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 Texas : Features : Columns : "Texas Tales"

Steamship Texas Ranger
(New Info)

by Mike Cox
Mike Cox

Spoiled by the technology of the times, it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like on the Texas coast during hurricane season back in the 19th century.

Sure, old salts knew the saying “Red sky at morning, sailor take warning” and the U.S. government learned of distant storms via telegraphic reports. Weather observers knew that a falling barometer could mean trouble, but coastal residents did not enjoy the luxury of a week or more of preparation time when a tropical cyclone churned in their direction.

Such was the case in early September 1874 when an unnamed storm weather historians now judge to have been a Category 1 hurricane slammed into Mexico somewhere around the Rio Grande. Since hurricanes do their worst on their northeast quadrants, the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas bore the brunt of the storm.

During this storm a vessel known as the Texas Ranger got in trouble off Padre Island. I wrote about this ship with a famous name last summer, but only recently ran into some additional information on her.

Unfortunately, the new details still leave questions unanswered, the figurative deck of the Texas Ranger’s story awash in ambiguity.

The Galveston News, then Texas’ newspaper of record, did not report the storm until Sept. 13 when it published a 14-paragraph dispatch sent the day before from Brownsville. “An Account of the Great Storm/Suffering and Loss of Life” read the page-one headline.

The storm battered the coast for 60 hours, the article said. Though Brownsville and Matamoras had flooding from heavy rains, the most severe damage occurred at Brazos Santiago, a long-vanished community then referred to simply as “Brazos” located across from Padre Island, closer to the Gulf of Mexico than Port Isabel.

“Everything was swept from Brazos,” the News reported, including some 25 people who perished in the storm. The lighthouse toppled, killing the wife of the light keeper. The narrow-gauge railroad line between Port Isabel and Brownsville had been badly damaged.

On the Rio Grande, the now ghost towns of Bagdad and Clarksville also sustained heavy damage, the report said.

Out in the Gulf, the Texas Ranger and several other vessels had been caught by the storm while under way, but the Ranger is the only vessel reported to have suffered casualties.

“The Texas Ranger was capsized and went ashore on Padre Island,” the story said. “Two of the crew were saved.”

On Sept. 15 the News reported that the ship operated out of Pascagoula, Miss. and had been bound for Indianola with a cargo of lumber. The ship had been “dismasted” by the storm, the story said.

Four days later, the News listed the names of eight persons on board the Texas Ranger who had not survived: Captain James Buchanan Sr. and his son, James Buchanan Jr.; the first mate, a man named Perrin or Perrit, whose wife also died; Dolce Robinson; a German known only as Adolph; and two unidentified seaman. The crew members who made it to shore were listed only as Libby and Furr.

The only other source of information on this maritime disaster, a 1930s newspaper story published in the Valley, gives the date of the incident as June 25, 1875. Other sources described the Texas Ranger as a coastwise side-wheeled steam packet, not a schooner.

According to the Depression-era newspaper account, an article based on some old-timer’s memory, the Texas Ranger had been on a course from Vera Cruz, Mexico toward the United States when she ran straight into the maw of an approaching tropical storm. (That’s consistent with the 1874 report that she was bound for Indianola, a once flourishing seaport up the coast from South Padre Island.)

That 1930s account said nine crewmembers went down with the ship. The captain floated to shore on a piece of debris but soon died, making the death toll 10. Only two crew members survived.

Memory being what it is, the 1874 stories, while lacking a lot of detail, doubtless more accurately describe the incident that was later reported as having happened a year later. They appear to scuttle a nice treasure tale.

The story from the 1930s said that in addition to the human loss in the wreck of the Texas Ranger, $200,000 worth of gold and silver -- in bars and coins – went down with the ship. Not calculating collector’s value or the price of gold or silver by the ounce, $200,000 would be worth nearly $4 million today simply by virtue of inflation.

However, the 1874 stories makes no mention of the vessel having been laden with anything more than lumber. Of course, when it comes to lost treasure, there’s always hope.

© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales"
August 13, 2009 column
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