108 years later - Galveston

Once again Galveston Island finds itself the target of one of Mother Nature's furies. Here are some excerpts from Builders by the Sea, History of the Ursuline Community of Galveston Texas by Sister M. Francis Johnson, O.S.U. The Ursulines are an order of Catholic nuns that date back some 470 years to Brescia, Italy. In 1847 the sisters established a convent on Galveston Island. Their history is Galveston's history. Here is what was written about that fateful September 108 years ago.

There were many children enrolled that September of 1900 in the old convent by the sea. Galveston then ranked as one of the richest cities of its size in the United States. Palatial homes lined the city's streets, and girls from those homes flocked out to the academy...

As Reverend Mother Mary Joseph stood on the tiled gallery of the academy that morning and looked out toward the black clouds scudding low over the leaden restless waters of the Gulf, she frowned. Out on the campus the tall palmettos danced to the castanets of their clashing leaves. Beyond the campus stood the many beautiful homes of the city. Reverend Mother Mary Joseph cast a glance upward at the new academy and let her large, blue-gray eyes dwell on its turreted towers, oriels, cathedral-like windows , and the imposing facade. Among the many fine buildings on the island, not one could equal this, she knew. A warm glow kindled within her eyes. Her glance again sought the clouds and she wiped a trace of spray from her cheeks. Heavy storms in Galveston were nothing new...

Mother Augustine waved a hand toward the campus. "Of course! Have we not a solid brick wall, eight feet high? High waters can never push through that! They never have!"...

By five o'clock that evening an unnatural darkness had settled on the city. All knew that they rested beneath the black wings of tragedy, but the nuns, following the example of Little Mother, went calmly to each duty..

With each passing moment the fury of the storm grew worse. Outside the great brick wall that in times past had sheltered the convent had gone down before the battering ram of waves ...

The nuns taking ropes , stood at doors and windows and sought to drag in terrified victims as they drifted by, clinging to beds, to limbs of trees , to anything that might sustain them...

A trunk floated by. The nuns fished it to safety. Inside was a battered and bruised woman...

In the heart of the night, when death had all but laid his finger on every one of the fifteen hundred refugees and nuns within the convent walls, a terrifying shriek arose above the tempest din...

Meanwhile, from within one of the cells, a new voice was added to the bedlam-the wailing of a newly born baby. It was the child of the woman who had been drifting in a trunk, she whom the nuns had dragged to safety. Nor was this the only one to come into the world during this wild night in Saint Ursula's-no longer by the sea, but literally in the sea.

By this time the raging waters had come within four feet of the second floor of the monastery. The refugees could go no higher, for the third floor story had been already demolished by the winds...

It took the clear light of the next day to reveal the entirety of the awful truth of the disaster. Reverend Mother Mary Joseph stared out through the gaping hole in the convent wall...none had ever before beheld such a scene as Little Mother contemplated that blustery Sunday morning of September 9, 1900...




May God spare this stretch of Texas from the destruction once wrought upon it. And may God grant those caught in the storm's path the faith, strength and grace to survive.