born!" (not the spiritual quoted by Work (see "Mighty Day") which has a chorus of ("Wasn't that a mighty day"(4x)). - BS
Some versions of "Wasn't That a Mighty Time" declare that "The story of Galveston flood Will never, ever be told." There is an odd bit of truth to this; Fehrenbach's 761 page Texas history has no index entries for the storm, and McComb gives it a single sidebar and two photos (pp. 104-105). But there are several books specifically about the disaster; I know of Hubert Molloy Mason Jr., Death from the Sea, 1972, which I have not seen; John Edward Weems, A Weekend in September, 1957; and Patricia Bellis Bixel and Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Galveston and the 1900 Storm, cited here. There is also Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (sometimes published with other subtitles), but while Larson is a popular author of history, I have found his accuracy level in other books to be distressingly poor, so I have not used it for this entry. I assume "Isaac" is Isaac Cline, the forecaster, who will be mentioned several times below.
A number of other books were published in 1900-1901, but with the sole exception of Clarence Ousley's Galveston in 1900, they should be avoided as tabloid-style fictionalization, according to Bixel/Turner, p. 168.
Galveston Island is one of the barrier islands off Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. Shaped somewhat like a carrot, it is twenty-seven miles long and a maximum of three miles wide (Bixel/Turner, p. 1), with the widest parts generally in the northwest. It is quite low; before it was rebuilt, the highest part of the island was just nine feet above sea level (Bixel/Turner, p. 5).
The first European to see it seems to have been Cabeza de Vaca in 1528, but it was left to its native inhabitants for the next two and a half centuries. The Island had been named for the Conde de Gálvez, a one-time governor of (Spanish) Louisiana (Fehrenbach, p. 126) who ordered the area mapped in 1785 (Bixel/Turner, p. 1). A few filibusterers, and the famous pirate Jean Lafitte, spent time there in the half century after that. A man named Michel B. Menard realized the value of its harbor (loosely speaking, the entrance to the bay on which Houston resides) and set to take advantage of it (McComb, p. 68); he can probably be considered the founder of the city of Galveston, which took shape immediately after Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836 (Bixel/Turner, p. 2). It soon became the main shipping point for much of Texas, with cargo being taken off big ships and loaded into smaller vessels that could penetrate the shallower streams and inlets of the Texas coast. By 1899, there were twenty steamship routes connected with Galveston, fourteen of them connecting with Europe. The population at the turn of the twentieth century was 80% white, 20% Black (Bixel/Turner, p. 4).
"[T]he Island City was the most advanced and sophisticated in Texas.... Galveston trailed Houston, Dallas and San Antonio [in population]. It would never catch up.... Galveston was still the most important port, it was the first to have telephones and electricity, it had the best newspapers and theater, it had the greatest variety of sports, it had the most individual wealth and the most advanced architecture, and it was a place of unique, unusual beauty which ever visitor could feel" (David G. McComb, quoted on p. 5 of Bixel/Turner).
But, despite a history of street flooding during storms, it had very little protection from bad weather. Indeed, the residents had cut down the trees and leveled the dunes on the beach, eliminating such natural protection as the island had. Contrary to some of the songs, there was no sea wall (Bixel/Turner, p. 10) -- the city, despite the wealth of its population, had little revenue and was financially constrained; many of the streets were still just open spaces covered with sand! (Weems, p. 25).
The storm was not entirely un-forecast. Warnings had gone out as early as September 4 (Weems, p. 11). On Tuesday, September 5, the Galveston Daily News had a mention of bad weather in Cuba, and ships heading east from Texas were told they might expect high winds (Bixel/Turner, p. 12). Additional word of high winds came from the Gulf Coast over the next several days. And the storm was known to be strong; a number of telegraph lines in Florida were knocked out (Weems, p. 11). But there was no way to know where it would go next. In Galveston, the only evidence of something usual, on the morning of September 8, 1900, was an unusually high tide that was producing some flooding (Bixel/Turner, p. 17). The sky did not show strong signs, the winds gave no warning, and the barometer was not unusually low (Bixel/Turner, p. 19).
Nonetheless meteorologist Isaac Monroe Cline, who was in charge of hurricane warnings, decided to raise the storm flag -- a red flag with a black square (Bixel/Turner, pp. 18-19). Later, he would drive around the outer coast of the island, warning residents to go home and tourists to try to leave the island (Weems, p. 34). The line in the song that the people were warned "But they never meant to leave their homes Till death was in their face" seems to have been accurate. Weatherman Joseph Cline, Isaac's brother, also went around the town pointing people to the center of town, where their chances of survival would be better, but many refused to take his advice (Weems, p. 84).
The Clines' prediction was good forecasting -- but of course there were storms and there were storms. The best guess is that the Galveston hurricane was what we would now call a Category 4 storm (Bixel/Turner, p. 41), although we can't be entirely sure because most wind gauges blew out. Similarly, the rain was estimated at ten inches, although no official figure could be given because the official rain gauge blew away some time before 2:30 after measuring 1.27 inches of rain. At 2:30 the wind was averaging 42 miles per hour, with higher gusts (Weems, p. 65).
