Logline: When 46 hard-fighting Irish-Texan cannoneers face off against an invasion of 15,000, it will result in the only medals issued by the southern Confederacy.
Short Pitch
It is called The Battle of Sabine Pass
It is a war action movie.
In the vein of 300.
It is like Fury meets Glory.
It follows ambitious, jovial Irish officer Dick Dowling
And young runaway drummer boy John Drummond
As they fight to free the Texas coast from Yankee invaders and prejudice against Irish and Catholic immigrants.
Problems arise when most of the Texas army is pulled from the coast and Dowling and his forty-six men find themselves the only ones to stop an invasion of 15,000.
Together their skill, training, dedication to each other and Gaelic love of fighting will result in one of the most lopsided victories of the war.
The idea came to me when I read a paragraph about the battle in The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts by Burke Davis and it grabbed hold of my Irish and Texan descendent soul.
My unique approach is focusing on one unit of artillerymen called The Davis Guard and their struggles with military life, war and bigotry against Catholic Irish.
A set piece would be when Dick Dowling is standing on top of the mud pile called Fort Griffin. He has told the Davis Guard that their officers want them to retreat. “What say you,” says Dowling in a thick Gaelic accent. “No, no!,” reply his men. “Shall we fight,” he ask them. Fight, fight, fight,” they reply in unison. “It’s too hot to walk back to Sabine City,” one jokes. Just then a courier rides up. He carries a small Confederate flag. Dowling grabs the flag, crawling higher on the parapet and waves it toward the approaching gunboats. “Dick Dowling is a dead man before that flag shall come down!”
Target audiences would be men and women 20-70, teenagers, military buffs, action movie fans, history buffs, Civil War reenactors, naval buffs, Navy veterans, service members and their families, Catholics, Irish Americans, Irish people, and of course, Texans.
Audiences would want to see it for its epic stand of fighting Irish against overwhelming odds, its action, adventure, and themes of courage, brotherhood, honor and devotion to duty.
Today’s topic for a movie is the Second Battle of Sabine Pass. Books I consulted were Sabine Pass: The Confederacy’s Thermopylae by Edward T. Cotham Jr., from University of Texas Press, Dick Dowling at Sabine Pass: A Texas Incident in the War Between The States by Frank X Tolbert, from McGraw-Hill, Dick Dowling and the Jefferson Davis Guard by Michael Don Jones, from CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, “Chapter 4: Sabine Pass – Against Terrific Odds” of Strange Battles of the Civil War by Webb Garrison, Jr, from Cumberland House, and “Chapter Six: Sabine Pass” of Tempest Over Texas: The Fall and Winter Campaigns of 1863-1865 by Donald S. Frazier, from State House Press.
Act One
Beginnings – Meeting Dick Dowling, The Davis Guard, Frederick Crocker, David Farragut (Pages 1-5)
In Washington, D. C., Winfield Scott is explaining the Anaconda Plan for blockading and choking the life out of the seceding states along the Gulf Coast, and the importance of the Mississippi River. Naval officer David Farragut charges into the office, insists that he is loyal to the Union despite his Southern birth and demands a command in the coming war. Scott hears him out and the two men talk of the importance of Sabine Pass, second largest Texas seaport after Galveston, an entrance for blockade runners to the Neches and Sabine Rivers, a flank of Houston, and an attack route upon the Niblitt’s Bluff and the railroads connecting the Lone Star State and its supplies with the rest of the South.
In Houston Richard W. Dowling is drilling the Davis Guard. Dick Dowling’s family fled their homeland of Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine, immigrating to America. After his parents died in New Orleans, Dick led his orphaned siblings to Houston, Texas. Here he married Elizabeth Anne “Annie” Odlum, daughter of prominent Texas Revolutionary figure, Benjamin Digby Odlum.
