Galveston Storm & The Seawall
What a difference a wall makes...
What a difference a wall makes...
| Project Executive Group |
Updated - Sep 2008
RAISING GALVESTON
by John H. Lienhard
Today, a determined city saves itself from extinction. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents
this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
We Houstonians like to run down to Galveston for seafood, for museums, or just to see ships and the Gulf. It's a nice
town. Yet in 1900 Galveston's citizens seriously considered walking away from it -- letting it revert to a swamp. Many
did leave.
The Galveston storm was the worst natural disaster America ever suffered. Over 6000 people died. The way the city
finally responded to that horror forms one of the great American legends.
Galveston is a long island running west to east. It tilts slightly to the northeast. On the north is a protected harbor.
The south side faces the Gulf of Mexico. The 19th-century city lay on the east end. Its highest point was nine feet
above sea level. Its mean elevation was only five feet.
The city was flooded repeatedly down through the 19th century. In 1886 a commission talked about building a wall
against the sea, but they rejected the idea. It would cost too much. Now Galveston had seen just how bad a
hurricane could be. Citizens knew they'd have to either give up their city or protect it.
So by a ratio of 150 to 1 the people who could vote decided to undertake a wild engineering scheme. They would
build a great dam, a Sea Wall along the south Gulf coast. It'd be 17 feet high and 3 miles long with a skirt of
protective granite rip-rap. But the Sea Wall was a piece of cake compared to what followed. Next they raised the
whole city. And this was the major city in Texas.
They slanted the ground so water that got over the Sea Wall could run off toward the bay on the north. That meant
raising the ground almost to the lip of the Wall. Then they sloped it downward to eight feet above sea level on the
north.
To do that, they cut a canal into the city and began pumping in a slurry of sand and salt water. The water ran off and
left sand behind. Homeowners had to lift their houses up on stilts so the slurry could fill in under them.
It took 300 jacks to lift the big brick Moody mansion. It took 700 jacks to lift St. Patrick's church. Of course there
was a component of brutality in all that. Some homeowners couldn't afford the raising. Some had to sacrifice the
bottom floor of their houses. Some had to abandon their homes entirely.
The work went on in sections for seven years. In 1915 the new city they'd built suffered its first test. A storm every
bit as bad as the 1900 hurricane hit Galveston and caused only eight deaths. Since then they've extended the Wall
and filled in more land. No one at all died in hurricanes Carla and Alicia.
And, today, the very presence of Galveston is one of the great joys of living in Texas.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
No. 1099: ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER
by John H. Lienhard
Today, a civil engineer creates order. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about
the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
You're at a meeting. A motion is on the floor. Someone moves a substitute motion. The group debates it. Another
person moves closure on debate. Now the chair has to know whether that motion is legal, whether it demands
action, what fraction of the vote is needed to close debate, and what action should follow.
We agree on a code called Robert's Rules of Order to resolve those questions when we meet. Robert's code guides
the chair through the thicket. It keeps meetings from descending into chaos. So let's meet Henry Martyn Robert, the
man who gave us those rules.
Robert was born in South Carolina in 1837. Engineer/historian Henry Petroski tells how Robert went to West Point
and then saw service in Panama. During the Civil War he worked with the North while his brother became a
Confederate General. For the rest of his life he worked for the Corps of Engineers on projects all over America.
Here in Texas, we honor Robert for his work on Galveston Island. After 1895 he worked on building jetties on the
northern end of Galveston. Those jetties shifted the currents in such a way as to erode the sand bar that was
blocking Galveston Bay.
Robert retired as a brigadier general the year after the terrible Galveston flood of 1900. Galveston immediately put
him on a board charged with creating means to protect the city in the future.
So it was that Henry Robert worked on the huge project of raising the level of Galveston and building a seawall
around it. If you live in this area, you've read his name on the Sea Wall plaque.
But Robert's greatest engineering achievement was made much earlier -- in 1877. And it began when he attended an
out-of-control church meeting in Massachusetts. He came away vowing he would know parliamentary procedure
before he attended another meeting. But he found little written on the subject and no general agreement as to how
to run meetings.
A jurist named Cushing had written on parliamentary procedure in 1845, and Jefferson had written rules for the
conduct of Congress. Neither book was widely read or easy to use. So Robert went to work. With highly-honed logic
and an engineer's appreciation of structure, he created an extremely robust set of procedural rules that would serve
every kind of deliberative gathering.
No publisher would touch such a dry subject, so Robert published it himself. He originally had 4000 copies printed,
figuring they'd last two years. They were gone in four months. He kept revising and improving the work. By 1914, a
half million copies had been sold. The ninth edition came out in 1990.
