Isaac's Storm

ISAAC'S
STORM
 

A
Man,
a
Time,
and
the
Deadliest
Hurricane
in
History
 

ERIK
LARSON

VINTAGE
BOOKS
 

A
DIVISION
OF
RANDOM
HOUSE,
INC. NEW
YORK
 

For
Chris,
Kristen,
Lauren,
and
Erin
 

FIRST
VINTAGE
BOOKS
EDITION,
JULY
2000

Copyright
©
1999
by
Erik
Larson

All
rights
reserved
under
International
and
Pan-American
Copyright
Conventions.
Published
in
the
United
States
by
Vintage
Books,
a
division
of
Random
House,
Inc.,
New
York
and
simultaneously
in
Canada
by
Random
House
of
Canada
Limited,
Toronto.
Originally
published
in
hardcover
in
the
United
States
by
Crown
Publishers,
a
division
of
Random
House,
Inc.,
New
York,
in
1999.

Vintage
and
colophon
are
registered
trademarks
of
Random
House,
Inc.

The
map
on
pp.
x
xi
is
being
used
by
courtesy
of
the
Rosenberg
Library,
Galveston,
Texas.

The
Library
of
Congress
has
cataloged
the
Crown
edition
as
follows:

Larson,
Erik.

Isaac's
storm:
a
man,
a
time,
and
the
deadliest
hurricane
in
history
/
Erik
Larson.

—
lsted.

p.
cm.

Based
on
the
diaries
of
Isaac
Monroe
Cline
and
on
contemporary
accounts.

1.
Galveston
(Tex.)
—
History
—
20th
century.
2.
Hurricanes
—
Texas
—
 

Galveston
—
History
—
20th
century.
3.
Floods
—
Texas
—
Galveston
—
History
—
 

20th
century.
4.
Cline,
Isaac
Monroe.
5.
Galveston
(Tex.)
Biography.

I.
Cline,
Isaac
Monroe.
II.
Title.

F394.G2L37
1999

976.4'
139-dc21
99-25515

CIP

ISBN
0-609-60233-0

Vintage
ISBN:
0-375-70827-8

Author
photograph
©
Roseanne
Olson
Book
design
by
Leonard
Henderson

www.vintagebooks.com

Printed
in
the
United
States
of
America
10
9876543

 

TELEGRAM
 

Washington,
D.C.
 

Sept
9,
1900

To:
Manager,
Western
Union

Houston,
Texas

Do
you
hear
anything
about
Galveston?

Willis
L.
Moore,

Chief,
U.S.
Weather
Bureau
 

THE
BEACH

September
8,
1900
 

THROUGHOUT
THE
NIGHT
of
Friday,
September
7,
1900,
Isaac
Monroe
Cline
found
himself
waking
to
a
persistent
sense
of
something
gone
wrong.
It
was
the
kind
of
feeling
parents
often
experienced
and
one
that
no
doubt
had
come
to
him
when
each
of
his
three
daughters
was
a
baby.
Each
would
cry,
of
course,
and
often
for
astounding
lengths
of
time,
tearing
a
seam
not
just
through
the
Cline
house
but
also,
in
that
day
of
open
windows
and
unlocked
doors,
through
the
dew-sequined
peace
of
his
entire
neighborhood.
On
some
nights,
however,
the
children
cried
only
long
enough
to
wake
him,
and
he
would
lie
there
heart-struck,
wondering
what
had
brought
him
back
to
the
world
at
such
an
unaccustomed
hour.
Tonight
that
feeling
returned.

Most
other
nights,
Isaac
slept
soundly.
He
was
a
creature
of
the
last
turning
of
the
centuries
when
sleep
seemed
to
come
more
easily.
Things
were
clear
to
him.
He
was
loyal,
a
believer
in
dignity,
honor,
and
effort.
He
taught
Sunday
school.
He
paid
cash,
a
fact
noted
in
a
directory
published
by
the
Giles
Mercantile
Agency
and
meant
to
be
held
in
strictest
confidence.
The
small
red
book
fit
into
a
vest
pocket
and
listed
nearly
all
Galveston's
established
citizens
—
its
police
officers,
bankers,
waiters,
clerics,
tobacconists,
undertakers,
tycoons,
and
shipping
agents
—
and
rated
them
for
credit-worthiness,
basing
this
appraisal
on
secret
reports
filed
anonymously
by
friends
and
enemies.
An
asterisk
beside
a
name
meant
trouble,
"Inquire
at
Office,"
and
marred
the
fiscal
reputations
of
such
people
as
Joe
Amando,
tamale
vendor;
Noah
Allen,
attorney;
Ida
Cherry,
widow;
and
August
Rollfing,
housepainter.
Isaac
Cline
got
the
highest
rating,
a
"B,"
for
"Pays
Well,
Worthy
of
Credit."
In
November
of
1893,
two
years
after
Isaac
arrived
in
Galveston
to
open
the
Texas
Section
of
the
new
U.S.
Weather
Bureau,
a
government
inspector
wrote:
"I
suppose
there
is
not
a
man
in
the
Service
on
Station
Duty
who
does
more
real
work
than
he...
He
takes
a
remarkable
degree
of
interest
in
his
work,
and
has
a
great
pride
in
making
his
station
one
of
the
best
and
most
important
in
the
country,
as
it
is
now."

