>> welcome to galveston on booktv. located in an island off the gulf coast texas is the main port for the texas navy during the texas revolution and served as provisional capital of the state of texas. is visited by 6 million tourists experiencing beaches and other attractions. with the help of comcast partners we will learn about the history of this city from local waters. we begin with casey green -- casey greene undone 1900on the 1900 storm that devastated galveston. >> the 1900 storm struck galveston in 1900 on september 8th, a saturday.

the storm began at noon and raised in dramatic intensity and finally when it tapered off that evening. this hurricane was and still is the deadliest natural event in the history of the united states. the destruction pull 28 to $30 million certainly the destructive hurricane. many buildings did survive with major damage but the death toll is why we remember this event more than anything. it can happen again. saturday, september 1900, people went to the beach, the rising tides, the rising wind certainly drew them. they watched in amazement as

both of these physical factors battered beach front structures. at that time we had been bad house is out of the gulf of mexico and also had peers and even had net huge pavilion called olympia by the see. as the storm increased in intensity, these structures were turned into matchsticks by the hurricane. the problem is people didn't realize this storm would increase so rapidly so they took refuge in their homes. especially south of broadway they fought their homes would offer them refuge from the storm. little did they know the storm would increase in ferocity. estimated wind gusts if not the actual winds in the neighborhood of 120 miles an hour or more with a maximum storm surge of

almost 16 feet. by the time they realized they had better leave their place of residence and move into interior galveston it was too late. this is a panoramic map paul the birdseye matter of palestinian 1895. it gives us a pretty good idea of the physical layout of galveston at the time. you will notice the port of galveston, the harbor is at the bottom of the mac and the gulf of mexico is at the top. you can also see in the wood bat houses, there was not much difference from the beach front to the city. broadway was and still is the major east/was thoroughfare

through galveston. there are wood structures north of broadway the south bay were smaller. the massive loss of life occurred in this area. you can see that hurricane coming from the gulf would have swept over the city in one massive blow. typically after a major cataclysms there is a period of silence. people got up that morning and it was deathly still. we have an account of slimes that covered galveston. at points south of broadway you

could see nothing but an empty plain, literally houses and other buildings managed to matchsticks. this was a total event. the city's infrastructure was destroyed. that includes streets, telegraph lines trolly lines, trolly cars, literally, houses litter believe the wholeliterally the whole city was under water. most that to mrs. face the loss of life in galveston at 6,000. in 2000 galveston commemorated the centennial of the 1900

storm. "through a night of horrors: voices of 1900 galveston storm" is a book i and my co-editor put together with survivor accounts. we estimated the loss of life in galveston at approximately 8,000. many people were in town in galveston at that time. businessmen conducting their business that weekend, and others who wanted to wander into the gulf of mexico see the beach front and they are included among several thousand people can't account for. there is no accurate or complete list. we only have 199 official death records. many of those bodies were unidentified. most of the list of people who

died in their hurricane were prepared by anecdotal sources word of mouth and several thousand more casualties around galveston bay toward houston. this was a storm that was rapidly evolve in, rapidly acting but did a lot of damage in its wake. the recovery was a homegrown effort there were physical or technological changes in the 1900 storm the thousands upon thousands of walker's came to galveston to remove the debris, the bodies posed the threat of disease. at the same time they wanted to provide housing for the survivors. if people couldn't take refuge

in their homes and also had to secure food, water, communications. the city had to resurrect itself from the bottom up. houston television stations will show footage taken from the aftermath of the 1900 storm. the newspapers might do interviews but the potential for destruction from futures storms is always kept in mind. certainly the 1900 storm is a new gateway. more than that, always returned to and it happened here.

>> you are watching booktv on c-span2. we are visiting galveston, texas with the help of comcast. we visit next with author andrew hall with "civil war blockade running on the east coast" exploring galveston's role in the civil war. >> people don't think of texas as playing much of a role in the civil war, a familiar with the lot of battles that took part in the eastern united states, sharpsburg or antietam. they think of a campaign in georgia sherman's march from atlanta to savannah in 1864 and the savannahs in 1865. the campaigns that took place in