Here in Texas, we see the raising of Galveston as a great engineering miracle. But few of us know that the same
structural genius gave us the set of conventions for doing business in peace -- when passions could so easily destroy
the democratic process.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
Men in Texas use ropes to pull away the debris of houses in order to look for bodies after the Galveston Hurricane of
1900
The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history was not Hurricane Katrina. Not even close. It was the storm that hit
Galveston, Texas, exactly 108 years and one week ago. That storm killed about 8,000 Americans and leveled what
had been the largest city in Texas. It was a vicious storm with 130 mph winds. But, like Katrina, it needn't have been
as deadly as it was.
Today, the 1900 Hurricane has been largely forgotten. But the memory resurfaced like a violent flashback on Sept.
13, as Hurricane Ike demolished Galveston once again.
Now as then, there are stories of open sky where homes had once been; of beaches blanketed by lumber; of loss
beyond reckoning. This time, though, the number of dead appears to be very low.
What was different in 1900? For one thing, the storm was stronger than Katrina — estimated at about a Category 4
when it hit Galveston. For another, the government's attitude towards such storms was far more arrogant than it is
today. The U.S. Weather Service did not even like to use the words "hurricane" or "tornado," as Erik Larson details
in his book about the disaster, Isaac's Storm. Officials did not want to panic anyone, a problem that still exists today
in other forms — even though we now name our storms well in advance and spend days warning people to prepare
for the worst.
Forecasters were overly confident in their primitive technology, which did not yet include satellites or doppler radar.
And they were distrustful of Cuban forecasters; before the 1900 storm, U.S. forecasters had a policy of ignoring or
downplaying warnings from Cuba, even though the island generally experiences storms well before the U.S. In all,
the government's role made its response to Katrina look almost elegant by comparison.
When the storm made landfall, many members of the public had been warned to get to high ground. But too many
did not or could not get high enough in time. As local forecaster Isaac Cline wrote afterwards, "Where 20,000 people
lived on [Sept.] 8th not a house remained on the 9th, and who occupied the houses may, in many instances, never
be known." On the beach, where St. Mary's Orphanage had once stood, rescuers found the bodies of some of the 93
children who had never left.
Afterwards, engineers built a sea wall to protect Galveston — and even raised the entire city, using mud from the
Gulf of Mexico. But it remained vulnerable. Partly because of the storm and partly because oil was discovered in
Houston soon afterwards, Galveston never really recovered. Texas' economic momentum shifted, and Galveston
became a beach town — with a history and future pummeled by wind and rain.
by John H. Lienhard
Today, a determined city saves itself from extinction. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents
this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
We Houstonians like to run down to Galveston for seafood, for museums, or just to see ships and the Gulf. It's a nice
town. Yet in 1900 Galveston's citizens seriously considered walking away from it -- letting it revert to a swamp. Many
did leave.
The Galveston storm was the worst natural disaster America ever suffered. Over 6000 people died. The way the city
finally responded to that horror forms one of the great American legends.
Galveston is a long island running west to east. It tilts slightly to the northeast. On the north is a protected harbor.
The south side faces the Gulf of Mexico. The 19th-century city lay on the east end. Its highest point was nine feet
above sea level. Its mean elevation was only five feet.
The city was flooded repeatedly down through the 19th century. In 1886 a commission talked about building a wall
against the sea, but they rejected the idea. It would cost too much. Now Galveston had seen just how bad a
hurricane could be. Citizens knew they'd have to either give up their city or protect it.
So by a ratio of 150 to 1 the people who could vote decided to undertake a wild engineering scheme. They would
build a great dam, a Sea Wall along the south Gulf coast. It'd be 17 feet high and 3 miles long with a skirt of
protective granite rip-rap. But the Sea Wall was a piece of cake compared to what followed. Next they raised the
whole city. And this was the major city in Texas.
They slanted the ground so water that got over the Sea Wall could run off toward the bay on the north. That meant
raising the ground almost to the lip of the Wall. Then they sloped it downward to eight feet above sea level on the
north.
To do that, they cut a canal into the city and began pumping in a slurry of sand and salt water. The water ran off and
left sand behind. Homeowners had to lift their houses up on stilts so the slurry could fill in under them.
It took 300 jacks to lift the big brick Moody mansion. It took 700 jacks to lift St. Patrick's church. Of course there
was a component of brutality in all that. Some homeowners couldn't afford the raising. Some had to sacrifice the
bottom floor of their houses. Some had to abandon their homes entirely.
The work went on in sections for seven years. In 1915 the new city they'd built suffered its first test. A storm every
bit as bad as the 1900 hurricane hit Galveston and caused only eight deaths. Since then they've extended the Wall
and filled in more land. No one at all died in hurricanes Carla and Alicia.
And, today, the very presence of Galveston is one of the great joys of living in Texas.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
No. 1099: ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER
by John H. Lienhard
Today, a civil engineer creates order. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about
the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
You're at a meeting. A motion is on the floor. Someone moves a substitute motion. The group debates it. Another
person moves closure on debate. Now the chair has to know whether that motion is legal, whether it demands
action, what fraction of the vote is needed to close debate, and what action should follow.
