The times. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1890-1903, 1900-09-21
THE STORM STORY
BY EYE Illness.
"a Spanish Captain Rode Out the
Gale. !
HIS HEAVY LOAD SAVED HIM.
.rhe First Ship Out feom Galveston,
and He Tells the Horrors That
Were Presented of Disas-
ter, Wreck and Death
HIS. HEAVY LOAF. SAVED HIM.
fsnccial Dispatch to The Times ,

Especial Dispatch TO The TimeS)
NORFOLK, Va, September 2O.-The
story Of the storm at Galveston was told
here this morning by an eye witness, who
says that the horror of it has not been ex
aggerated.
Captain F. de Bengoa, commanding the
Spanish steamer Ramon de Larrinasa.
which sailed from Galveston September
18th for New Castle Upon Tyne, by way
of Norfolk was aboard his steamer in Cal
weston harbor when the storm arose on
Saturday morning The steamer was
loaded and ready to sail. About 8 O'Clock,
while rain fell heavily, Captain Bengoa
cleared his ship at the Custom-House and
returned to the office of his agents. Shortly
afterward, when he started for the pier
where his vessel was moored, the water
in the street was two feet deep. Neither
car or other conveyance being obtainabls,
he started to wade to the Larrinaga.
RISING FLOOD.
Before he reached the pier the water in
the streets was four feet deep. Through
this he waded to his ship, and afterward
secured her to the pier with every rope
aboard.
The wind, he said, which came in great
circling gusts, soon swept the superstruc-
ture off the pier, and the rising waters
burst the deck of the pier, the component
parts of which soon drifted away. Only
that portion of the pier to which the Span
ish ship was moored remains. To the fact
that the vessel was heavy laden the Cap
tain attributes her salvation,
During Saturday and Saturday night
Captain Bengoa said thousands of men
who sought to make their way to their cy-
clone-swept and water-encompasse homes
were drowned or killed by falling houses.
DIED IN THE STREETS.
Many failed to succor their wives and
children whom they sought, to save, and
themselves died in the streets, while wives
and children died in their homes.
Captain Bengoa, illustrating the violence
of the wind, said that five Of the crew Of
the Spanish steamer Teesfora which lay
alongside and to the windward of the
steamer Comma, were taken up from the
Telesfora's deck and hurled through the
air. All landed on the deck of the Comma.
Leg or arm of each man was broken, and
the mate was dead when found.
When Captain Bengoa came on deck on
Sunday morning, when the sun was shin
ing and the storm was past, he counted
fifteen bodies of men, women and children
in the wreckage about the Larrinaga.
Here and there among the dead were
corpses Of horses, COWS and other animals.
HOUSES CRUMBLE.
During the storm frame houses floated
and toppled over, and brick houses crun,-
bled as though made of pasteboard, Cap
tain Bengoa said, and settled where they
once stood.
Galveston, when the storm was past and
the water receded was, said the Spanish
Captain, denuded of houses for six squares
inland from the water front. Here and
there only, he said, stood roofless and
ruined relics Of what were once substantial
houses and stores.
He says the need is great, and that a.!
the aid sent Galveston. and more, is
needed.
His is the first ship to reach here from
Galveston since the catastrophe.
From the deck of the Larrinasa Captain
Bengoa saw thrown into the Gulf after
the storm one thousand bodies Of men, wO
men and children. These were frs
weighted with stones that they might no
rise.