Confederate Mortar Boat?

[Fez1964]

Down here in Houston, Texas, I am researching what kind of Civil War naval vessel was sunk that is referenced on the attached photo of a historical marker.

We have determined that much of the marker's inscription is false. We have not found any evidence that a Confederate blockade runner named the Augusta during the Battle of Galveston made it's way up from the Gulf of Mexico to Houston through the bayous waterways.

My research shows that the sunken vessel may have been a mortar boat which is basically a maritime barge with a cannon mounted on it. Eyewitnesses to the sunken vessel described it as a "gunboat" and a "barge" measuring 60 feet in length and 25 feet wide with a cannon mounted on it. Apparently the vessel carried many cannonballs.

But my understanding is that only the Union used mortar boats and not the Confederacy. Could this sunken vessel be a captured Union mortar boat and the Confederacy sunk it to prevent the Union from taking repossession?

 

[bdtex]

@AndyHall You know anything about this?

 

[JOHN42768]

Welcome, enjoy

 

[mofederal]

Hello and welcome to the CivilWarTalk from Southeast Missouri. My sister and brother-in-law live in Houston, I will have to ask them about it. I found this link.

Site of Sunken Confederate Ship

★ ★ Site of Sunken Confederate Ship historical marker located in Houston, Harris County, Texas.

www.stoppingpoints.com

 

[Pollaco]

Howdy and Welcome from South Texas, I can't say I've ever heard of the "Augusta".

 

[Seduzal]

Welcome to CWT from the Smoky Mountain side of North Carolina. Just jump right in and enjoy.
Thanks for sharing this awesome article. Never seen or heard this before. Another piece of Civil War history's
mysteries found.

 

[archieclement]

Why does it look like the marker has been broken off something?

 

[Pollaco]

Why does it look like the marker has been broken off something?

Most of the historical markers here in Texas are mounted on a pipe-like stem or staff. They seem to be a challenge to some morons and vandals.

 

[AndyHall]

@AndyHall You know anything about this?

Yes, will respond later. TLR, the marker is garbage. A lot of them were back in the day.

 

[AndyHall]

Most of the historical markers here in Texas are mounted on a pipe-like stem or staff. They seem to be a challenge to some morons and vandals.

That one was originally. That one was broken off, likely in a flood, and later recovered.

 

[trice]

Being curious, I looked around on the net and found this:

In the early summer of 1968, Lewis organized an excavation of Buffalo Bayou near the Milam Street bridge in hopes of locating and recovering artifacts from the sunken ships or barges. His efforts to find these Civil War relics relied on the eye witness accounts of three Houston residents who participated in the 1906 excavations at Milam Street. Each of them had vivid memories of the event that took place over sixty years earlier, even though each was only a young boy at the time.​

​

John Gresham claimed that he and his grandfather, John S. Taylor, boarded the sunken boat at Milam Street during the low tide which was accentuated by a north wind that had blown the bayou water out and exposed the ruins. Gresham and his grandfather boarded the old Confederate ship which his grandfather recognized as the Confederate blockade runner Augusta. Taylor had served as the cannoneer of the ship while a member of Hood's Texas Brigade. The schooner Augusta had made a trip to New Orleans, Mobile and back. While docked near the Milam Street bridge, the 65 feet long and 20 feet wide schooner was sunk about thirty feet downstream from the bridge with its bow pointed out toward the middle of the bayou. Gresham recalled that the forward cabin of the ship was extant and the muzzle of an iron cannon was sticking out. The deck of the boat was gone, but the ribs were still visible. Among the ruins, they picked up about forty cannonballs which later were taken to Fort Sam Houston and exploded by the Army.​

​

W. L. Cleveland remembered the old boat that could be seen in the middle of the bayou near the Milam Street bridge when the water was low. He recalled the time that it was blown up after some divers had recovered several boxes of rifles from the boat.​

​

Felix Joe Richard was there when a north wind caused a low tide in Buffalo Bayou and a boat was exposed. The boat was about 60 feet long and 25 feet wide. There was another boat across the bayou, but it appeared to be buried more deeply in the mud. Richard went onto the boat and found boxes of shells, boxes that could have had rifles in them, cannon balls and a cannon that was bolted down to the main deck.​

From The Civil War at the Milam Street Bridge by Louis F. Aulbach​

​

 

[AndyHall]

First, and apology that I cannot cite specific sources on this one. I have an entire file on the supposed Buffalo Bayou blockade runner twenty years ago, and might still. but I cannot put my hands on it right now. Much of this is from the files maintained by the marker office at the Texas Historical Commission in Austin, that not only keeps the material submitted for the marker, but also correspondence that comes in about it afterward.

In the late 1960s/early70s a huge pile of shells, round shoot, and other material was dredged up from Buffalo Bayou downtown, some distance above Allens Landing and the confluence with White Oak Bayou. This stuff seemed pretty obviously CW related, and there was much speculating that it was from a blockade runner of some sort. Some old-timers turned up, saying that they had played on the wreck of a boat in that area when they were kids (see No. 11 above), and the whole story began to coalesce that this was a "Confederate ship." I don't know where the name AUGSUTA came from.

So that's the background to the writing and placing of the marker shown in the OP.

Later it transpired, and was reported in correspondence to the Historical Commission after the marker was installed, that there was a local merchant's warehouse that had been leased by the CS military for various kinds of stores, including ammunition. When the Department of Texas collapsed in early June 1865, the warehouse was broken into by soldiers and civilians, looking for anything they could use for themselves, or sell for cash. They cleaned the place out, except for the munitions, including a large quantity of black powder, that was scattered all over the place, from torn bags and such.

The merchant decided that the best course of action was to get all of that stuff off his premises, so he had it all carted a short distance to Buffalo Bayou and dumped in the stream. There also was an abandoned vessel there of some kind -- maybe from before the war, maybe after -- and the scattered CS munitions dumped there and the vessel became conflated in peoples' memory, especially the kids who came along 40 years later and played on them, in much the same way that an old, abandoned house is said to the be haunted.

Anyway, almost everything on that marker is either speculation or hand-me-down lore. The Historical Commission is a good deal more stringent there days about what gets put on markers.

 

[archieclement]

Not sure it's related, but found a reference of a schooner Augusta at the mouth of the Trinity river in 1827........which is in the same general area.

 

[AndyHall]

@Fez1964, I haven't found my files on the project, but here is a photo taken on the site during our visit there in the late 1990s, between the Travis and Main Street Bridges. This was a Southwest Underwater Archaeological Society project, and an excuse to play with the full-mask communications gear. There wasn't a shipwreck there, but (IIRC) we did locate three grocery carts and lots of assorted other modern trash.

 

[Fez1964]

View attachment 373053

@Fez1964, I haven't found my files on the project, but here is a photo taken on the site during our visit there in the late 1990s, between the Travis and Main Street Bridges. This was a Southwest Underwater Archaeological Society project, and an excuse to play with the full-mask communications gear. There wasn't a shipwreck there, but (IIRC) we did locate three grocery carts and lots of assorted other modern trash.

Actually the sunken ship in question was between the Milam Street and Main Street bridges.