Dowling’s first language is Gaelic and has brought his ideas of Irish independence and local identity with him from “The Old Country.” But he is also ambitious. He opens three popular bars in Houston and, unlike many Irish immigrants of the day, becomes an American citizen. He joins the Houston Light Artillery Company in reaction to John Brown’s violence in Kansas. In response to anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigotry in southern militant groups like the Knights of the Golden Circle, he and his wife’s uncle, Frederick Odlum, secede from the Houston company and start the Davis Guard, named in honor of U. S. secretary of war and Mexican American War hero Jefferson Davis. Also in the unit are his brother Patrick and brothers-in-law Patrick Hennessy, married to his sister Mary J., and Edward John Odlum.
Inciting Incident – Conflict with Command After Secession (Pages 5-10)
After the election of Abraham Lincoln, Dowling and Odlum sign a petition demanding that Governor Sam Houston onvene the legislature to consider secession. In February 1861 Texas secedes from the Union. The Committee of Public Safety places the Guard under command of Texas Ranger John S. “RIP” Ford.
Ford’s mission is to capture Union military installations on the Rio Grande. Immediately there is trouble between him and Frederick Odlum, who refuses to allow his men on the ship for transferring them to the Rio Grande, claiming unseaworthiness. Ford views this as insubordination. The Guard takes a different ship. They arrive at Brazos Santiago and peacefully overtake the military installations. A few weeks later another Texas unit arrives, and the Guard is ordered out of their barracks and into a filthy cell. Another “hot dispute” ensues, and the Guard is charged with “mutinous and disorderly conduct.” At first Rip Ford has an order read at dress parade to disband the Guard, but later rescinds the order, recognizing the potentialities of the Guard. They are shipped back to Houston in March with a reputation for being unmanageable.
Second Thoughts – The Blockade Begins (Pages 10-20)
The first Union blockaders appear off the Texas coast near Galveston on July 2, 1861. The first exchange of shots occurs on August 3. Soon Texas’ nearly 370 miles of tidal coast are under blockade.
In Sabine City, near Sabine Pass, Kate Dorman, owner of the Catfish hotel, and other residents are worried by the neglect shown by Confederate authorities toward the area. Blockade runners begin finding safety in the Pass and locals cobble together a ten-foot-tall pile of dirt called “Fort Sabine.”
The Yankees are also blockading the Mississippi River. In April 1862 Farragut, now a flag officer with a young protégé named Frederick Crocker, charges by forts Jackson and St. Philips and capture New Orleans. During this battle the U. S. S. Clifton is damaged, but later repaired. The U. S. S. Sachem also takes part. The Union gunboats fire on civilians, Catholic churches.
Meanwhile in Houston a local priest, Father Augustine D’Asti, allows the Guard to stay in the priest residents. They become proficient artillerymen drilling as Company F, 1st Texas Heavy Artillery under a Colonel Joseph J. Cook, a zealous Methodist preacher and daring officer. They get along with him better than with Rip Ford. The performance of Private Michael McKernan stands out. Dowling’s brother-in-law, Edward John Odlum, grows tired of the months of endless drills and is transferred to Louisiana.
They are an unusual battery. Most artillery batteries are aristocrats, made up from the “better class of young men.” Company F is made up of railroad section hands, longshoreman, barkeeps, dock hands and other types of manual laborers, the lower rung of society. As Irish Catholics they face rudeness, segregation, discrimination and mockery for their religion and speech. Many Texans distrust the Irish since they settled in Spanish Mexico before the Revolution due to their religion and were used by the Mexican authorities as a buffer against Anglo-Saxon settlers. A Houston newspaper calls them “drunken, riotous, bigoted, fanatical, ignorant set of Roman Catholics incapable of self-government and possessing none of the materials for making good citizens.”
Yet many Irish still enlist in Texas regiments bound for Confederate service. Some wish to show loyalty to their new homeland. Some see similarities between Ireland’s cry for independence and that of Dixie’s cry for secession. Some find their local identity from Irish culture to fit right in with Texan pride. Some Irish fear job competition from freed slaves. Others wish to repay the Democrat Party for welcoming them to America with open arms. Others believe that the abolitionists are bigots against Irish and Catholics. Some are just Irishmen who are only at peace when they are fighting.
Meanwhile Farragut and Crocker head up the Mississippi River, charging past Vicksburg’s batteries. Crocker impresses Farragut with his actions against Confederate forces at Ellis Cliffs Again, they fire on civilians at places like Baton Rouge.
