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Girl, 16, shares story of terror, tragedy
Published July 27, 2009
At 11:30 p.m., the lifesaving station in which 21 people huddled, praying for deliverance from the hurricane raging around them, collapsed, and 16-year-old Minnie Florea later remembered this was “the beginning of the end.”
Minnie, who told her story about surviving the 1915 storm to newspaper reporter Bess Whitehead several weeks after the ordeal, said the lifeboat, which had been damaged earlier when it struck a cedar post, still was afloat. But when the station’s walls began falling, the people inside had no choice but to seek its sanctuary again.
Minnie was the only one of the 13 members of the Florea party who did not get into the boat. “Just as I stepped in the window and made the jump,” she said, “an awful wave lifted the boat and turned it completely over.”
The rope holding the boat was fastened to something inside the station, and as it drew taut, Minnie and a large plank were caught against a wall.
“I thought it would crush me to death before anyone saw me, but three of the lifesavers were near,” she said, adding it took all their strength to lift the rope enough to pull her free.
Minnie’s mother was standing on a high wagon inside the station, holding to a rafter with one arm. There was no use for her to struggle, she told Minnie, because she could not stay up. With the rest of her family gone except for Minnie, Mrs. Florea said she might as well go, too.
At that point, Minnie and her mother were separated, and the girl never saw her mother again.
“It was so dark that I could not tell the people in the water from the planks and drift wood,” Minnie said. “I didn’t know who was back in the station and who was not, for a little while.”
Then she saw her brother, Dunlop, holding onto Rose, her baby sister. “Childlike, (Rose) thought that she would be safer with a larger man, so she turned loose of Dunlop and grabbed for Dr. Newton,” Minnie remembered.
Though the doctor tried to reach the child and succeeded in getting her on a piece of the boat with him and his sister, he was unable to look after all of them.
A huge wave then struck them and washed Rose away, “then she made the first and only outcry that was heard that night,” Minnie said. “Flinging her little arms above the wave she cried, ‘Save me, Daddy, save me!’”
Shortly afterward, Minnie realized her father and Rose were among the six people who had not made it back.
“The walls of the station were just like paper,” she remembered. “When the waves rushed out they would close, and the minute the water dashed back they would open again. I knew I would be crushed if I stayed there, but I couldn’t leave.”
Follett Shannon, a lifesaving crew member who was one of the survivors of the group, called to Minnie that he would tie a rope around his waist, and throw her the end of it.
She remembered telling him she did not want to hamper him from saving himself, and that all her family members were gone, and she did not want to be saved, but he told her that was foolish.
He told her she did not really know her family was lost, and added, “I am here to take care of the rest and not myself.”
Minnie caught the rope, but was unable to hold onto it when a piece of driftwood struck it. Shannon then tried to push some timber to her.
“The water was turning in a seething whirlpool and we and the planks were whirled with it,” she said. “It was dark as pitch and rain was beating on my face till it felt like the skin was off.”
The waves parted Minnie from Shannon, leaving her absolutely alone for the first time. She was “beyond reach and sight of the pieces of boat and station, whirled like the shaft of a gasoline engine, and going with the drift — somewhere,” she said.
Then, a few minutes later, she passed some dark object and when she called out Dr. Newton answered, telling her he had his sister with him.
“That was the last one of our party that I saw and the last voice I heard,” she said.
A few seconds later, Minnie saw the station’s door being propelled into the air by the waves. She was helpless to dodge it, and when it struck her head it knocked her unconscious for a short time.
After she regained consciousness, something that she later realized was a jellyfish stung her leg and she jerked it up. This caused her mouth to fill with water, strangling her and making her sick. Realizing the danger that posed, Minnie resolved not to open her mouth again until she was on land.
“Only a few times and for just a minute all those 20 hours (that she was in the water) did I open my eyes,” she said.
All this time, she clung to her lifejacket and two pieces of weather-boarding about 6 inches wide and 6 feet long. “I kept them under my arms like sled runners,” she said.
She held the lifejacket clasped to her chest, with her arms over and under the planks, and wound her legs around the bottom of her jacket, Minnie said later.
“My body from the shoulders down was in the water all the time. In that one position I drifted and tossed and rode the waves. If there was one monster wave that night, there were ten thousand and I jumped every one and rode them all.”
Next week: Minnie’s ordeal continues.
Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission.
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