There was a rail line from Galveston to Houston, about three hours away, and there were people who wanted to take it out of town, but the high water made that impossible even before the main storm hit; the tracks were reported flooded by 12:15 (Weems, p. 53). Trains to Beaumont, Texas (which connected to Galveston by boat) were also out of reach.
At 11:00 a.m. on September 8, the Galveston meteorologists reported to Washington a temperature of 82.8F, winds of 30 miles per hour, heavy rain, and a falling barometer (Weems, p 46). By noon, storm waters had made it as far as twelve blocks into the city and still rising (Weems, p. 49). At noon, the winds reached "gale force" on the Beaufort scale and were still increasing (Weems, p. 54).
If it hadn't been clear before, by early afternoon it was obvious that this was going to be an unusually strong storm, and people were struggling to get home and prepare (Bixel/Turner, pp. 23-24). We don't know who was the first person to die, or when, but by 1:00 p.m., it is known that a baby had drowned (Weems, p. 58).
By late afternoon, the storm surge was so high that it covered all of Galveston Island (Bixel/Turner, p. 27; Weems, p. 72, believes this happened between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m.); because floods were so common, most houses were raised, so many were still above water, but that didn't mean they could stand up to the weather! It is believed that the storm surge was about fifteen feet (Bixel/Turner, p. 41), meaning that every point on the island was under at least six feet of water. Electricity was out, naturally; so were all bridges to the mainland. Trains, streetcars, and even the water pumps went down (Bixel/Turner, p. 43; on p. 46, they explain that the island's water was supplied by a pipe from the mainland. The pipe survived, but without pumps, Galveston had no water). The two telegraph lines to the island were down by about 2:00 p.m.; around 3:00, the telephone line to the mainland went down, meaning that all communication with the mainland was gone (Weems, pp. 66-67).
The last official wind gauge blew away at 5:15. The highest five-minute average up to that time had been 84 miles per hour; there had been gusts unofficially recorded at 100 miles per hour, and the wind is thought to have gotten stronger after that (Weems, p. 80).
The peak of the storm came between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m., September 8 (Bixel/Turner, p. 28). At 7:15, an official observer recorded a barometric pressure of 28.48 inches of mercury, said to be the lowest on record to that date (Weems, p. 110), though far lower pressures have been recorded since. The water peaked in the hour after 8:00 (Bixel/Turner, pp. 30-31). It stayed very high until about 10:00 or 11:00, though, and began to fall after that (Bixel/Turner, p. 31). Weem, p. 127, says that most of the damage had been done by 10:00 p.m., after which a south wind started to blow water out of the town.
Apart from the immediate death and destruction, the entire city was covered with a "foul-smelling slime" that permeated both the buildings that still stood and the supplies that were still available (Weems, pp. 135-136).
After hitting Galveston, the storm headed north and northeast, losing power as it went over land; it traveled over Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, the Great Lakes, and eastern Canada (Weems, p. 150), but the damage it did seems to have been less memorable, though Bixel/Turner, p. 164, claim that 4000 died outside Galveston and Weems, p. 167, says that some 2000 died elsewhere.
A few days after the storm, mayor Walter C. Jones sent out a description and appeal: "It is my opinion, based on personal information, that 5000 people have lost their lives here. Approximately one-third of the residence portion of the city has been swept away. There are several thousand people who are homeless and destitute; how many, there is no way of finding out..." (Weems, p. 149). His estimates were perhaps low. Galveston's insurance inspector concluded that 3636 residences were demolished and that the total damage was on the order of 28 million dollars (Weems, p. 153). Other estimates place the property damage between $17 and $30 million (Bixel/Turner, p. 43) -- which, given that inflation increased prices some 25-fold in the following century, puts the damage in the range of half a billion to a billion early-twenty-first century dollars. It was estimated that 97.5% of the homes in the city had suffered damage (Bixel/Turner, p. 73). There were five thousand applications for help rebuilding homes (Bixel/Turner, p. 73) -- i.e. five thousand families whose homes were destroyed or at least damaged beyond their own ability to repair.
"There had never been a worse disaster in North American history. The death toll, only approximate until much later, would eventually reach six thousand, the largest number of disaster fatalities ever recorded in American history" (Bixel/Turner, p. 33, although Weems, p. 167, says that estimates range from 3,000 to 12,000). The death toll was out of a population, according to the 1900 census, of 37,389 (Bixel/Turner, p. 57), so roughly one person in six died. Another six thousand or so migrated out; the city is said to have lost 32% of its population (Bixel/Turner, p. 57).
In the aftermath, with few relief supplies and desperate people resorting to looting, the mayor and police chief declared martial law and recruited a volunteer militia (Bixel/Turner, p. 46). There were so many bodies, and the ground was still so wet, that they could not be buried; after an attempt to bury them at sea, which failed because corpses kept coming back to land, most were cremated (Bixel/Turner, p. 48).