tennessee and mississippi. there weren't a lot of major military actions that took place in texas. texas sometimes doesn't get the attention it probably should. galveston's role in the civil war was an important one. galveston at the time in 1860 was the largest city in texas. it had the largest population. it was one of the two commercial centers of texas and was the primary seaport of texas. there were no rail connections between texas and the rest of the united states in 1860. you could not get on a train in texas and travel to other parts of the country so texas, texas primary link to the rest of the united states or after 1861 the rest of the confederacy was by sea. galveston was the best natural harbor on the texas coast. galveston was the largest city. so a lot of -- everything

involved trade and blockade running, went through galveston for the most part and other small ports along the texas coast. galveston was the primary. even before the confederates fired on fort sumter in april of 1861 in charleston the union was preparing and thinking about what happens if this becomes -- if secession becomes a shooting war. one of the things they considered was establishing a blockade of southern ports. the idea of a blockade is an old traditional technique used in warfare to blockade an enemy court to keep ships and vessels from coming in and out, prevent the enemy from getting support from outside. the union union forces declared a blockade on april 19, 1861. that was two days after

jefferson davis declared the confederates would authorize privateers to go after union shipping which is itself an act of war but the union blockade was declared in april of 1861. the idea was the federalists would position war ships around the confederate coast, southern ports and prevent vessels from coming in and out. running the blockade, was it legal? it wasn't legal in the eyes of union forces. it was legal in the eyes of the confederacy because they didn't recognize they didn't recognize federal authority in the seceded states. blockade running was mostly done as a private venture. anyone could become a blockade runner if you had the capital or a vessel or business interest and lots of people did. lots of people involved in other

aspects of business became involved in blockade running during the war because that was a way to maintain their business. how seriously did the federal government, the union take blockade running? they could seriously. they would need to devote a lot of resources to the blockade. 40 or 50 vessels, and had to expand tremendously. from 1862, the union navy was buying up every ship it could find not just building lots of new work ships but purchasing every civilian ship they could put a gun on and using it on the blockade. the thinking was we don't need to blockade the coast. we need lots of ships. we need lots of war ships because they are not going to be going into combat a lot.

that is probably right. the e in in navy expanded during the course of the war from 40 to 56 on active service to 600. the vast majority of those were on the blockade around southernport. the blockade became much more effective as the war went on because simply because the yen in navy expanded so much at the very beginning of the war. the first ship appeared on the blockade of of galveston, the uss south carolina appeared off galveston in july of 1861 and was only one ship. not just galveston but the entire texas coast but war came after that and expand by 1864 there were typically a dozen union warships just off galveston. they took it seriously and devoted a tremendous amount of resources into enforcing the

blockade. for the fast blockade runners the odds were still in their favor even by the end of the war. they getting through most of the time. the odds got a lot longer as the law war went on. blockade running could be hazardous. blockade runners were private almost all privately-owned vessels. there were few exceptions late in the war of ships that were owned by the confederate government but most were privately-owned civilian merchant ships. they were unarmed and generally they would not put up a fight if they were caught. they would run like crazy. they would throw cotton overboard, they would throw cargo overboard. they would put everything that would burn into the furnaces to keep going and try and out run blockade -- blockade vessels that was after them. once they were cornered the would usually surrender.

there were dangers. there were lots of blockade runners that were wrecked because they traveled at night, they traveled in poor weather conditions they were trying to get in and out of harbors where all aides to navigation had been removed. it was very common for blockade runners to be wreck the special in coming into a confederate port and there were sometimes casualties when that happened. sailors and crew members were drowned or lost so there were dangers involved in that regard. federals, they were in a tight spot because they were out to stop the blockade runners, to capture them but most of the crews of blockade runners either where citizens of neutral

countries, british typically, they were either citizens of neutral countries or at least had papers saying they were citizens of neutral countries and there wasn't much the union could do to hold them for very long. what they would do with the ships is a captured blockade runner would have a prize crew put aboard. they would put the vessel to the nearest federal price court which in this case would be new orleans or key west. the navy would file papers to prize the captured vessel condemned as it was called. they would present the evidence that the ship was in fact running the blockade in contravention of u.s. law and they would prevent evidence to the court. if the owners of the ship had a representative which they generally didn't, that person could go to court as well presenting evidence they were

not running the blockade. they never admitted they were doing that. of -- almost always the ship was found to be running blockade condemned by the court and the ship and all its cargo would be sold at public auction. a un number of cases of blockade running vessels that were caught, sent to a price accord, condemned, sold at auction, sold again and sold to someone who put it back in the blockade running it in two four months the same vessel was running under a new name with new owners. to the end of the war the blast -- the last blockade runner in texas the last blockade runner entering confederate port, the port of galveston, came into galveston on the night of may 23rd, '24 feet 1865. that is more than a month after