The Davis Guard is sent to Galveston and assigned to Pelican Spit. They will defend the very first fort in case of an attack. But all the Union Navy does is feint around the bay for two years.
During this time we meet them. Richard C. O’ Hara, from Zanesville, Ohio, something of a poet. Micheal Carr, industrious, humorous man with a touch of pathos. William Hardin, Episcopalian, butcher. Which might explain how he gets along with a mostly Catholic regiment. John Drummond “Anderson,” 17, lied about his age after running away from home in Missouri. He becomes the drummer boy. Daniel Roach, laborer, a bit crazy. John McGrath, tailor. John Rayn, 40 years old. Dennis O’Neil, 56 years old. One is from England. Another from Canada. Almost all are of Irish descent if not origin. Many of their physical characteristics, hair color, eye color, height, are in their military records (and are available for casting directors).
Meanwhile in Louisiana Farragut and Crooker fail to capture Vicksburg. On their way back down the Mississippi they fire on civilians at Donaldsonville, hitting a Catholic Church. Union General Godfrey Weitzel arrives on scene. Troops under his command commit deprivations against civilians throughout south Louisiana, especially Catholics. During a skirmish Edward John Odlum is wounded.
Climax of Act One / Lock-in – First Battle of Sabine Pass, Capture of Galveston (Pages 20-30)
Farragut and Croker meet army general Benjamin Butler, who has plans to isolate Texas from the rest of the Confederacy by capturing Galveston. Farragut awards Crocker for his actions on the Mississippi with command of the USS Kensington.
Crocker’s first independent command is the First Battle of Sabine Pass September 24–25, 1862. He faces a force of fewer than thirty men of Spaight’s Battalion in Fort Sabine with a force of twenty-five cavalrymen about 3 and a half miles away. He bombards the fort for a day and is met with silence. He sends three boats fitted with howitzers to capture it that evening. They find the fort abandoned.
The next day he goes with a shore party to demand the surrender of Sabine City. He is met by a delegation of the city that says the civilians have abandoned the place due to Yellow Fever, which had killed the mayor just a few days prior. Sabine City is the first major Texas city to be captured by the Yankees. The Yankees capture a few prisoners, destroy a couple of buildings and some supplies of military importance, burn the railroad bridge and destroy a couple of schooners.
Then Union Navy Commander William B. Renshaw sails into Galveston Harbor. On October 4, 1862 the Davis Guard and the rest of the Confederates retreat from Galveston Island without firing a shot, mostly because they mainly had Quaker guns, logs painted to look like cannons. Word comes that Annie’s only brother Edward John Odlum has died of wounds sustained in Louisiana.
Back at Sabine Pass, a company of Spaight’s Battalion fire on the U. S. Steamer Dan. The Yankees retaliate by shelling the town. Yankee shore parties are sent to burn down buildings, including the sawmill. They use the dock of the Catfish hotel to launch their raids. They seize a horse and cart belonging to Kate Dorman’s husband to haul their weapons. She gives them a tongue lashing, saying “our boys are coming to kill every last one of you.” The Yankees return the horse and cart after their raid and threaten to burn the hotel. She says she would see them in the lower infernal regions first, and they may burn it if they choose.
She might not have long to wait. There’s a new commander in Houston by the name of John B. Magruder.
It is time to take back the Texas coast!
Act 2
First Obstacle – Battle of Galveston (Pages 30-40)
The Battle of Galveston alone deserves to be a movie for its daring, epic scale and ingenuity. The attack was planned for January 2, but a black cook informed the Union command in the city. A resident, Mrs. Rosanna Dyer Osterman, informed the Confederates that their plans had been discovered. Instead of calling off the attack, Magruder moves the attack date up to New Year’s Day.