The attitudes of the citizens of the city is shown by the fact that fifty Black men were forced at bayonet point to help with body disposal (Bixel/Turner, pp. 48, 57; Weems, p. 144, mentions that people were made to work at weapon-point but doesn't say they were Black). A number of Blacks were accused of looting, and some were shot (Bixel/Turner, p. 78; they seem to want to deny that looting happened, but in light of what we now know about police and racism, I'd guess the looting was real but the shootings were the work of prejudiced policemen). Other Blacks were imprisoned for looting, and denied relief supplies (Bixel/Turner, p. 80).
Eventually relief supplies started to arrive, of course. The Red Cross was one of the relief organizations; it was the last time Clara Barton would be directly involved in rescue efforts (Bixel/Turner, p. 61), and her presence probably encouraged others to contribute (Bixel/Turner, p. 63); she also fought against the racial prejudice of the locals (Bixel/Turner, p. 810. Help came in from all over the place. One of the biggest contributions was tents from the army -- most from the recent Spanish-American War, but some supposedly going back to the Civil War! (Bixel/Turner, p. 70).
The initial crews hired to rebuild were basically people swept off the streets, and were so incompetent that, supposedly, 90% of the homes put up had to be rebuilt (Bixel/Turner, p. 73). Eventually the relief committee gave in and hired union professionals.
Various services came back online in the week after the storm. The first mail boat was on September 12. Western Union managed to string a new wire on September 13 (and charged no fee for telegrams pertaining to relief). The water supply also came back on September 13, at least for places with working plumbing (Bixel/Turner, p. 74), but that was only a small minority at first (Weems, p. 157). The banks are said to have re-opened on September 15; the next day, some mule-drawn streetcars began running, with difficulty due to the debris (Weems, pp. 158), and electric power was restored in many areas. Long-distance telephone service came back on the 17th. On September 21, with one of the several railroad bridges repaired, the first train pulled in (Weems, p. 158; Bixel/Turner, p. 76); in addition, the streets were mostly clear, and new phone lines were being laid. By October 22, five schools had re-opened (Bixel/Turner, p. 76) -- though that still left many, including all but one black school, closed (Bixel/Turner, p. 77).
But just getting services back didn't get the city rebuilt. As we have seen, the city government had been close to bankrupt before the storm (in 1899, it did not meet its September payroll until December; Bixel/Turner, p. 91; in 1895 it had been discovered that the official accountant knew no bookkeeping and was not creating financial statements!; Bixel/Turner, p. 94). Galveston had no reserves to deal with even small problems, let alone a catastrophe. And its mayor and twelve aldermen were regarded by many as corrupt and self-interested (Bixel/Turner, p. 90); in 1900, they were also deadlocked between an Old Guard and a reformist faction (Bixel/Turner, p. 91). Ultimately the city asked the Texas legislature to let it shift from this traditional system to an appointed commission of government (Bixel/Turner, p. 92). This proved better able to deal with the financial difficulties.
The engineers chosen by the commission made several recommendations: a seawall 17 feet high (1.3 feet higher than the storm surge), putting up an embankment associated with it, and raising the city itself and its streets. The estimated cost for all this would be about $3.5 million (Bixel/Turner, p. 95). Construction began of the wall about two years after the hurricane, in October 1902, with sections finished by 1904 although there would be extensions thereafter (Bixel/Turner, p. 97, who on the following pages have photographs of the wall under construction). And the wall also caused increased beach damage, which (apart from reducing the appeal of the beaches) threatened to undermine the seawall, so it turned out to require ongoing (and expensive) maintenance (Bixel/Turner, p. 126). Still, the seawall soon proved its worth, helping the city through hurricanes in 1909 and (especially) 1915 (Bixel/Turner, p. 157); in the latter storm, which was thought comparable to the storm of 1900, only a few lives were lost although there was again extensive property damage, including to the wall itself (Weems, p. 160, says twelve lives were lost in 1915; Bixel/Turner, p. 157, says eight).
Raising the land also involved temporarily moving homes, both to raise them and to cut the canal that would be used to bring in the fill (Bixel/Turner, p. 108; Weems, pp. 160-161) -- something the government paid for, but I have to think the people went along only because their houses were being rebuilt anyway. And they apparently buried a lot of trash in the fill (Bixel/Turner, pp. 119-120), which I have to think would have eventually resulted in pollution problems. The filling was finally finished in 1911, with a new firm taking over the task that had been too much of a financial strain for the company originally contracted (Bixel/Turner, p. 121). The port was also rebuilt, and a causeway was constructed to the land, with a lift bridge to keep the channel open, to carry trains and cars (Bixel/Turner, pp. 132-135). Difficult to finance as it was, all that work paid off; by 1912, Galveston was again the nation's #2 port, after New York (Bixel/Turner, p. 130). - RBW
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