Magruder's Purchase of a Texas Steamer

DaveBrt

1st Lieutenant
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
Location
Charlotte, NC
Found the following in the Secretary of Wars Letters Received microfilms
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@AndyHall might know something about this.
 
Yes he does! Plug Bayou City steamer into the search and look for Andy...a post on a thread started by Mark Jenkins....surprise!
Andy is speaking about Civil War Blockade Running On The Texas Gulf Coast at the Houston Civil War Roundtable next Thursday night. I am going and will post about it.
 
Sorry for not responding earlier; I was traveling and away from the Intertubes.

I had not seen this specific document, but this reflects Magruder's purchase of the river steamer Bayou City several weeks after the Battle of Galveston on New Years Day, 1863. Bayou City, outfitted as a "cottonclad" gunboat, had played a pivotal role in that fight, capturing the U.S. steamer Harriett Lane by boarding which effectively turned the momentum of the fight in favor of Magruder and the Confederates. Up to that point, Bayou City and several other old civilian boats had been leased by the Magruder's command in an arrangement that wen back prior to his assuming command in the fall of 1862. These boats had been organized into the Texas Marine Department, and were used primarily as transports, moving men and materiel around the bays and small rivers on the upper Texas coast. Marauder began using these boats much more aggressively than his predecessor did. Bayou City, in particular, appears to have been used in a more military role after the battle, including as a guard boat at the mouth of the harbor. From my Buffalo Bayou book:
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Just as the sudden detonation of Westfield [at the end of the battle on January 1, 1863] rattled the crews of the remaining Union ships in Galveston harbor, so too the recapture of Galveston rattled the confidence of Union naval officers on blockade duty in the Gulf of Mexico. Many Federal officers had a bit of “ram fever” during the war, with the havoc wrought by the Confederate casemate ram Virginia a few months before being fresh in their minds. Bayou City seems to have caused more than a few worried headaches for the officers of the blockading squadron, for the converted packet is listed several times in dispatches to the Navy Department. Federal Commodore H. H. Bell, who re-established the Union blockade off Galveston, was convinced by Bayou City’s collision with Harriet Lane that the cottonclad was built specifically as a ram. Not long after arriving at Galveston, Bell wrote that “a formidable looking ram, having one smokestack, looking like the Bayou City, came down the bay and took station at Pelican Spit.” The Union Navy’s fear of Bayou City may have done more to protect Galveston than any number of coastal artillery pieces.
 
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Andy is speaking about Civil War Blockade Running On The Texas Gulf Coast at the Houston Civil War Roundtable next Thursday night. I am going and will post about it.

I'm glad you're planning to come. Please do RSVP ASAP if you haven't already, though -- getting a correct head count is apparently a big deal for the venue. RSVP to Don Zuckero, drzuckero-at-sbcglobal-dot-net, today (Monday) if you can.
 
I'm glad you're planning to come. Please do RSVP ASAP if you haven't already, though -- getting a correct head count is apparently a big deal for the venue. RSVP to Don Zuckero, drzuckero-at-sbcglobal-dot-net, today (Monday) if you can.
Did that last Monday.
 
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