Download or read book Vanished Texas Coast Lost Port Towns Mysterious Shipwrecks and Other True Tales written by Mark Lardas and published by History Press. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People may associate Texas with cattle drives and oil derricks, but the sea has shaped the state's history as dramatically as it has delineated its coastline. Some of that history has vanished into the Gulf, whether it is an abandoned port town or a gale-tossed treasure fleet. Revisit the shipwreck that put Texas on the map. Add La Salle's lost colony, the Texas Navy's forgotten steamship and Galveston's overlooked 1915 hurricane to the navigational charts. From the submarines of Seawolf Park to the concrete tanker beached off Pelican Island, author Mark Lardas scours the coast to salvage the secrets of its sunken heritage.
Download or read book The Vanished Texas Coast written by Mark Lardas and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People may associate Texas with cattle drives and oil derricks, but the sea has shaped the state's history as dramatically as it has delineated its coastline. Some of that history has vanished into the Gulf, whether it is an abandoned port town or a gale-tossed treasure fleet. Revisit the shipwreck that put Texas on the map. Add La Salle's lost colony, the Texas Navy's forgotten steamship and Galveston's overlooked 1915 hurricane to the navigational charts. From the submarines of Seawolf Park to the concrete tanker beached off Pelican Island, author Mark Lardas scours the coast to salvage the secrets of its sunken heritage.
Download or read book Vanished Texas Coast The Lost Port Towns Mysterious Shipwrecks and Other True Tales written by Mark Lardas and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People may associate Texas with cattle drives and oil derricks, but the sea has shaped the state's history as dramatically as it has delineated its coastline. Some of that history has vanished into the Gulf, whether it is an abandoned port town or a gale-tossed treasure fleet. Revisit the shipwreck that put Texas on the map. Add La Salle's lost colony, the Texas Navy's forgotten steamship and Galveston's overlooked 1915 hurricane to the navigational charts. From the submarines of Seawolf Park to the concrete tanker beached off Pelican Island, author Mark Lardas scours the coast to salvage the secrets of its sunken heritage.
Download or read book Texas Shipwrecks written by Mark Lardas and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2016 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Texas coastline and offshore waters are flat, shallow, featureless, and filled with shoals. Texas waters are subjected to extreme weather, not just hurricanes and tropical storms but also northers and seasonal gales. This, combined with two centuries of naval warfare off Texas waters, produced many shipwrecks of all sorts, from Spanish treasure fleets to simple working boats. The ships of pirates, navies, cotton traders, immigrants, fisherman, and oil shippers line the Texas coast, cover the sea bottom off Texas, and blanket the bottom of Texas rivers. Each wreck has a story, romantic or repellent, prosaic or unusual, but all intriguing"--Back cover.
Download or read book Texas Gulf Coast Stories written by C. Herndon Williams and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2010-12-03 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The middle Texas coast, known locally as the Coast Bend, is an area filled with fascinating stories. From as early as the days of de Vaca and La Salle, the Coastal Bend has been a site of early exploration, bloody conflicts, legendary shipwrecks and even a buried treasure or two. However, much of the true history has remained unknown, misunderstood and even hidden. For years, local historian C. Herndon Williams has shared his fascinating discoveries of the area's early stories through his weekly column, "Coastal Bend Chronicle." Now he has selected some of his favorites in Texas Gulf Coast Stories. Join Williams as he explores the days of early settlement and European contact, Karankawa and Tonkawa legends and the Coastal Bend's tallest of tall tales.