lincoln had been assassinated. the mississippi department had not surrendered. texas was officially part of the confederacy, still officially part of the war. the blockade was selective here. the last week of may of 1865 we had blockade runners moving into the port and believing. it was the last blockade runner to enter a confederate port. talk about in the book, a rough ending to blockade running because on the morning of the 24th tied up at central wharf which was right here where we are now. tied up at central wharf. they were doing all the things they normally did to get the ship unloaded, putting gained flakes down and stuff like that

and confederate courier on horseback came pounding out a long the appealing cast off, get your ship out into the harbor away from the dock. before they could do that, a gain of 200 soldiers confederate soldiers who were away from their garrison. away from their post, they were fed up, swarmed the ship and began breaking open cargo holds looking for litter and alcohol. when they found that a they found that and started drinking, a large group of citizens had arrived and were watching all this and pretty soon the looting became general and you had women and children and civilians and soldiers all going through the cargo of this blockade runner that had just arrived, taking

anything, anything they could use anything they thought they might be able to sell taking everything they could get their hands on and finally the captain managed to get enough people of his ship that he could cast off, he got going again and the blockade runner had been wrecked the night before picked up at crew and the night of may 24th headed back to the gulf of mexico. that was the last blockade runner to clear a compared -- confederate port and it happened right here. this is not a part of war history people are familiar with and they should be. it is easy to focus on the grand battles of the war. this is a part that people need to know about. this is a part that affected civilians.

this is the part that affected the people back home. in many ways what happened in galveston, texas, was typical of what happened across the south. particularly in sea ports that were blockaded during the war. there was a continual, there was a continual federal navy presence offshore, there were bombardments of town, there was excitement when a blockade runner would arrive, but there was lots of hard ship. they did without agreed deal. it is something people need to know about. another aspect of the war that is not as heroic, not as dramatic. it is part of the war that is hard to glorified but it is an important part of the war because it represents life as lived by a lot of people 150 years ago. >> while in galveston we talked to stephen curley, author of

"celluloid wars: a guide to film and the american experience of war" which examines the portrayal of war in american movies. >> american cinema had a profound effect on the way people see war. even from the beginning we understand the vision of war for most of us is not having been to war but having heard about war, having seen and read about war. playing images of war. i think sometimes the myth of the shield perseus needed to defeat gordon but anyone who looked at gordon would turn to stone. he was able to look in the shield and see the reflection of gore gone. that is what we do in the movies. movies are kind of mirror. a mere reality. they don't mirror reality itself. most films we're talking about the beginning of cinema itself

89 b5, the first recorded films. they ran 60 seconds. this one american film called tearing down the spanish flag, 198 -- 1908. people couldn't get enough of a. imagine being able to see it, being able to beat their. that wasn't exactly true. they weren't there. people who made the movie took a camera to the roof talk in new york city and to film a spanish flag being lowered and replaced by an american flag and in the background was not really have an of but a billboard picture of havana that made it look as if we were there. it was fake footage but it was extraordinarily popular. the kind of thing people put their nickels in in a nickelodeon to watch and they

watched it over and over again. american war films have always been teach and please. propaganda is the key side. mary pop and set a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down. there are movies that have a greater kind of propaganda. think of the green berets with john wayne about the vietnam war. john wayne's propaganda take on what the vietnam war was. wasn't the war itself and we get movies like steven spielberg's saving private ryan which you might say has some propaganda affects but after the second world war, it is mostly a movie about war and the experience the feel of war. accuracy in filmmaking is a

style, it is an option. what you can do when you are making a film. all of the directors understood this, you can make a film that gets it right or you can make a film that is entertaining. entertaining always trumps getting it right. there was the sense when we talked about the vietnam war, it was in the news and people said you don't know exactly what it is. recent war movie, we were soldiers, shows it in a way number of people said that is what happened. on the other hand take a movie like the deer hunter which is really fantasy, the idea of russian roulette, that didn't happen. yet many people believed the deer hunter got it right in another sense. fantasy and realism are styles approaching the experience of war.

