Isaac Cline once referred to the possibility of a threatening storm as an "absurd delusion- (84). Somewhere, a butterfly opened its wings, and nature showed Galveston just how absurd it could be. .
On September 5, the storm was right on top of Havana, Cuba. No one knows if it had reached hurricane intensity yet. Willis Moore, the chief of the National Weather Bureau, had instituted a ban on all cable transmissions from Cuba, in fear of the country posing as competition to the service (105). He also feared "alarmist- Cuban forecasts could cause mass hysteria among Americans (104). He was even suspicious of Cuba stealing the bureau's weather observations to improve their own forecasts (104). Moore's passion for control had caused a schism between Cuban and U.S. meteorologists (102). His blatant disregard to all Cuban forecasts shows arrogance that quite a lot of Americans shared at the time. The United States had emerged from the Spanish American War as world powers, a new role to our citizens, which caused widespread pomposity (66). Banning all cable transmissions was an absurd action, especially since it was the peak of hurricane season. For Cuban's meteorologists had pioneered the art of hurricane prediction; it was part of their culture (102). In fact, they saw a hurricane as poetry (107). .
Captain T.P. Halsey of the steamship Louisiana saw a red-and-black storm flag at Port Eads, Louisiana, where they were moored. He did not take the warning very seriously, for he had survived eight cyclones so far and believed he had nothing to fear (109). Hurricane and cyclone were words the bureau did not like to use, as they tested the credibility of the service. And credibility is something which, at this time, they could not lose. This fact unintentionally reinforced the bravery of sea captains like Halsey (109). So, the Louisiana with its 30 passengers made its way to sea at 5:22 p.
