Читать книгу Lamy of Santa Fe - Paul Horgan - Страница 37

iv.

The Wreck at Indianola

THE GULF OF MEXICO COAST of Texas described a long southwestward curve from Sabine, past Galveston, to Brownsville at the mouth of the Rio Grande. At about midpoint of the curve lay Matagorda Bay. Like most of the coastal region, it was separated from the great Gulf by long, extremely narrow islands of sand and sea grass broken by occasional small inlets giving access from the open sea to the mainland harbors. The land—old sea beds almost at the level of the Gulf—was flat, and shaped into dunes by the wind. Greasewood grew there sparsely, and occasional rows of tall palm trees—the palmetto—stood with their tousled heads trained inland by the sea winds. On cold mornings a silvery fog diffused the sun into a pale disc. Winter there was the season of the lesser Canada goose, the egret, and the avocet. Looking to land from the sea was like looking toward another sea, so level was all, and so lost in vapory distance. The coastwise vessels paralleled in their passage the long curve of the occasionally broken rope of sand islands. The temper of the sea close to shore, where the water grew shallower in a long gradual rise of the Gulf bottom, was affected by weather both from out at sea and from far inland. In January 1851, pilots at the Gulf ports reported tides to be much lower than usual, because of strong northerly winds, which made entrance through the inlets to the bays more difficult than ever.

But given ordinary conditions, the ships managed successfully, until late during the night of 9 January 1851 one of those sudden and violent storms known as Texas northers struck out across the land toward the Gulf, bringing with dawn inky blue skies, wildly high winds, howling rain frozen on contact with anything, and driving the tide outward at Caballo Pass, the inlet for the Matagorda Bay ports of Indianola and Port Lavaca.

The Pass was a sea arm bridged underwater by a high sand reef which at the best of times gave trouble to the port pilots. During the storm of 9 January, the current in the gut, always dangerously swift, was running especially fast, and the tide, blown out to sea by the blue norther, lowered the clearance level perilously. Added to this hazard were others—shifts in the underwater bar caused by the work of the northerly winds, and the recent relief of pilots familiar with the passage by new pilots assigned to the station at Caballo Pass who had had little experience in the local waters.

Out of the storm, during the forenoon of 9 January, the Palmetto came toiling into sight and hove to off the bar of Matagorda Bay. Captain Jeremiah Smith signalled for a pilot. Despite the furiously high waves, pilot Thomas Harrison reached the ship and took charge. In the uproar of wind and sea, he had to measure his chances and maneuver the ship for several hours, but finally at twenty minutes past three he was at the inlet, and he pressed toward the bar. In the attempt to cross over, the Palmetto struck bottom, and struck again, repeatedly.

Harrison tried to back the ship into the Gulf, but failed at his first efforts. Just then the winds increased and the waves grew wilder. The Palmetto thumped bottom again and again, until, according to the Picayune, “her thumping became alarming and it was deemed essential to force her over.” Harrison at last was able to take her off the bar, running back some three hundred yards into open water, and then again approached the inlet. There again she struck bottom and a leak was opened into her weakened hull. The waves rose still higher and carried her at last over the bar and through the inlet, but it was clear that the ship was beginning to sink. She had been fighting to gain the passage for almost three hours. At seven in the evening, she ran for the empty beach, grounded a little distance offshore, and was “almost instantly filled, the sea breaking furiously over her decks.”

A ship’s boat was lowered, a line was taken ashore and secured, and the passengers—there were over a hundred—gathered to take to the remaining boats. The women went first, then the men passengers, and finally the officers and crew. The sea was combing wildly across the tilted decks. The wind, said Lamy, was blowing gales and the sandy surf was running high, but no life was lost. The whole company were soaked through. Men went to work trying to make a beach fire of washed-up timbers—some from the Palmetto—and by the time they succeeded, Lamy remembered, everybody was “white with frost and ice.” Night was coming down. Some of the ship’s freight pounded toward shore. Most of the passengers’ baggage was sighted and some saved. Frozen and shaken between dismay and relief, men on the beach hauled out of the water some baskets of champagne and kegs of brandy which they broke open. Before long a great number of the survivors were roaring drunk, a sight which Lamy deplored. In the presence of their revelry and profanity he found himself unable to say his daily office.