the question is how well it succeeds, whether it is fantasy or realism. it is only a movie. on the other hand movies have become much more visceral, much more spectacular. the idea of seeing a clint eastwood movie. you know when you see americans sniper you won't see a 1940s war movie where the only wants are upper arm wounds clean wounds and people die in ballet affect. what you are going to see is this role exploding than fragments and spurting blood, that is the kind of thing that is in there. mash is about the korean war but it was made during the vietnam war and the question of what robert altman was doing with that movie is more about the attitudes, the feelings of the vietnam era, it was the culture

of the people watching the movie. strangely enough when the movie turned into a tv show what we had was a womanizer who became a feminist and the attitudes changed in relation to the current culture in what was both accessible and also admirable about people who are in the madness we call war. that issue of war films often settled on such issues as is this an antiwar film or pro war film? almost no director will say or admit to making a pro war film. people are not happy with wars. nevertheless with in any war there is something to be shown. some kind of courage. rambo is an example of a movie that took the vietnam era and

essentially made it palatable for the american the link public. what sylvester stallone taught us was even though most people were not happy with the way the war was being waged, the way the war worked out, the outcome of the war there was something to be said for individual heroism. the individual heroism in a movie like rambo is not the kind of heroism you would have actually seen had you been there at that time. once again this is the movies and what we want to see is sometimes a larger than life hero. people said john wayne was really great playing john wayne. his movies like the would the man is not a realistic movie about the would seem of but a realistic movie about john wayne kind of hero and what would have

happened had he been asked and iwo jima lower managers in a way that hollywood created. like casablanca, as they are students of film at have been taught to analyze film. they see the movie in a different way than someone who is just watching it in 1944 would have seen it. ..

how that makes us perceive what we were going to see on the screen itself. >> i like them to think -- the book i wrote, the research guide to american war films, i was a co-author. i teach film and so we had a really nice movement there. i like people who read that book to see how film influences war how war influences film, and i think it works both ways. i think the image of war on films influences the feelings the attitudes of the people who fight the wars and perhaps even the way that wars are waged. on the other hand, i think that the way that wars are actually waged influences the way that films are made and how each new generation of filmmaker brings

his or her own special perception to the making of a movie. >> during book tv z visit to galveston texas, we toured the book shop and. >> we're in storm alert as hurricane ike closes in and you can count the hours before landfall. we're talking on one hand. >> absolutely. the impacts, take a look at these waves crashing over the sea wall in galveston, texas. this sea wall is 16 feet tall so imagine how high these waves are. >> this is truly amazing what ike is dishing out right now. this is the worst we have seen, obviously, for the past two hours or so since we have been here in houston. the problem is -- my goodness.

really. this is mind blowing what we're witnessing right now and being able to broadcast to you live. i have never witnessed anything like this in my career. >> when we came down here we tried to be prepared. we brought overalls shovels, first aid kits. and the extent of the damage you just can never imagine how bad it is. there's no way. later determined that we had seven feet of water in here at the height of the storm. when we came in, there was debris that was taller than the table right here, so i guess about four feet and it was just -- all the bookshelves had fallen over. we had a large desk like that that was made out of metal and

it had turned over and twisted. and you couldn't even walk on top of the debris. it was -- i thought that yeah the books would have water in them and the wooden shelves might swell ask the books might swell, but i didn't realize they would fall. and just fall on top of each other. it's hard to describe. but you literally could not walk in the store anywhere. we tried to go through the area where the book -- glass had broken up and start cleaning up, and my husband and paul randall my employee, were able, after

hours of work, they cleaned off one square foot. so at that point, they turned to me and said this is too big a job for us. we can't do this ourselves. and later in the day, before we went back to houston, we drove around as much as we could, and we saw a lot of different companies that specialize in fire water damage restoration so we started writing down names of them, and later i called and interviewed four to five of them and had to pick one. they wore hazmat suits because before the storm even hit water had collected in the sewers had backed up, and so they wore hazmat suits.

they had huge wheelbarrows and huge shovels and these impossible blue strong black bags. never seen anything like it. and they worked as a team. they had just left hurricane gustav in baton rouge which happened three or four weeks before hurricane ike and they worked together on a regular basis. so they just came in and started shoveling and putting it in bags and breaking up the wooden shelves which took at least a week to get through the whole store. so there's a bench like a park bench on the opposite side of the street with no shade on it and that became my office. and i called about 20 book stores in houston to see if anybody had excess shelving they

could give me or i could purchase from them, and the first person i called -- because i had been in his store and just loved the way it looked -- was a man named neil setti with bookland in a bub sub of houston, and he donated it to us. all we had to do is rent a truck, hire some temporary employees, get it out of these warehouses he had and assemble it, and i was -- and he also sold us books at a very discounted price and then later gave us ten books. he also gave us a cash register and some cabinets that we had back in our storage room. so he was very generous person. i told all my contractors i worked with that we were going to open at thanksgiving and if they weren't onboard with this, then that was my deadline.