Cook places the guns, twenty in all, at intervals along the Galveston waterfront for two-and-one-half-miles. Firing commences on the Yankee guns and ships in the harbor at 5:00 A. M. with splendid drill. Guns blow holes in the Union infantry’s barricades on Kuhn’s Wharf
The Confederates begin to lose the artillery duel around daylight. Cook then leads a force of five hundred men, including some of the Davis Guard, through the chilly waste high water toward the wharf. They attack the 20th Street and Kuhn’s Wharf using scaling ladders. But the ladders are too short to reach the top of the wharf. As they retreat through the water, the men are shot in the back.
The charge is failing, and the Davis Guard is losing the artillery duel. Suddenly the Confederate Navy, Cottonclads because cotton bales are used as protection, appears and drive the Union from the bay. The Captain of the U. S. S. Sachem is ordered to destroy his ship but refuses and saves his vessel. In charge of the Clifton is Captain Richard Law. After the naval commander William B. Renshaw is killed, Law is left in charge and caught off guard by the attack of the Cottonclads. Then when the raider the CSS Alabama appears in the Gulf, Law orders a full retreat from Galveston. An angry Farragut has Law removed from the Clifton and places Crocker in charge.
Four of the Guard are wounded, one of whom, John Gleason, later dies from complications. The Guard finds Irish potatoes abandoned by the Yankees and have a feast. Dowling finds himself a sword.
They return to Houston and celebrate the victory by kicking up a rumpus at the courthouse. They fire guns in the air, adding two more to the wounded list. Due to this behavior the Confederate commanders decide to send the Guards far away from the city.
Their next assignment is to free Sabine Pass
Higher Obstacle/First Culmination – Freeing Sabine Pass, Building Fort Griffin (Pages 30-50)
Due to rumors of Confederate forces in the area, the small Union force at Sabine City has retreated to their ships the Morning Light, Butler, and Velocity, a blockade runner captured by Crocker. The Davis Guard are to assist in driving these blockaders from the pass.
Some are placed on the Uncle Ben, a light draft steamer, as sharpshooters. Others are placed on the Josiah Bell, a packet steamer, to man the gun named “Annie,” named after Dowling’s wife. The morning of the attack the Confederate commander Oscar M. Watkins is in a bad mood and drunk, so he places Charles Fowler in charge.
On January 21 Fowler leads the river steamers in chasing the Yankee blockade runners out of the pass and a thirty-mile battle as they pursue the Union ships out into the Gulf. Odlum and Dowling are on the Bell with the only artillery piece. The shell is stuck, making it difficult to fire the gun safely. The Bell slows and Dowling and Odlum force the shell where they can fire it. They disable the Morning Light’s Butler rifled gun, take out the rigging, and damage internal supports. Sharpshooters drive sailors below as they quit their guns and take shelter in the hold. According to Fowler, The Davis Guard, “Fired the prettiest shots.” A boarding party from the Ben capture the Morning Light and sail it back to the pass.
The victory is damped when they are unable, thanks to Watkins. to get the ship over the bar at the mouth of the Sabine River and he orders it burned to keep it from falling back into Union hands. The Guard is angry because by maritime law some of the plunder on the ship, $100,00 worth of provisions and supplies, belong to them. The men are praised by Watkins who want to throw him into the ocean. Blockaders soon fill up the mouth of the river again. The Guard is left in Sabine Pass as Watkins returns to Houston.
In New Orleans Butler is replaced by General Nathaniel P. Banks. Crocker captures a blockade runner and renames it the Arizona. Farragut charges pass the Confederate guns at Port Hudson. Again, the Union gunboats fire on civilians and Catholic churches. Union troops under Weitzel commit deprivations, loot Catholic churches, dance around in the priests’ robes.
On April 10, 1863, there is a skirmish around the Sabine Pass Lighthouse on the Louisiana side of the river that results in some Confederates, including Fowler, captured. Then on April 18th troops of the Twenty-First Texas Volunteer Infantry under Lieutenant Colonel William H. Griffin capture several union troops and sailors from a scouting party and wound a river pilot working for them. After this skirmish Union blockaders stop entering the pass and sending shore parties to monitor the Confederate war effort.
On April 20, 1863, the Arizona takes part in the Battle of Bayou a la Rose, Louisiana. Crocker wins this battle by charging through. More destruction of private property, persecution of Catholics by the Union military.