Download or read book Treasure People Ships and Dreams written by John L. Davis and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ghost Ship written by Brian Hicks and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On December 4th, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was discovered drifting through the North Atlantic without a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a shred of damage, no ransacked cargo—and not a trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the crew. What happened on board the ghost ship Mary Celeste has baffled and tantalized the world for 130 years. In his stunning new book, award-winning journalist Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this fabled nautical mystery and finally uncovers the truth. The Mary Celeste was cursed as soon as she was launched on the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1861. Her first captain died before completing the maiden voyage. In London she accidentally rammed and sank an English brig. Later she was abandoned after a storm drove her ashore at Cape Breton. But somehow the ship was recovered and refitted, and in the autumn of 1872 she fell to the reluctant command of a seasoned mariner named Benjamin Spooner Briggs. It was Briggs who was at the helm when the Mary Celeste sailed into history. In Brian Hicks’s skilled hands, the story of the Mary Celeste becomes the quintessential tale of men lost at sea. Hicks vividly recreates the events leading up to the crew’s disappearance and then unfolds the complicated and bizarre aftermath—the dark suspicions that fell on the officers of the ship that intercepted her; the farcical Admiralty Court salvage hearing in Gibraltar; the wild myths that circulated after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a thinly disguised short story sensationalizing the mystery. Everything from a voodoo curse to an alien abduction has been hauled out to explain the fate of the Mary Celeste. But, as Brian Hicks reveals, the truth is actually grounded in the combined tragedies of human error and bad luck. The story of the Mary Celeste acquired yet another twist in 2001, when a team of divers funded by novelist Clive Cussler located the wreck in a coral reef off Haiti. Written with the suspense of a thriller and the vivid accuracy of the best popular history, Ghost Ship tells the unforgettable true story of the most famous and most fascinating maritime mystery of all time.
Download or read book From a Watery Grave written by James E. Bruseth and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the discovery and excavation of the French ship La Belle, shipwrecked in 1686 in Matagorda Bay, Texas.
Download or read book S S Inchulva written by Linda Reeves and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: S. S. Inchulva A Florida Shipwreck Rediscovered Lost in a hurricane in 1903, the S. S. Inchulva was hidden under the surface of the water a short distance from Florida's shore. For decades, divers visited the mysterious wreck and townspeople told stories about the ghost ship, but the stories varied and the ship's true origin and identity were not known. A ten-year research project turned up a great deal of history and facts about the popular shipwreck. In the 1990's, a state marker with a plaque telling the true history of the vessel was erected near the wreck's site for visitors to enjoy. A decade passed before a bizarre set of twists and turns in January 2002 brought the ship's history to life. A British captain, searching for information about his missing grandfather, connected his long-lost relative with this ship after finding a bundle of letters, which had been secretly hidden away in a trunk for nearly a century. The letters written by the man's grandfather opened a window into the family's past and revealed the name of the missing forefather's ship; but, unfortunately, no clue was revealed as to where or how the ship perished or what had become of the grandfather. The letters intrigued the grandson, a professional seaman himself, and peaked his interest enough to begin a search and investigation to find out more. The captain spent a year digging for information. He searched books, libraries and museums. He came up with some interesting information and some fascinating ideas of his own about the ship's wreck. By chance, a few weeks after the letters turned up in England, an underwater discovery was made near the site where the ship wrecked in Florida. Amazingly, the findings uncovered at the bottom of the ocean linked to the grandson's discovery in the trunk. The seafloor findings also connected to the concerns written about in letters by the grandfather. This story is something more human than historical facts and figures. It is a story that sheds a little light on life at sea in the early 1900's and on the days leading up to the last voyage of the Inchulva. This story tells of the ship's crew and about the nine men whose lives were so abruptly taken on the day of the ship's demise. It is also a tale of a town landmark and an underwater treasure, of which many of the city's families have grown fond over the decades. When the S. S. Inchulva wrecked September 11, 1903, the tragedy touched many lives at the time. But, the wreck would continue to make an impact straight through to present day on the city where it crashed ashore so long ago.
Download or read book Indianola and Matagorda Island 1837 1887 written by Linda Wolff and published by Eakin Press. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indianola and Matagorda Island served a major role in the history and development of Texas. Matagorda Island served as a key point of entry for German immigrants as early as 1844.Incorporated in 1853, Indianola is now a ghost town. Once the county seat of Calhoun County, Indianola once had a population of more than 5,000 before a major hurricane destroyed the town in 1875, The town was rebuilt and again destroyed by a second hurricane in 1886. Linda Wolff goes into great detail in bringing the rich history of Indianola and Matagorda Island to life in this book. Designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1963. In addition to the history also provides a guide to the wildflowers, the birds, the wildlife and brings the reader to current time and the Matagorda Island State Park.