i didn't want to miss the thanksgiving traffic. so, the whole -- all the repairs were done with generators. we didn't -- the event was on september 13th, and we didn't get electricity returned until november 3rd. and the -- then we had to wait while an ac unit had to be ordered and sent here and we were actually open before we had our air conditioning installed. and when we opened, we had maybe one shelf -- for each shelf, one row of books. but we were open. and people came in and bought. there was very little to too when you got tired of working on your house, and so we were open.

after i -- while we were waiting to come down here for a whole week i think i cried in my bed for maybe an hour or two and then i said, okay, that's it, i've just got to get to work. i might as well give it the old college try again. people are also going to want to come to the beach, so there always has to be people to service them and entertain them that are the year-rounders. and i just couldn't see galveston dying. i thought we would come back stronger than ever, and it's true. everything looks beautiful. it's got fresh paint on it. and had the best six years ever

and every year it gets better and better. so we're very happy that we made that choice. >> this weekend, booktv is in gavel stop texas, with the help of our local cable partner comcast. up next we visit with the author of "the ship that would not die" about the usts texas clipper. >> the texas clipper which is the name that it goes by now, is now an artificial reef off the coast of texas. right near the texas and mexico border. we had it here for about 30 years, and it sailed and there were generations of students that sailed on it. it was the first training ship. there was texas clipper 2 and 3 offeredwards but it was the first training ship. it was not born as the texas clipper but it was born as the

ussexcambian. an attack transport during the second world war. in 1944 there was tremendous ship-building program. it came out of charles point, maryland not far from baltimore, outside the inner harbor and was one of those ships that was built in that tremendous ship-building program. it was not one of the 90-day wonders. this was a high-class ship because it was intended to become a cargo transport passenger carrier, after the war was over. so it was built to the specifics of the american export line. the ship comes out in december of 1944. it is launched. by this time the war is going the way of the allies, early on in the war. nobody knew who was going to win and in fact early on in the war it looked as if the axis powers

had the upper hand and they were winning the battles. but by 1944 he war changed. the ship spent most of its time during the way taking wounded soldiers from iwo jima and bringing them to the hospital onboard the ship and then taking them back to hawai'i, where there were bigger hospitals. after their stop at iwo iwo jima, the ship went back and forth between the west coast of the united states to the islands in the pacific and did that up until the war was over and then was the first ship to go into the submarine headquarters in japan. they came in there and some of the people -- the forerunners of which nowdays the navy seals -- they had got then early and made the beachhead safe for landing

even in those days there were interesting relationships between sailors in the navy and marines, and so these navy people had big placards saying welcome marines. the marines were not happy with that. after the war was over the ship still had a job to do because there were so many people nurses doctors, soldiers, sailors, marines, all over the world, and they were part of -- in the business now of transporting and they transported them in waves back to places like seattle and los angeles. san pedro harbor in los angeles. after the war was over, the ship was brought to the james river in virginia and was put into moth ball there until the company that it was originally

built for the american export lines, claimed it, and then it and three others of the ships were taken up to the northeast and they were refinished. that had all their armaments removed. the ship itself stayed exactly the same configuration it originally had, but the superstructure, that kind of deck structure changed remarkably and what was put in the superstructure now were civilian kinds of spaces ballroom, for example a tea room, more staterooms for passengers and so the ship got a different -- it had a different skyscraper look. in 1949 the ship was launched as the excambian, along with three other ships that were called the four a's.

the american export lines had these -- they're mid-size ships that could hold 250 passengers, and in those days they had a crew of about 250 to care for the 250 passengers and to run the ship. you can't find that kind of attention if you go on a liner today. it did that all the way up through the latter '50s and something happened and what happened was air travel. there was of course air travel before the second world war but after the second world war, there was increasing air travel. by the late 1950s, jets -- the first commercial jetliner between a transatlantic jetliner between new york and europe moved back and forth and that really spelled the death nell for many o