Once they were blown around the head of the cape, May ordered the anchors dropped. Now protected from the full fury of the wind and sea, the ship and her crew and passengers rode out the storm. The darkness came and passed. Though the danger of sinking had diminished, the night of torment never seemed to end. Gripped by her anchor chains, Charleston buried her bows into the violent and merciless waves. Dawn was a deliverance, but the exhausted crew and passengers, numbed by the cold and constantly soaked, never ceased bailing.
At the end of the second day, there was a noticeable easing of the wind and savage seas. The storm had veered northward. The rain fell off to a heavy drizzle and the swells flattened. A gull appeared and circled the steamboat, squawking as if surprised at seeing it still afloat.
Two hours later, Chief Engineer Leland informed Captain May that he had both boilers fired and enough steam to get underway. Now able to work his stove and oven, the boat's chef prepared the first meal the passengers and crew had eaten in nearly forty-eight hours. Wine and rum were poured by Captain May, and the crew and passengers toasted each other for their remarkable survival.
The next day, to the surprised stares of the town's citizens, who couldn't believe the sight, the battered and broken Charleston limped into the harbor at Beaufort, North Carolina. After temporary repairs, the steamboat triumphantly continued on to Charleston, where she was welcomed with cheers and a brass band.
"Well, we simply have to find the money," Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar said forcefully in his office during the fall of 1838.
"We can try to raise more bonds," the state treasurer offered nervously.
"Just do it." Lamar paused. "If we cannot protect our shore, we cannot continue as a nation. With every ship of our original navy wrecked and sunk, we must replace them and build a new and better navy."
A light breeze blew the leaves of the oak trees outside his office in Austin and staffed the papers on his desk.
"Just do it," he repeated, before turning his attention to the problem of raids by the Comanches.
Somehow the money was raised, and in November of the same year Samuel Williams, the Texas commissioner to the United States, was dispatched to Baltimore. Standing on the deck of the Charleston, he quizzed the owner's agent.
"The engines?"
"Recently overhauled."
"The hull and fittings?"
"As you can see, the vessel is in excellent shape."
Williams stared at the agent. "How much?"
"mr. Hamilton, the current owner, is asking only $145,000."
"Tell him the Republic of Texas will pay him $120,000."
The agent looked stunned. A spit-and-polish New Englander, he wasn't used to the candid ways of the wily Texans. "I doubt if Mr.
Hamilton will consider such a low offer." "One hundred twenty thousand firm, and I want her ready to sail next week."
"I'll submit your offer. That's all I can do.1
Williams turned and walked down the gangway to the dock. Halfway, he turned and peered at the agent. "One more thing."
"Sir?"
"Get those damned pigeons off the rigging of our ship."
Renamed Zavala, in honor of Don Lorenzo de Zavala, the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas, the former Charleston had her deckhouses removed and replaced with an open gun deck, mounting four twelve-pounder medium cannon and one long nine-pounder. Her cargo holds were converted to crew's quarters. Predating any selfpropelled vessels built by the U.S. Navy, Zavala had the distinction of becoming the first armed warship in North America.
The new commodore of the second Texas Navy, Edwin Ward Moore, sailed the Zavala to New Orleans to recruit new seamen. As a warship her complement became 126 men, three times the crew of the old Charleston. The pay was nothing to launch a bank. Marine privates were offered $7 a month, while experienced seamen drew $12. The higher grades drew more. A midshipman received $25 a month, boatswains $40, and lieutenants and surgeons an even $100.
Zavala was commissioned just in time. Trouble was afoot once again to the south. Mexico had proclaimed a blockade of Texas ports, and although the Mexican army was busy with a revolt in the Yucatan, the long-expected follow-up invasion of Texas after Sam Houston's decisive triumph over Santa Ana at San Jacinto was soon approaching.
President Lamar decided to assist the Yucatan rebels, who had revolted against Santa Ana, with his new fleet of warships and thereby draw the Mexican Navy away from the Texas coast. On June 24, 1840, the Zavala, accompanied by Commodore Moore's flagship, the sloop-of-war Austin, and three armed schooners, slipped out of Galveston Bay and turned south across the Gulf to the Bay of Campeche on the Yucatan peninsula.
Once they reached Mexican waters off Yucatan, Moore ordered his little fleet to begin regular patrols up and down the coastline. It soon appeared that President Lamar's plan to avert attack on Texas by sending his navy into enemy waters was working. Spies reported no immediate plans by the Mexican generals to send their armies north.
Zavala never fought a battle with an enemy ship during its service in the Bay of Campeche, but she proved indispensable for a daring expedition that Commodore Moore carried out in the fall of 1840. Under the command of Captain JT. K. Lathrop, Zavala towed Moore's flagship, Austin, and the armed sloop San Bernard ninety miles up the San Juan Bautista River to the provincial capital of Tabasco, currently under the control of the Mexican government.
