The bishop of Galveston at last rested his case. In the end, the eloquent arguments made no difference—Lamy must follow his own intention, and, indeed, would not even stay out the week and take the next boat west, as Odin urged, but would reboard the Palmetto that evening and sail on for Port Lavaca and the overland trail to San Antonio and Santa Fe.
Lamy was Odin’s peer as a bishop—there was no question of orders to be given by the older man. Resignedly, Odin turned to other matters, described conditions to the west, and assigned three Mexican villages near El Paso del Norte which lay in his jurisdiction, under Lamy’s episcopal care. It was obvious that places so remote could hardly be well administered from Galveston. Lamy would see them on his westward journey. They were Socorro del Sur, Isleta del Sur, and San Elizario, on the north bank of the Rio Grande. Lamy accepted the charge. The two prelates parted as sailing time drew near.
But Odin did not give up easily. Three days after Lamy left him, he wrote to Blanc at New Orleans, having told Lamy he would do so, outlining the advices he had urged upon Lamy, and suggested that if the archbishop agreed with them, he might make this known to Lamy, who would in any case have to delay two months at San Antonio waiting for the departure of an Army supply train, and such time could be used to go to France. Ships regularly sailed for French ports from New Orleans. Moreover—Odin thought of everything—if the vicar general whom Lamy would await in Texas should call on Blanc, why not send him straight off to San Antonio, where he could remain until Lamy’s return from France, using the time himself to learn Spanish and come to know the kind of people whom he would evangelize in New Mexico?
On the evening of 8 January 1851, the Palmetto made her way out of Galveston, scheduled to arrive off the mouth of Matagorda Bay on the ninth, and once again Lamy was on board.
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