Men of the U.S. Revenue Cutter, Life-Saving, and Lighthouse services were pushed to the edge of endurance when the Great Galveston Hurricane hit in 1900.
In September 1900, with little forewarning, a tremendously powerful hurricane struck the Gulf Coast. The storm made landfall a few miles west of Galveston, Texas, on Saturday, 8 September. The “Great Galveston Hurricane” proved far deadlier than any man-made, environmental, or weather-related event in U.S. history, with approximately 8,000 people killed in Galveston and roughly 2,000 more lost along other parts of the Gulf Coast. That death toll is greater than the combined casualty figures for the 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Ike, which devastated Galveston in 2008.