We agree on a code called Robert's Rules of Order to resolve those questions when we meet. Robert's code guides
the chair through the thicket. It keeps meetings from descending into chaos. So let's meet Henry Martyn Robert, the
man who gave us those rules.
Robert was born in South Carolina in 1837. Engineer/historian Henry Petroski tells how Robert went to West Point
and then saw service in Panama. During the Civil War he worked with the North while his brother became a
Confederate General. For the rest of his life he worked for the Corps of Engineers on projects all over America.
Here in Texas, we honor Robert for his work on Galveston Island. After 1895 he worked on building jetties on the
northern end of Galveston. Those jetties shifted the currents in such a way as to erode the sand bar that was
blocking Galveston Bay.
Robert retired as a brigadier general the year after the terrible Galveston flood of 1900. Galveston immediately put
him on a board charged with creating means to protect the city in the future.
So it was that Henry Robert worked on the huge project of raising the level of Galveston and building a seawall
around it. If you live in this area, you've read his name on the Sea Wall plaque.
But Robert's greatest engineering achievement was made much earlier -- in 1877. And it began when he attended an
out-of-control church meeting in Massachusetts. He came away vowing he would know parliamentary procedure
before he attended another meeting. But he found little written on the subject and no general agreement as to how
to run meetings.
A jurist named Cushing had written on parliamentary procedure in 1845, and Jefferson had written rules for the
conduct of Congress. Neither book was widely read or easy to use. So Robert went to work. With highly-honed logic
and an engineer's appreciation of structure, he created an extremely robust set of procedural rules that would serve
every kind of deliberative gathering.
No publisher would touch such a dry subject, so Robert published it himself. He originally had 4000 copies printed,
figuring they'd last two years. They were gone in four months. He kept revising and improving the work. By 1914, a
half million copies had been sold. The ninth edition came out in 1990.
Here in Texas, we see the raising of Galveston as a great engineering miracle. But few of us know that the same
structural genius gave us the set of conventions for doing business in peace -- when passions could so easily destroy
the democratic process.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
Men in Texas use ropes to pull away the debris of houses in order to look for bodies after the Galveston Hurricane of
1900
The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history was not Hurricane Katrina. Not even close. It was the storm that hit
Galveston, Texas, exactly 108 years and one week ago. That storm killed about 8,000 Americans and leveled what
had been the largest city in Texas. It was a vicious storm with 130 mph winds. But, like Katrina, it needn't have been
as deadly as it was.
Today, the 1900 Hurricane has been largely forgotten. But the memory resurfaced like a violent flashback on Sept.
13, as Hurricane Ike demolished Galveston once again.
Now as then, there are stories of open sky where homes had once been; of beaches blanketed by lumber; of loss
beyond reckoning. This time, though, the number of dead appears to be very low.
What was different in 1900? For one thing, the storm was stronger than Katrina — estimated at about a Category 4
when it hit Galveston. For another, the government's attitude towards such storms was far more arrogant than it is
today. The U.S. Weather Service did not even like to use the words "hurricane" or "tornado," as Erik Larson details
in his book about the disaster, Isaac's Storm. Officials did not want to panic anyone, a problem that still exists today
in other forms — even though we now name our storms well in advance and spend days warning people to prepare
for the worst.
Forecasters were overly confident in their primitive technology, which did not yet include satellites or doppler radar.
And they were distrustful of Cuban forecasters; before the 1900 storm, U.S. forecasters had a policy of ignoring or
downplaying warnings from Cuba, even though the island generally experiences storms well before the U.S. In all,
the government's role made its response to Katrina look almost elegant by comparison.
When the storm made landfall, many members of the public had been warned to get to high ground. But too many
did not or could not get high enough in time. As local forecaster Isaac Cline wrote afterwards, "Where 20,000 people
lived on [Sept.] 8th not a house remained on the 9th, and who occupied the houses may, in many instances, never
be known." On the beach, where St. Mary's Orphanage had once stood, rescuers found the bodies of some of the 93
children who had never left.
Afterwards, engineers built a sea wall to protect Galveston — and even raised the entire city, using mud from the
Gulf of Mexico. But it remained vulnerable. Partly because of the storm and partly because oil was discovered in
Houston soon afterwards, Galveston never really recovered. Texas' economic momentum shifted, and Galveston
became a beach town — with a history and future pummeled by wind and rain.
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Project Executive Group
Westbridge One, Suite 250
10260 Westheimer Rd.
Houston, TX 77042
info@projectexecutive.com
Westbridge One, Suite 250
10260 Westheimer Rd.
Houston, TX 77042
info@projectexecutive.com
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