Upon
first
meeting
Isaac,
men
found
him
to
be
modest
and
self-effacing,
but
those
who
came
to
know
him
well
saw
a
hardness
and
confidence
that
verged
on
conceit.
A
New
Orleans
photographer
captured
this
aspect
in
a
photograph
that
is
so
good,
with
so
much
attention
to
the
geometries
of
composition
and
light,
it
could
be
a
portrait
in
oil.
The
background
is
black;
Isaac's
suit
is
black.
His
shirt
is
the
color
of
bleached
bone.
He
has
a
mustache
and
goatee
and
wears
a
straw
hat,
not
the
rigid
cake-plate
variety,
but
one
with
a
sweeping
scimitar
brim
that
imparts
to
him
the
look
of
a
French
painter
or
riverboat
gambler.
A
darkness
suffuses
the
photograph.
The
brim
shadows
the
top
of
his
face.
His
eyes
gleam
from
the
darkness.
Most
striking
is
the
careful
positioning
of
his
hands.
His
right
rests
in
his
lap,
gripping
what
could
be
a
pair
of
gloves.
His
left
is
positioned
in
midair
so
that
the
diamond
on
his
pinkie
sparks
with
the
intensity
of
a
star.

There
is
a
secret
embedded
in
this
photograph.
For
now,
however,
suffice
it
to
say
the
portrait
suggests
vanity,
that
Isaac
was
aware
of
himself
and
how
he
moved
through
the
day,
and
saw
himself
as
somethng
bigger
than
a
mere
recorder
of
rainfall
and
temperature.
He
was
a
scientist,
not
some
farmer
who
gauged
the
weather
by
aches
in
a
rheumatoid
knee.
Isaac
personally
had
encountered
and
explained
some
of
the
strangest
atmospheric
phenomena
a
weatherman
could
ever
hope
to
experience,
but
also
had
read
the
works
of
the
most
celebrated
meteorologists
and
physical
geographers
of
the
nineteenth
century,
men
like
Henry
Piddington,
Matthew
Fontaine
Maury,
William
Redfield,
and
James
Espy,
and
he
had
followed
their
celebrated
hunt
for
the
Law
of
Storms.
He
believed
deeply
that
he
understood
it
all.

He
lived
in
a
big
time,
astride
the
changing
centuries.
The
frontier
was
still
a
living,
vivid
thing,
with
Buffalo
Bill
Cody
touring
his
Wild
West
Show
to
sellout
crowds
around
the
globe,
Bat
Masterson
a
sports-writer
in
New
Jersey,
and
Frank
James
opening
the
family
ranch
for
tours
at
fifty
cents
a
head.
But
a
new
America
was
emerging,
one
with
big
and
global
aspirations.
Teddy
Roosevelt,
flanked
by
his
Rough
Riders,
campaigned
for
the
vice
presidency.
U.S.
warships
steamed
to
quell
the
Boxers.
There
was
fabulous
talk
of
a
great
American-built
canal
that
would
link
the
Atlantic
to
the
Pacific,
a
task
at
which
Vicomte
de
Lesseps
and
the
French
had
so
catastrophically
failed.
The
nation
in
1900
was
swollen
with
pride
and
technological
confidence.
It
was
a
time,
wrote
Sen.
Chauncey
Depew,
one
of
the
most
prominent
politicians
of
the
age,
when
the
average
American
felt
"four-hundred-percent
bigger"
than
the
year
before.

There
was
talk
even
of
controlling
the
weather
—
of
subduing
hail
with
cannon
blasts
and
igniting
forest
fires
to
bring
rain.

In
this
new
age,
nature
itself
seemed
no
great
obstacle.

ISAAC'S
WIFE,
CORA,
lay
beside
him.
She
was
pregnant
with
their
fourth
child
and
the
pregnancy
had
entered
a
difficult
stretch,
but
now
she
slept
peacefully,
her
abdomen
a
pale
island
against
the
darkness.

The
heat
no
doubt
contributed
to
Isaac's
sleeplessness.
It
had
been
a
problem
all
week,
in
fact
all
summer,
especially
for
Cora,
whose
pregnancy
had
transformed
her
body
into
a
furnace.
Temperatures
in
Galveston
had
risen
steadily
since
Tuesday.
The
heat
broke
90
degrees
on
Thursday,
and
hit
90
again
on
Friday.
Moisture
from
weeks
of
heavy
rain
concentrated
in
the
air
until
the
humidity
was
unbearable.
Earlier
that
week
Isaac
had
read
in
the
Galveston
News
how
a
heat
wave
in
hicago
had
killed
at
least
three
people.
Even
the
northernmost
latitudes
were
experiencing
unusual
levels
of
warmth.
For
the
first
time
in
recorded
history,
the
Bering
Glacier
in
what
eventually
would
become
Alaska
had
begun
to
shrink,
sprouting
rivers,
calving
icebergs,
and
ultimately
shedding
six
hundred
feet
of
its
depth.
A
correspondent
for
The
Western
World
magazine
wrote,
"The
summer
of
1900
will
be
long
remembered
as
one
of
the
most
remarkable
for
sustained
high
temperature
that
has
been
experienced
for
almost
a
generation."