If the Union had monitored the Confederate activities around the Sabine Pass, they would have seen that once again the Texas Coast was being saved by immigrants. Valery Sulakowski, from Poland who had helped Austria during its rebellion against Hungarian rule. And Julius G. Kellersberg, born in Switzerland, who had been a military engineer for the Austrians as well. So southern secession against northern rule fit in right well with their resumes.
Sulakowski and Kellersberg build a new fort at the northern end of an oyster reef that splits the river into two channels – The Texas and Louisiana. Guns now point straighter down the pass toward the entrance. The structure is entirely made of earth, strengthened by railroad iron and timbers from the bulkhead of the Morning Light.
The new fort is called Fort Griffin.
Midpoint – News Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson Failing, Another Invasion (Pages 50-55)
The men hear about friend and family killed in the Eastern Theater of the war as the South faces setbacks. Over 500 Texans are casualties at Gettysburg. Thousands are captured at Vicksburg. Tens of Thousands are cut off from home now that the Union has control of the Mississippi. Texas is now isolated from the rest of the Confederacy.
Discouraged soldiers complain about the mosquitoes, say the clouds of them make a better fort than Griffin. Spies bring word of and there are rumors in newspapers about another invasion of Texas. The men talk about tales of destruction at the hands of Yankees, like Athens, Alabama. (With artist license they could be seen reading Official Report Relative to the Conduct of Federal Troops in Western Louisiana by Henry Watkins Allen)
Obstacle – Lack of Supplies, Guns at Fort (Pages 55-60)
While construction on the fort finishes up, the men live at a two-story house near the fort. Terence Mulhern’s wife lives in Sabine City. The age of one Guard, Thomas Daugherty, is revealed to be 15 when he enlisted. His father wants him discharged but he remains in the service. (In a movie his fellow Guard could stand up for him, tell his father, “He’s a man now.”)
In New Orleans a new general arrives. William B. Franklin, commander of the 18th Corps, brings news of the New England commercial interest who need cotton from Texas to keep their mills running. Lincoln wants Texas restored to the Union for its votes and to implement his reconstruction plan. Also, to keep an eye on the French invasion of Mexico. Banks settles on Sabine Pass as an invasion point because it is closer to Louisiana, from there the Union army can outflank and attack Houston, and the port is covered with stacks of millions of dollars of cotton.
Fort Griffin still has one more problem: No guns. A local fisherman mentions that spiked guns were buried near the old Fort Sabine. guns are dug out of the mud and Kellersberg sends them off to be cleaned in Galveston. Some have balls wedged in the barrels that are worked out. Will they fire?
Test firings are successful.
But there is another problem: lack of ammunition. At first flour sacks are fired at white poles, planted at certain distances, in the pass. Then Dowling remembers ammunitions had been used as ballast in the bottom of the Uncle Ben during its chase of the Morning Light. They can use some of it to practice with.
But would the patched-up cannons stand the pressure of battle?
A battle that will soon occur as an invasion force of 15,000 men prepares in New Orleans.
Disaster – Large Invasion Fleet Spot (Pages 60-65)
Banks places Crocker in charge of the naval operations at Sabine Pass. Farragut, more interested in capturing Mobile, Alabama, is not there, instead leaving Henry H. Bell, another Southerner who shares his aggressive nature, in charge (a movie would probably just take artist license and have Farragut there). Franklin will be in charge of the army, 15,000 in all, while Weitzel will be in charge of the first 5,000 troops to land at the Pass. The plan is to attack on September 7. Cracker will lead the attack in the invasion in the USS Clifton.
But there is a foul up. A series of them. Miscommunications. Ships miss each other because they sail further out in the Gulf for speed. The blockader that was supposed to be at the mouth of the pass as a marker for the fleet goes to Galveston to refuel, causing many ships to miss the entrance. Element of surprise gone, Crocker orders signal lights lit. Thirty-three streamers, and three gunboats filling a cloudless sky on a dark night over an endless sea with light must have been a beautiful yet chilling sight for the defenders of Fort Griffin.
