It's scary enough when a city is hit by a bad storm, but can you imagine what it's like when a city is hit by hurricane winds and tidal waves? On September 8, 1900, the city of Galveston, Texas, on the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, was ravaged by 120 mile-per-hour winds, torrential rains, and flooding. The storm lasted 18 hours. Tidal waves swept through the sea-level streets destroying homes and buildings and wiping out electricity, roads, and communications systems. More than 5,000 people lost their lives as a result of this storm.
As soon as they heard of the cyclone and tidal waves that destroyed Galveston, the Edison motion picture company sent cameramen by train to the scene. The Edison catalog explained how the photographers arrived shortly after the storm had hit, and "at the risk of life and limb," they managed to take about 1000 feet of moving pictures, "in spite of the fact that Galveston was under martial law and that the photographers were shot down at sight by the excited police guards." It's not clear that any photographers were actually shot. The author of the Edison catalog might have been exaggerating a bit in order to increase interest in the films.
In the film of "Panorama of Galveston Power House" (a scene, MPEG Format, 6.8MB) from 1900 you can see the devastation left by the storm. From the wrecked buildings, you get an idea of the incredible strength and power of the cyclone.
The storm was so powerful that all the light boats along the dock front were lifted out of the water and washed up into the streets; many were carried inland for miles. This film clip (MPEG Format, 10.0 MB) of "Launching a Stranded Schooner from the Docks" from 1900 shows the boatmen working together to get their craft back into the water.
The Edison films were among the first to market disaster and devastation to a mass audience. "These films are now drawing immense crowds at Eden Musee and Proctor's vaudeville houses in New York City," according to the 1901 Edison catalog. "This great disaster ... has startled the entire world, . . . and everyone will be interested in seeing authentic moving pictures of a representative American city almost entirely wiped out by the combined power of water and wind."
By 1904, the "Galveston Flood" was a popular amusement park attraction at New York's Coney Island. The Coney Island Fun House were built where visitors were promised a firsthand look at the "scene of horror." On a 200 square-foot stage, people watched a simulation of the Galveston storm complete with thunder, lightning, wind, and waves.
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