Download or read book 438 Days written by Jonathan Franklin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The miraculous account of the man who survived alone and adrift at sea longer than anyone in recorded history. For fourteen months, Alvarenga survived constant shark attacks. He learned to catch fish with his bare hands. He built a fish net from a pair of empty plastic bottles. Taking apart the outboard motor, he fashioned a huge fishhook. Using fish vertebrae as needles, he stitched together his own clothes. Based on dozens of hours of interviews with Alvarenga and interviews with his colleagues, search and rescue officials, the medical team that saved his life and the remote islanders who nursed him back to health, this is an epic tale of survival. Print run 75,000.
Download or read book The Karankawa Indians of Texas written by Robert A. Ricklis and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular lore has long depicted the Karankawa Indians as primitive scavengers (perhaps even cannibals) who eked out a meager subsistence from fishing, hunting and gathering on the Texas coastal plains. That caricature, according to Robert Ricklis, hides the reality of a people who were well-adapted to their environment, skillful in using its resources, and successful in maintaining their culture until the arrival of Anglo-American settlers. The Karankawa Indians of Texas is the first modern, well-researched history of the Karankawa from prehistoric times until their extinction in the nineteenth century. Blending archaeological and ethnohistorical data into a lively narrative history, Ricklis reveals the basic lifeway of the Karankawa, a seasonal pattern that took them from large coastal fishing camps in winter to small, dispersed hunting and gathering parties in summer. In a most important finding, he shows how, after initial hostilities, the Karankawa incorporated the Spanish missions into their subsistence pattern during the colonial period and coexisted peacefully with Euroamericans until the arrival of Anglo settlers in the 1820s and 1830s. These findings will be of wide interest to everyone studying the interactions of Native American and European peoples.
Download or read book Texas Forgotten Ports written by Keith Guthrie and published by . This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: River ports on the Red, Brazos, and Rio Grande rivers
Download or read book The Fishermen and the Dragon written by Kirk Wallace Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Public Library Best of 2022 A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman’s relentless battle for environmental justice. “Riveting…it has a little of everything that a thrilling story needs. It feels quite prescient, as if something we’re living out now, you can see scenes of it then. A gripping book that deserves a wide readership.”--George Packer, author of The Unwinding By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen’s rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else “it’s going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!” The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal. A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays—and who now represents the fishermen’s last hope.
Download or read book Yondering written by Louis L'Amour and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2004-10-26 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Over the years I have been proud to write about the men and women of the American frontier. But I have written many stories with entirely different settings which I have long wanted to share with my readers. “I have collected some of these in Yondering. They are glimpses of what my own life was like during the early years. Those were the rough years; often I was hungry, out of work and facing situations such as I have since written about. “Although these stories take place in a variety of locales, they are stories of people living under conditions similar to the way they might have lived on the frontier. I hope you’ll enjoy Yondering.” —Louis L’Amour
Download or read book Mud Muscle and Miracles written by C. A. Bartholomew and published by Naval Historical Center. This book was released on 1990 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Last Slave Ship written by Ben Raines and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-01-24 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “enlightening” (The Guardian) true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors’ founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day—by the journalist who discovered the ship’s remains. Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts. Traveling from Alabama to the ancient African kingdom of Dahomey in modern-day Benin, Raines recounts the ship’s perilous journey, the story of its rediscovery, and its complex legacy. Against all odds, Africatown, the Alabama community founded by the captives of the Clotilda, prospered in the Jim Crow South. Zora Neale Hurston visited in 1927 to interview Cudjo Lewis, telling the story of his enslavement in the New York Times bestseller Barracoon. And yet the haunting memory of bondage has been passed on through generations. Clotilda is a ghost haunting three communities—the descendants of those transported into slavery, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their fellow American enslavers. This connection binds these groups together to this day. At the turn of the century, descendants of the captain who financed the Clotilda’s journey lived nearby—where, as significant players in the local real estate market, they disenfranchised and impoverished residents of Africatown. From these parallel stories emerges a profound depiction of America as it struggles to grapple with the traumatic past of slavery and the ways in which racial oppression continues to this day. And yet, at its heart, The Last Slave Ship remains optimistic—an epic tale of one community’s triumphs over great adversity and a celebration of the power of human curiosity to uncover the truth about our past and heal its wounds.