The commander of the Granite City is afraid of the raider CSS Alabama. He sends his local pilot ashore at Calcasieu Pass, thirty miles from Sabine Pass to see if the Alabama was really in the area. It was not When the Granite City catches up with the rest of the felt, Crocker fears the element of surprise is gone. Franklin argues landing, but Crocker decides to charge into Sabine Pass.
Seeing all these ships passing the mouth of the pass alerts the Guard and they began preparing for an attack. Of the 73 soldiers on the muster roll, only 43 are available. The last of the fort’s six guns was installed just two days before. Work is ongoing at the fort. There are no embrasures to poke the cannon muzzles through the four-foot-high redoubt. The gunners will be exposed each time the gun is fired.
A civilian named John Murphy has to hitch up his horse and drive the ammunition from his shed to the newly constructed fort. He had taken his wagon apart to prevent Yankee raiding parties from stealing it, so he has to assemble the wagon and then bring the ammunition. White lines are drawn down the center of the barrels for aim. Gunners hide in bombproofs. Sharpshooters from Spaight’s Battalion are aboard the Uncle Ben.
The Yankee invasion has been delayed by a day. At 2:00 am on the 8tt of September the gunboats enter the pass. At 6:30 they open fire on the fort. They continue until 7:30 having fired twenty-six balls. The Confederates did not return fire. Crocker makes fresh plans, burning daylight ferrying troops to the ironclads.
The attack is still on.
Crisis/Highest Obstacle – Outnumbered, Ordered to Retreat (Pages 65-70)
The men in the fort grumbled when it looked like the attack was off. When ships reappear, it was some relief but as more ships appeared that relief turned to apprehension. Soon the horizon was filled with smoke from steamers. Regulations call for 90 to 100 men to guard the six guns in the fort. The surrounding country is too swampy for horses to harass the gunboats, so Spaight’s Cavalry and the 21st Texas will be of no use. The Uncle Ben only as a signal gun to fire.
Since Confederate authorities believe the Union will invade via the Red River, most of the Texas troops have been moved to Shreveport Louisiana. There is not a large body of troops within a hundred miles of Sabine Pass. The closet reinforcements of any size are six hours away. Magruder, who is 80 miles north of Houston, believes a stand will be a useless sacrifice of men, sends an order to abandon and blow up the fort.
By 11 am 9 ships have entered the pass, but the Guard has not opened fire. Uncle Ben makes its own reconnaissance. The Sachem fires warning shots at the Uncle Ben and fort, which miss both and land back of the fort. As The Clifton, Arizona, Sachem and Granite City steam closer, it is apparent that it will be twenty six-guns vs six.
Climax of Act Two – The Davis Guards Will Stay (Pages 70-75)
Odlum is in the hospital at the Catfish Hotel when he receives the order from Magruder. He gives orders to abandon the fort, spike the guns and fall back to Beaumont if it is about to fall into enemy hands. However, he decides to leave it up to Dowling. “Use your own discretion about giving battle,” Odlum writes him. If they give up the position, they will only have to retake it in a later battle. The messages between Odlum and Dowling are delivered by John Drummond.
Here’s how I might write what happens next in a screenplay
Act Three
Climax/Descending Action – The Battle of Sabine Pass (Pages 75-90)
The locals begin preparing coffee, bake bread, biscuits, cake, and, especially, potatoes, for their defenders. Kate Dorman and another lady drive to the fort in a buggy, deliver the food. They return to the Catfish Hotel and like many people of Sabine City, watch the show from their roof tops, praying against the Yankee devils. The 8th of September is the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. If they are Catholic, no doubt they send a few prayers her way.
In The fort John Drummond is assigned to be a powder man, running gunpowder to the guns. Dr. G. D. Murray from Scottland, naval commodore Leon Smith, and Frederick Odlum enter the fort and decide there are enough men to man the defenses. Dr. George H. Bailey, assistant surgeon for the cavalry, volunteers to service one of the cannons with “Magruder Pills.” Dowling admires Dr. Bailey for volunteering despite his asthma which will be made worse by the smoke.