Anchoring his ships with their guns pointing into the city, Commodore Moore brazenly landed with a small shore party and walked into the main square. The small city was seemingly deserted.
Moore motioned to a seaman who spoke Spanish: "Shout that we want to see the town leaders."
The seaman nodded and yelled out the demand in Spanish. From inside a large brick building, a short, heavy-set man with a red sash stretched across his broad stomach nervously stepped slowly into the street, holding a tree branch with a white strip of cotton tied to the top.
"Ask him who he is," Moore ordered.
The seaman questioned the man in Spanish. "He says he is the mayor. He also says the garrison troops have run away."
Moore smiled like a fox in an unguarded chicken coop. "Inform the mayor that unless he and his leading citizens hand over $25,000, we will level their city with our guns."
After the translation, there was no hesitation, no debate. The seaman glanced at Moore and laughed. "The mayor asks if it would be all night to pay in silver?"
Pleased that his gamble had paid off, Moore nodded. "Tell him that silver will be just fine."
That ransom paid the Texas sailors their wages and bought badly needed supplies for the always underbudgeted navy. In early February of 1841, the fleet returned to Galveston for repairs and provisions.
Before she saw Galveston again, Zavala very nearly became a drifting derelict.
On her way home, Zavala encountered a terrible storm that never seemed to end. For five days the sturdy steamboat fought her way through the heavy seas. With the deckhouses and passenger cabins removed when she became a warship, the sea surged over her now open gun deck without inflicting any damage. Zavala was no stranger to the savagery of turbulence. Her big paddle wheels stubbornly drove her on into the rampage.
"She can't take much more of this," the ship's first mate shouted to Captain Lathrop over the shriek of the wind.
Standing beside two helmsmen who struggled with the wheel, Lathrop shook his head. "She braved a blow worse than this in '37 when she ran between Philadelphia and Charleston. I heard tell ships sank all around her."
"She may be tough, but another five days of this weather and I'll bet my next promotion we'll all be walking on the bottom of the Gulf."
A fireman came up through a hatch from the engine room and approached Lathrop. "The chief engineer's compliments, sir, but he reports that we're down to our last ton of coal."
"Three hundred miles from home port." The first mate looked at Lathrop, apprehension in his eyes. "If we lose steam, it
's all over."
Captain Lathrop stared thoughtfully at the deck for a few moments, the spray whipping into his beard. Then he looked up. "Please tell the chief engineer he has my permission to burn the ship's stores, bulkheads, and furniture. Whatever it takes to keep us under way."
Her interior gutted, Zavala survived the storm and arrived at Galveston four days later. When she crossed over the bar and headed toward her dock, her boilers barely produced enough steam for her paddle wheels to move her along at three knots.
After her one and only cruise as a warship, Zavala was laid up and allowed to deteriorate. Refusing to spend another dollar on the Texas Navy, newly elected President Sam Houston ignored pleas to save the finest vessel in the fleet. Unattended, she began to leak so badly that she was run aground to keep her from sinking. She was then stripped and abandoned. In time she became a rotting hulk at the upper end of the harbor's mud flats, settling deeper into the marsh until only the tops of her boilers and one of her two smokestacks remained in view.
By 1870, what was once the finest and most technically advanced ship in the Republic of Texas Navy had completely disappeared under the ooze and was forgotten.
Ship in a Parking Lot
November 1986
My involvement with the Zavala began innocently enough when my wife, Barbara, and I visited NUMA president Wayne Gronquist, who has his law offices in Austin, Texas. During our stay, Wayne led me over to the capitol building and introduced me to then Governor mite. After a short chat about lost shipwrecks, the governor presented me with a certificate signed by him, proclaiming me an admiral in the Texas Navy.
I know I made some joke that I was probably admiral number 4,932.
Then I really put my foot in my mouth when I said, "Now that I'm an admiral, the least I can do is to find myself a fleet of ships," never dreaming a Texas navy truly existed.
Like a great number of Texans, I was not aware that the Republic of Texas had put together a small navy, two as a matter of fact. The first navy was made up of four small warships, most of them sloops, that were destroyed by storms and enemy action between 1835 and 1837.
The second navy, under the brilliant leadership of Commodore Edwin Moore and consisting of eight ships, lasted from 1838 until 1843.
The combined Texas navies left a remarkable historical legacy.
The early ships harassed Santa Ana's supply line, capturing several merchant ships and sending their cargo of arms and supplies to General Sam Houston and greatly contributing to his victory at San Jacinto.
Despite their heroic and distinguished service, very little has been written about the exploits of the Texas warships. Only two books were written on the subject, many years ago, Thunder on the Gulf by C.
L.
Douglas and The Texas Navy by Jim Dan Hill. What few details have come to light since have appeared in articles of historic journals. As with most shipwrecks, their final graves were veiled and forgotten.
There is nothing worse than a cocky Clive Cussler.
