Republic of Texas Navy Ship Zavala

The Zavala


An illustration at Clive Cussler's NUMA website. This doesn't look like a paddlewheeler to me, and it has three masts rather than two...

___________________
Clive Cussler covers the fate of this ship in his book The Sea Hunters, and it is also available online at hisNuma website.

Cussler, the creator of Dirk Pitt, created a new duo - Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala, for a new series of books, "co-written" by Paul Kemprecos. (I'd say Cussler lends his name, Kemprecos does the writing, but that's just my opinion.) It's interesting that Cussler should honor the Zavala in this way.

In any event, here's the history of the Zavala from Wikipedia:

The Texan schooner Zavala was a Texas Navy ship in Texas' second Navy after the Texas Revolution. She was the first steamship-of-war in North America.

The Texas Navy was officially formed in January 1836, with the purchase of four schooners: Invincible, Brutus, Independence, and Liberty. These ships, under the command of Commodore Charles Hawkins, helped Texas win independence by preventing a Mexican blockade of the Texas coast, seizing Mexican ships carrying reinforcements and supplies to its army, and sending their cargoes to the Texas volunteer army. Nevertheless, Mexico refused to recognize Texas as an independent country. By the middle of 1837, all of the ships had been lost at sea, run aground, captured, or sold. With no ships to impede a possible invasion by Mexico, Texas was vulnerable to attack.

In 1838, President Mirabeau B. Lamar responded to this threat by forming a second Texas Navy. Unlike Sam Houston, Lamar was an ardent supporter of the Texas Navy and saw the urgent need for its continuation. The second Texas Navy was placed under the command of Commodore Edwin Ward Moore, an Alexandria Academy graduate who was recruited from the United States Navy.[2] One of the ships of this second navy was the Zavala.

History of the Zavala
The Zavala was built in 1836 as a passenger steamship named the Charleston serving the Philadelphia-Charleston route. In 1838, when Lamar began rebuilding the Texan fleet, the navy purchased the Charleston for $120,000 and renamed it Zavala in honor of Lorenzo de Zavala, the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas.

Capt. A. C. Hinton was her first commander in the Texas Navy. Capt. John T. K. Lothrop took command of the Zavala on 4 March 1840 and led her on her only campaign. After the successful Texas revolt, other parts of Mexico had rebelled against the regime of Santa Ana, including the Yucatan peninsula. President Lamar was determined to assist the rebels in their struggle with Mexico City. So, on 24 June 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 near the Yucatan Peninsula.

During the cruise off the Yucatan, Zavala never engaged the enemy directly, but she proved invaluable in the only action that the flotilla saw. on 20 November 1840, the steamship towed Moore's flagship, Austin and the schooner San Bernard 90 miles up the San Juan Bautista River to Villahermosa, the seat of government control in the state of Tabasco. There the small flotilla pointed their guns at the city and then sent troops into the seemingly deserted capital. Commodore Moore encountered a man bearing a white flag on a tree branch, and when he ascertained that this was the Mayor, the Texas commodore demanded $25,000 or he would level the town. The Mayor asked if silver would be acceptable, and upon receiving an affirmative reply, delivered the ransom. The commodore set sail with his booty and used the money to repair and outfit his ships.

Return to Galveston and the end
Returning to her homeport in Galveston, Zavala encountered a terrible storm and ran out of coal, forcing the crew to burn anything they could put their hands on to avoid losing her in the storm.[4]

Badly damaged, Zavala was laid up in Galveston harbor awaiting repairs, which due to the state of the Republic's finances were not forthcoming. With the election of Sam Houston in 1841, the navy was no longer a priority and Zavala was allowed to deteriorate. In May 1842, she was in such poor condition that Zavala was eventually scuttled to prevent her sinking and in 1844 she was broken up and sold for scrap.

The wreck
Clive Cussler, founder of NUMA, located the hull of the Zavala (archeological site 41GV95) beneath a parking lot in the former Bean's Wharf area of the harbor in 1986. Clive doesn't mention that she was broken up and sold for scrap:

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 finiest 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.

Cussler found the Zavala by conducting research, of course. Two books had been written on the subject of the Navy. Cussler was helped by a team of Texans who smoothed the way.

Cussler searched historical documents and found a

drawing that [portrayed] the capture of USS Harriet Lane, a Union warship boarded by the 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 athe Zavala.

Cussler then looked up Bean's Wharf in the Galveston Directory of 1856. He was able to trace the evolution of the wharf throughout the decades, assembled a search team, and found the site of the ship to be underneath a parking lot for use of workers at a nearby grain elevator.