Here is another take on the "Sea King" ...
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/etslq
SEA KING. In November 1861 a local draftsman and inventor named
Robert Creuzbaur submitted a plan to the Texas government that called for the construction of an iron-plated gunboat called the
Sea King for service in the Confederate Navy. At the time, the Confederate States of America was in desperate need of a navy capable of breaking the Union blockade. Creuzbaur's vessel was to be made of wood and iron with propellers at the stern and powered by a hot-air engine. He estimated that it would travel at a rate of eighteen miles an hour. In addition to the topside armaments, he proposed that the
Sea King should also employ a "submarine cannon." This gun would be below the waterline and would wreak havoc on the wooden hulls of the Union fleet. Half a century before they were first used, he had proposed what eventually became the modern torpedo tube.
Governor
Francis R. Lubbock appointed a scientific committee composed of William Van Rosenberg, James Brown, and Dr.
J. M. Steiner. The Texas legislature also appointed committees to investigate the proposal. These committees subsequently concluded that such a ship potentially could "destroy in a short time the whole naval power of our enemies." On November 25, 1861, the House passed a bill calling for the construction of an effective marine force, and appropriated $500 for Robert Creuzbaur to present his plan to the Confederate War Department in Richmond. It is not known whether or not Creuzbaur presented his plan. Three months later, on March 8 and 9, 1862, the Confederate ironclad
Virginia (Merrimack) attacked Union ships in Hampton Roads, near Chesapeake Bay and engaged in a historic battle with the Union ironclad
Monitor. The race for ironclads had begun in earnest. Ironclads were built quickly and with little room for innovation or experimentation such as that proposed for the
Sea King. War at sea would never again be the same.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Larry Jay Gage, "The Texas Road to Secession and War: John Marshall and the Texas State Gazette, 1860–1861,"
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 62 (October 1958).
House Journal of the Ninth Legislature, First Called Session, February 2, 1863-March 7, 1863 (Austin: Texas State Library, 1963). William N. Still, Jr.,
Iron Afloat: The Story of Confederate Armorclads (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971).
Texas State Gazette, November 30, 1861
Another on Creuzbaur:
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fcr17
CREUZBAUR, ROBERT (?–?). Robert Creuzbaur, surveyor and draftsman, was associated with the
General Land Office of Texas as a mapmaker during the mid-1800s. He probably came to Texas in the mid-1840s. Two of his maps are of particular importance. In 1848 he was commissioned to compile topographic information for a map of Texas for
Jacob de Cordova, a land promoter. Creuzbaur also made a map from notes compiled by John S. (Rip) Fordqv on his exploring expedition in 1849 showing the route from Austin to Paso del Norte. This map was published for emigrants, and it gave the distances from one water hole to another, as well as pertinent landmarks and detailed descriptions of the nature of the soil and terrain. This map is included in
Creuzbaur's Guide to California and the Pacific Ocean(1849). Creuzbaur also drew up a map of Austin in 1853. Sometime during the 1850s he married the daughter of Eli Kirk of Austin. In 1861 he invented the
Sea King, a type of gunboat designed to fight Yankee blockaders. A joint committee from both houses of the Texas legislature appropriated $500 to enable Creuzbaur to present his plans to Confederate authorities in Richmond. After the
Civil War he moved north and settled in Brooklyn, New York, where he was still living in 1899. Copies of his maps are in the
Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin, and at the General Land Office in Austin.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Austin History Center Files. Frank Brown, Annals of Travis County and the City of Austin (MS, Frank Brown Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin). Larry Jay Gage, "The Texas Road to Secession and War: John Marshall and the Texas State Gazette, 1860–1861,"
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 62 (October 1958). Kenneth F. Neighbours, "The Expedition of Major Robert S. Neighbors to El Paso in 1849,"
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 58 (July 1954).
Bringing the