Masochistically hooked once again and compelled to uphold my pride, I called old pal Bob Fleming, my researcher in Washington, and launched plans to search for any Texan shipwrecks whose hulks might have somehow survived the ravages of time.
Of the twelve ships known to have served the Republic of Texas, all but three were either lost at sea, transferred to the U.S. Navy when Texas became a state and ultimately scrapped, or vanished from recorded history. The ships I concentrated on were the armed schooners Invincible, run aground in the Gulf after a battle with two Mexican warships; Brutus, wrecked in Galveston Bay after a hurricane; and Zavala, run ashore in the Galveston ship channel and abandoned.
Many extraordinary and friendly people in Galveston became swept up in the project and helped immeasurably. Adding to Fleming's research efforts, Kay Taylor-Hughes accomplished wonders by supplying local accounts of the ships. Mike Davis performed an outstanding job on Brutus. Bureaucratic red tape was cut by lovely Sylvia Jackson, Senator Chet Brooks, and Stan Weber. Wayne Gronquist coordinated the project, while Barto Arnold proved most helpful and cooperative.
Brutus was a schooner armed and commissioned in January of 1836.
She was 180 feet in length with a 22-foot beam and carried a long 18-pounder swivel and nine short guns. in company with Invincible, she caused havoc with Mexican merchant ships along the Gulf Shore and Yucatan coast, capturing several prize ships. In her short career Brutus did her share to help Texas become independent.
In October of 1837, a tremendous gale swept the Texas coast, destroying a number of structures and wrecking a score of ships.
Brutus was mentioned as being "considerably injured."
Contemporary reports stated that she was left grounded near Williams Wharf.
After a survey of old records and a measure of the modern dock area off the city of Galveston, Mike Davis placed the Brutus at the foot of 24th Street and the end of Pier 23, under the Salvage Wharf Company warehouse 22-23, where her bones still lie today.
In the meantime, I concentrated on Zavala. She turned out to be a project that was fun and a challenge at the same time. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for her because she didn't make me sit on a survey boat, rolling in the waves, hearing the clack of the magnetometer and staring at dials and paper recorders for ten hours at a stretch.
The first clue that gave me a direction was a drawing that Fleming and Taylor-Hughes both turned up, portraying the capture of U.S.S.
Harriet Lane, a Union war ship boarded by Confederates during the battle for Galveston during the Civil War. In the foreground of the pen-and-ink drawing, a triangular pier jutted into the harbor with several soldiers guarding a series of buildings perched above the pilings.
The pier was labeled BEAN'S WHARF. In back of the structures, a black pipe protruded from the water. The artist identified this as the Zavala.
Now I had a ballpark.
In the Galveston Directory of 1856, we found the following information under the heading of "wharves."
Bean's Wharf-In rear of block 689 and opposite the "Shipper's Press," built the present year, by A. H. Bean and Nelson Clements, of New York, and controlled by T. H. McMahon & Gilbert; has a front of 300 feet.
Any optimism that we were on the trail of the lost steamship was shot down by local historians, who believed that Zavala sank outside the outer end of the pier in the channel and was dredged out of existence many years ago. I couldn't bring myself to write her off. I didn't read it that way. My reasoning was based on the assumption that Bean would never have built his wharf where the Zavala's wreck could hinder ships loading and unloading their cargo. It seemed only logical that the wreck was either under or alongside the old wharf pilings, certainly not outside in the channel.
Fortunately, I found the evolution of changes along the channel was fairly easy to trace. Bean's Wharf was well documented in old waterfront surveys from 1856 to 1871. It began at the foot of 29th Street and extended 130 yards over the water in an L shape, the outer docking area extending west until it was adjacent to 30th Street.
After I examined a map of the waterfront from 1927, it became obvious that years of landfill now buried the old wharfs that once traveled over a broad marsh from shore. By overlaying the old maps in chronological order a search grid was defined.
While the search team was assembling at Galveston, my good friend and business partner Bob Esbenson, who became a character in my books and was described as a big pixie with limpid blue eyes, and I drove to the site and checked it out. My prime worry was that a structure of some kind sat over the wreck. Warehouses, grain elevators, and huge concrete dock facilities run continuously for two miles along the channel. Incredibly, the site where Bean's Wharf once stood was free of construction.
Our search grid was open because in 1971 a nearby grain elevator exploded, killing nearly thirty people. A warehouse over Bean's Wharf had been destroyed and the debris removed down to the dirt. It was now a parking lot for the rebuil
t grain elevator's workers.
I climbed to the top of the grain elevator and visually lined up the streets shown on the old maps. Most of the former thoroughfares that once crisscrossed the old dock area were now little more than weedovergrown alleys. Far below, Bob Esbenson stood in the parking lot and moved about according to my shouted directions. Finally, when I was satisfied he was standing approximately where I thought Zavala's remains were buried, he marked the spot.