Among the debris borne toward shore he thought he saw his trunk containing his books and vestments. When sure of it, he asked a strong young Negro in the crowd if he would venture into the shallows, where the sand-colored surf pounded away, and try to bring back the trunk. The matter was accomplished. Lamy paid his helper out of his pocket with what little money he carried—otherwise the rest of it, and all his other possessions, including his “beautiful little carriage,” were destroyed in the wreck.

Going about among the freezing beach party, Captain James Cummings, the principal pilot of Caballo Pass, whose house was three miles inland, gave what comfort he could. He had seen the Palmetto go to her end, and during the rescue work had built beacon fires to guide the boats; and now he offered his house—the only one for miles around—to the number it could accommodate. Among them was Lamy, who, with others, went to take food and drink with the pilot. They would stay with him until he could arrange for boats to come and carry the survivors to Indianola, in the next day or two.

On the morning after the wreck, all that could be seen of the Palmetto was “one wheelhouse remaining above water.” The ship, a total wreck, was not insured, being a condemned vessel. One thing all agreed upon—Captain Jeremiah Smith had performed his hard duties during the disaster with “intrepid, cool, and humane conduct.” When three days later the shipwrecked company reached Indianola, several members came together to memorialize their thanks to Captain Smith and Captain Cummings. On 12 January, they drafted and sent to the Daily Picayune at New Orleans “A CARD—TO THE PUBLIC,” which the paper printed in its issue of 21 January 1851:

We, the undersigned, passengers by the steamboat Palmetto feel it incumbent upon us to publicly express our warmest gratitude and thanks to Capt. Jeremiah Smith, all the officers and crew, for their gallant conduct during the whole of the dreadful catastrophe that occurred to that boat on the 9th inst. No set of men ever made greater exertion for the safety and well-being of those under their care and could not have had less regard for self than did these heroic men. Capt. Smith during the whole time displayed the greatest coolness and courage, and but for his excellent judgment and self-possession, we fear that we would not now have this opportunity of thanking him, deeming it more than probable that we would have been lost. Nor can we permit this opportunity to pass without returning our sincere thanks to Capt. Jas Cummings, who, after rendering as much assistance at the scene of the disaster, kindly afforded all possible relief to the sufferers at his house near the beach, and did much for making them comfortable under all the circumstances.

Eleven men signed the “card,” of whom the last was “Rev. J. Laury”—a misprint for Lamy, who in his calligraphy of that time wrote the “m” of his name in three small peaks which together looked like “u” and “r.”

Galveston citizens presently followed with another printed testimonial in praise of Captain Smith—he was their fellow townsman—and in the courtly rhetoric of that formal time, he sent his reply to the Galveston News, 14 February 1851:

Gentlemen: I have this moment received your note of today [10 February], in which you manifest the feelings of the citizens of Galveston towards me, as commander of the late Steamer Palmetto. If anything, Gentlemen, could have added to the kind feelings which I have always enjoyed towards my fellow citizens, it certainly would have been the tenor of your note of invitation to a public dinner, as expression of the estimation in which I am held there; and while I feel a pride in your manifestation, I regret that I have not words to express, in accordance with my feelings, the satisfaction I have in the knowledge of your confidence. This confidence shall to the best of my experience, be preserved unblemish’d under which circumstances I cannot refuse the compliment; therefore I will name Friday next, 14th inst., as the day on which I shall have the honor to greet you, with a seaman’s heart, overfull from your kindness, and remain respectfully, your obliged fellow citizen and sincere friend, J.S.

The amenities concluded, those at Indianola gradually managed their next steps. The little town was a rival of Port Lavaca as the sea-water harbor for San Antonio, which lay inland a hundred and forty miles westward in a direct line. Indianola was soon to be thought of as “a great railroad terminal between the Atlantic and the Pacific.” Centuries earlier, Matagorda Bay had been the scene of an ambitious colonization by the French, when on 31 August 1685 La Salle had established Fort St Louis on its protected shore. But none of such great enterprises came to fruition, and Indianola itself vanished, to become only a name on antique maps.

The Gulf flats, in all their sea hues of oyster-colored sand, olive and russet bush, and gray grass, where a single tree even as far as eight miles inland was an event, gave way now and then to dunes in regular intervals of rise and fall—waves of dune made by wind just as waves of water. In the cold of January, over a sandy trail which dragged at wheels and feet, the stranded travellers made their way finally to Port Lavaca. Lamy reflected upon his losses in money and objects, and knew that he must appeal for their replacement to an arm of the Church with which, now, as a bishop, he would correspond directly. This was the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, with offices at Paris and Lyon. He would lean on it heavily for help in all the years ahead.