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Oct. 28, 1998
Union gunboats
bombard the city
The war was getting close to home by 1862. While many of the men were away fighting in the major battles in the East, mothers here were seeking writs of habeas corpus to retrieve underaged sons who had slipped away to join the army. The U.S. Navy blockade was forcing wives and daughters to learn new skills, like making their own candles and using looms to make cloth for homespun dresses and uniforms.
The blockade here was commanded by Lt. J.W. Kittredge, captain of the bark Arthur. He kept the coast in an uproar, chasing and sinking blockade runners, leading scouting forays ashore, keeping the locals guessing what his next move would be. In July, 1862, he captured the shallow-draft boats he needed to cross the bar and sail into Corpus Christi Bay. Now he could attack the city.
On Wednesday, Aug. 13, Kittredge's shallow-draft fleet - a steamer with three guns, two schooners and a sloop with one gun each - took up battle stations in the bay. Under a flag of truce, Kittredge gave the Confederate commander, Maj. Alfred M. Hobby, 48 hours to evacuate the city.
Corpus Christi residents buried their valuables and began to stream out of town. Mrs. Rosalie B. Hart Priour, a schoolteacher, wrote that "every wagon, cart, carriage, and ambulance that could be found was pressed into service, even wheelbarrows were in use to carry articles of household furniture to a place of safety. You could see in every direction women and children running to the country loaded with chickens, wash tubs, pots, kettles..." Mrs. Priour said her husband laughed aloud at the sight of one young woman carrying a wash tub who, after going a short distance, called back, "Mama, don't forget the looking glass."
They camped on the prairie three miles west of town. Some had umbrellas and others set up quilts on sticks to escape the broiling sun. One 10-year-old boy, James Ranahan, slipped back into town to see what would happen, but when the guns began to fire, he ran all the way back to camp. The evacuees listened to the bombardment, wondering if their homes were safe.
The Confederates, wrote Mrs. Priour, arranged their forces along the beach "determined to defend the place as long as possible....All the men from the country for 50 to 100 miles around crowded in to their assistance, some armed with shotguns, some with rifles, and others without arms of any kind, depending on what they could procure on their arrival."
The federals, she wrote, "had well-displined troops, good cannons, plenty of ammunition, and good gunboats. They could remain in the bay and shell the town until the last house in the place was destroyed... While they were bombarding the town, I was at my mother's ranch on the Aransas River. We went out and sat down in a hollow near the river where we would hear every shot that was fired, as the river emptied in the bay and the sound followed the water."
The Confederates placed three smooth-bore cannons - an 18-pounder and two 12-pounders - behind old earthworks built by Gen. Zachary Taylor's army in 1845. (The location has long been debated, but it probably was in the vicinity of the Texas State Aquarium.)
The gunboats and the shore battery exchanged fire all day on Saturday, Aug. 16, to little effect. Kittredge moved his boats out of range at nightfall and both sides refrained from firing on Sunday. On Monday, Kittredge sent a shore party to try to flank the battery, but a cavalry charge broke up that gambit. Kittredge moved his ships south, shelled houses for awhile, and then abandoned the fight. Some 500 to 600 solid shot and explosive shells were fired and there were four injuries, two on each side, and one fatality, Confederate Pvt. Henry Mote.
The weary evacuees returned home. Many houses had been damaged. A hole three feet across had to be repaired on one house on Chaparral. A corner was shot off a house on Tancahua. A cannonball smashed a clock brought from Germany by a Mrs. John Ernest Petzel. One cannonball whizzed along the shelf in a saloon, breaking all the whisky bottles. A shell fragment took off the ear of the Anderson children's gray cat. Later, it was told that some of the cannonballs - which the residents called "Kittredges" - were filled with whisky. The story told later was Kittredge's whisky was stolen by his sailors and they hid it by taking the powder out of the cannonballs and refilling them with hootch; on night watches, they could uncap a cannonball and have a party. During the bombardment, it was said, they forgot which of the cannonballs were filled with whisky.
This was the famous Battle of Corpus Christi. The city's newspaper, The Ranchero, in the braggadocio of the times, called it "the Vicksburg of Texas." It was a minor engagement, but it scared away many of the city's residents, who moved inland for the duration of the war.
This is the second of three articles.)
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© 1998 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a
Scripps Howard newspaper.
All rights reserved.
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