The Sea Hunters Part 4

The Republic Of texas Navy Ship Zabala 1836-1842 early morning, the sun was blotted out by black, sinister clouds, and the wind gained in velocity with each pa.s.sing hour.

Lightning streaks were followed by the threatening rumble of thunder . A driving rain was accompanied by fast-rising seas as the worst storm in recent memory struck the mid-Atlantic coast in October of z Captain Henry May peered into the growing tempest from the wheel house of his ship, the steamship Charleston. The sea had turned from beautiful to ugly in less than forty minutes. A veteran of the run between Philadelphia and Charleston, South Carolina, May knew from experience that conditions were building into the worst storm he'd ever co faced in his twenty-five years at sea.

"Better warn the pa.s.sengers to tie themselves to their berths, Mr.

Lawler. We're in for a nasty blow."

May's first mate, Charlie Lawler, forced a tight grin. "Nasty blow, captain? She looks more like the furies run amok."

"While you're at it, tell Chief Engineer Leland to mind his fires.

Judging from the rise in the waves, we'll be taking on water."

The full force of the storm fell on them without mercy. Within another hour, the seas became heaving mountains that rushed out of the sheets of pouring rain and curled down on the bows of Charleston as she took them head-on. The bulwarks and railings along the main deck were swept away along with the lifeboats. The shutters that shielded the lower windows of the pa.s.senger cabins were crushed inward by the force of the water.

May was blessed with an experienced crew, who fearlessly took to the decks to clear thedamage and nail canvas and boards over the shattered windows. They labored under a drenching downpour that blocked out the sky and turned the sea into a boiling caldron.

Lawler's voice was lost in the howling wind, and he had to use hand motions to direct the crew to heave any wreckage overboard.

In the wheelhouse, May added his strength to that of the helmsman as they struggled to quarter Charleston's bows into the wave crests before the steamboat dropped sickeningly into the troughs. "Help me bring her around," he ordered the helmsman. "We'll try and run her ash.o.r.e."

"The waves will pound our broadside," helmsman Jacob Hill protested.

"We'll never make it before being crushed to pieces."

"We'll sink if we don't!" May snapped.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with muscles raised for the task, Jacob Hill nodded in grim silence, murmured a short prayer, and took a new grip on the wheel spokes.

Slowly, too slowly, it seemed to Hill, the hull slewed broadside to the onslaught of the seas that smashed into the entire length of the helpless ship. She rolled on her beam ends until May could look out the side windows of the wheelhouse directly down into the menacin gray waters. Charleston was tossed like a helpless block of wood and buried repeatedly by the mountainous seas. After what seemed an eternity, the waves finally lifted, and dropped the stern as the great paddle wheels began churning with the current. She had incredibly survived the 180-degr&e Turn without springing her timbers.

"Only G.o.d knows why," Captain May said, sighing, "but she's still sound as a dollar."

"She's a sweet-handling ship," muttered Hill. "I know of no other that could have done it."

At 569 tons, Charleston was a side-wheel steamer with a length of 201 feet and a 24-foot beam and was propelled by two walking-beam engines fired by two boilers and a smaller auxiliary. She was built in Philadelphia by the well-respected shipbuilding family of John Vaughan & Son in 1836. A fast ship for her day, she could make 16 knots.

Though Charleston was riding easier, the margin between life and death for her pa.s.sengers and crew was still paper thin. Incredibly, the storm increased in its fury. The deckhouses were smashed in, as were the windows of the wheelhouse. May and Hill found themselves fighting to keep the ship on a steady course while whipped and deluged by the driving rain.

Broken and confused, the waves surged up and under the sponsons, the wooden projections fitted under the guards of the paddle wheels and running the length of the hull, shoving the decks upward and allowing water to flood the ship's interior. All too quickly, the ship began to sink deeper in the twisting water.

Unable to spare any of his crew, Lawler beat on the doors of the cabins and ordered the male pa.s.sengers to man the pumps and form a bucket brigade to bail out the water flowing into the cargo deck below.

No man refused Lawler's demand. They kept at it for the next eighteen hours without rest, often helped by their wives, who insisted on lending a hand. Even the few children on board were pressed into service, to stuff rags and cotton around the sprung doors and windows of their cabins.

Just after twelve noon, the forward hatch cover was smashed in, and the water that poured in Put out the fires of one of the two boilers.

Thankful for the auxiliary boiler, Chief Engineer Leland stoked it to life. With the ship made nearly unmanageable by the mountainous seas, May ordered sails set in another attempt to run the battered Charleston ash.o.r.e. But the vicious wind suddenly blew in from a new direction and tore the exposed canvas to shreds. For the moment it appeared that all hope was lost and the Charleston was going to the bottom, along with three other pa.s.senger ships that were pounded to pieces and sunk by the same tempest. But the contrary wind that dashed May's hope of grounding the ship in the safety of the sh.o.r.e began working in his favor, driving Charleston around Cape Lookout off the North Carolina coast and into more sheltered waters.

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 pa.s.sengers rode out the storm. The darkness came and pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 pa.s.sengers and crew had eaten in nearly forty-eight hours. Wine and rum were poured by Captain May, and the crew and pa.s.sengers 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 bra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 a.s.sist 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 sh.o.r.e 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 st.u.r.dy steamboat fought her way through the heavy seas. With the deckhouses and pa.s.senger 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 hara.s.sed 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 c.o.c.ky Clive Cussler.

m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tically 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 sc.r.a.pped, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 Sh.o.r.e 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.