Meanwhile the Union gunboats are closing in on Fort Griffin. Union sharpshooters, many of them New York Irish, are in the rigging of the ships. They are expected to pick off the gunners while the cannons keep up a heavy, rapid fire on the fort. The Clifton, with Crocker aboard, is followed by the Granite City in the Texas channel. The Clifton will attack the fort while the Granite City covers the landing of Weitzel’s troops. The Sachem is followed by the Arizona in the Louisiana channel. They will speed into Sabine Lake and the fort off from behind. Once the fort is reduced, the troop landing will begin.
The Arizona runs aground on the Louisiana side of the oyster bay, sticks. The Sachem is within 1,200 yards and the crew begin to wonder if the cannons are Quaker guns due to the strange silence from the fort which to them looks like a pile of mud. Then they notice a series of tall poles stuck in the mud. Some ask what they could mean. “I believe we’ll get an answer to your question when we get near those poles and the answer will be quite unsatisfactory to us all,” comes the answer, maybe while they watch Davis Guard James Cocoran dash back toward the fort with a few poles in his hands. Suddenly the Confederates open fire. The first few shots miss.
Michael McKernan’s 35 pounder hits the Sachem’s hull. Then five more of the guns find the range. The sixth gun falls off its platform after its third firing and is out of commission for the rest of the battle. Kernan is soon called Smasher by the rest of his comrades.
Dowling sends two artillerymen, Terence Mulhern and Pat Sullivan, to return Kate Dorman’s dishes so they will not break during the battle. In an ironic twist they are almost hit by the concentrated fire of Union guns overthrowing the fort. Dr. Murray starts to ride out of the fort but turns his horse about around due to the artillery barrage. When it slightly lets up, he dashes out “for reinforcements.”
Dowling calms his men and is sighting his 32-pounder with the cool precision of someone at target practice. A shot tears over the parapet, takes off the handle of the elevation screw that Dowling has just adjusted and lands where he had just been standing.
Meanwhile the Sachem is being pulverized. The steam dome takes a direct hit, scalding and boiling men alive. They begin jumping overboard to escape the heat. It is probably the closest Kate Dorman gets to see the Yankees burning in the infernal regions. An explosive celebration breaks out in the fort, defenders cheering and jumping atop the works where they wave the Confederate flag despite Union sniper fire.
On the Sachem railings vanish. Decks are plowed and torn. Wooden splinters become deadly projectiles. The Sachem tries to escape but is caught in a sharp current and swings around into a mud bank, locking it in bow and stern. The Arizona, freed from the oyster bay, moves forward and starts to rescue sailors jumping from the Sachem, then retreats under fire, freighted by the Uncle Ben, who has used its small power with great responsibility.
Meanwhile the Clifton attacks down the Texas channel, crawling up like a tiger on its prey, according to Crocker. Its guns tear huge holes in the southside of the fort.
Guards do not have time to swab the cannons and let them cool down. They become so hot that two men burn thumbs down to the bone when they touch the barrels. On the Clifton Crocker calls for full speed ahead (Probably something to the effect of “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!)
The Davis Guard shoots the Clifton’s wheelhouse away. Wheel ropes are torn away. The ship swerves into the left bank, skids through a salt marsh and comes to a grinding halt on a sandbar. The sailors are thrown to the deck. Now between 500-300 yards from Fort Griffin they have a clear shot to send broadsides at the defenders. Snipers keep up a heavy fire. Confederates dig away parts of the works with shovels and even their hands so their guns can lower enough to fire upon the ship.
The Clifton returns with fire with grape shot. Crocker orders the pivot gun loaded with solid shot and fired through the deck and gunwale to get a shot at the fort. Minnie balls from the Clifton fly into the fort, sharpshooters nearly hitting the gunners. Dozens of men with guns jump from the ship. Dowling is afraid they’ll charge the fort, but when he sends two men with muskets to greet them, the Yankees, probably stuck in mud, surrender.
Members of the Home Guard appear out of the marsh on the Louisiana side of the Sabine with old rifles and muskets and fire on the Arizona. A boatload of New York sharpshooters sends them into retreat. Clouds of smoke by small bay boats and tiny packets ferrying a few troops from Beaumont down the Neches and burning pine knots frighten the rest of the Yankees. The commander of the Granite City sees “artillery arriving at the fort.” What he probably saw was Commodore Smith with his staff. Nevertheless, he orders a retreat, leaving the Clifton to its fate.
A Confederate shell hits the steam drum, turning the Clifton into a boiling geyser. The guns are disabled, one by one. One can only be fired when a crewmember uses a hatchet to explode the primer. The Confederate fire is becoming more and more deadly. An executive officer, promoted by the deaths of the ones ranking above him, talks Crocker into surrender as they watch the casualties on his ship mount. It is obvious no help is coming as the transports and other ships turn back.
5,000 turned back, 15,000 stopped by 46.
The battle is over in an hour and a half. About thirty minutes elapsed from the start of the bombard of the Clifton to its surrender. The defenders of Fort Griffin had begun to tire. When observers arrive, Dowling asks them for reinforcements. Confederates only have forty charges of powder left in the fort. They have fired 137 shots during the battle. Hot guns take a day to cool. And besides from some burns and fragment wounds, have no seriously casualties.
The Yankees, on the other hand.
Twist/Wrap-up – Surrender of The Clifton and Sachem, The Davis Medals (Pages 95-100)
Twenty Union soldiers and sailors are dead. When Dowling, covered in black powder, rows out to the Clifton to accept their surrender, the officers think it is some kind of joke, referring to him as a boy and “shaughram.” Only when Dowling calls for Dr. Bailey to treat the burn victims on the ship did Crocker and the officers realize that he was the commanding officer. The Sachem is captured by the Uncle Ben, which the northern officers refer to as “a cotton ark.” Outnumbered by his 300 prisoners, Dowling calls upon the militia and drafts an assembly of townspeople, mostly old men, to guard the captured northerners.
Many of the Union ships are having a hard time escaping over the bar at the pass entrance. Thousands of dollars of rations and several hundred horse and mules are thrown over the sides to lighten their weight. Bodies and debris washup for weeks. Dr. Bailey salvages the fouler rations from the water to treat burned Yankees.
Kate Dorman and the rest of the town celebrate the victory East Texas style, a big meal. Engineers Sulakowiski and Kellersberg show up at the fort after the battle, their driver having gotten lost in the dark. A train arrives in Beaumont with Major Watkins and then literally drives backwards to get the news to Houston. Dowling sums it all up to Divine Providence.
The astounding victory boosts morale across the Confederacy after the disasters at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. It inspires Jefferson Davis to issue the first and only medals for valor for Confederate soldiers during the war, The Davis Guard Medals. Dowling becomes a recruiter for the Southern military. While another invasion of Texas would fail at Sabine Crossroads in Louisiana the following year, never again would the Union seriously encroach upon the southeastern Texas coast.
The Battle of Sabine Pass is one of the most astounding battles in history, both for the skill shown by the defenders of Fort Griffin and the lopsided numbers and victory. With less men than King Leonidas, Dowling’s men had won their Thermopylae. T. R. Fehrenbach says Dowling and his men “fought the most brilliant and decisive small action of the Civil War.” Andrew Forest Muir said of the battle “for bravery this engagement ranks with the Defense of the Alamo, and for military results the Battle of San Jacinto.” Arthur Bergeron, Jr. has suggested that had the Texas coast been recaptured in September 1863 then the Union Navy’s attention could be turned to Mobile Bay, shortening the life of the Confederacy.
The impact on Texas can still be felt today. Texan economy was never devastated by the destruction of war waged in the other Southern States, like Louisiana just across the Sabine River, because the invasion had been turned back and thus prospered. The tenacity of the Davis Guard is just one more feather in the hat of proud Texan history. And the actions of Dowling and his men help breakdown bigotry and social prejudice against Catholic and Irish. In 1863 a Houston newspaper said the Battle of Sabine Pass “should put to death anti-Irish sentiment in the state.” Because if St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, then Dick Dowling drove the Yankees out of Texas.
Because it is an exciting and astounding story of Irish immigrants beating the odds is why the Battle of Sabine Pass Should Be A Movie.
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