Sergeant Lena Riggi Basilone, USMCWR, prepares to christen U.S.S. Basilone at Orange, Texas, December 21, 1945. U.S. Navy photo.

Tonight HBO will debut its new miniseries, The Pacific. The series, patterned after the network’s acclaimed Band of Brothers series a decade ago, follows three real-life Marines — Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone — to tell the story of World War II in the Pacific. Leckie and Sledge survived the war, to write (respectively) the classic war memoirs Helmet for My Pillow and With The Old Breed. Gunnery Sergeant Basilone was killed during the Fifth Marine Division’s landing on Iwo Jima in February 1945. Basilone had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during on Guadalcanal in 1942 (the first enlisted Marine so recognized during the war), and was awarded a posthumous Navy Cross for heroism on the beach at Iwo Jima.

In July 1945, the Navy laid down a new Gearing-class destroyer at the Consolidated Steel Corp. at Orange, Texas. The new hull was launched on December 21, 1945, several months after the end of the war, by Basilone’s widow, Lena, herself a Sergeant in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. After the launching, however, work on the destroyer was suspended. In August 1946 the incomplete hull was towed to Galveston, and later to New Orleans, and finally to Bethlehem Steel Co. in Quincy, Massachusetts. U.S.S. Basilone (DDE-824) was finally commissioned in July 1949 at Boston.

Launching a new destroyer at Orange. The vessel here may be the Gearing-Class destroyer U.S.S. Dyess (DD-880), launched on January 26, 1945. The launching of U.S.S. Basilone would have been similar, a beam-on launch into the Sabine River. Portal to Texas History/Heritage House Museum, Orange, Texas.

U.S.S. Basilone served almost continuously over the next 28 years, often alternating between training and weapons systems evaluations off the East Coast and service in the Mediterranean as part of the U.S. Sixth Fleet. The ship’s crew earned three battle stars for service during the Vietnam War. The old destroyer was decommissioned and struck from the Navy register in 1977. She was sunk as a target in the Atlantic off St. Augustine, Florida in 1982.

On a personal note, I knew two men who were at Iwo Jima, one a Marine who hit the beach, the other a Navy petty officer who drove one of the Higgins boats transferring the men and materiel ashore. It was years ago that I knew them, though; I imagine they’re gone now. Wish I’d talked to them more about their experiences there.

Full-sized image here.

I’ve been remiss in posting updates to Maritime Texas, in part due to getting wrapped up in some non-maritime recreational reading. Sorry about that.

Reconstruction has begun on the fishing pier wrecked during Hurricane Ike eighteen months ago. This is the same location where a buoy washed ashore last summer.

The Coast Guard investigation of the Eagle Otome oil spill at Port Arthur continues. No surprising findings have been reported so far, although there was apparently some difficulty in communication between the vessels’ pilots shortly before the collision.

Maritime Texas reader Greg Stitz of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum reports on the successful effort to raise the No. 2 attack periscope of U.S.S. Razorback (SS-394), a Balao-class fleet submarine commissioned in 1944. Razorback was later converted to “Guppy” configuration, and served three decades in the Turkish Navy as Muratreis, before being returned to the United States for use as a museum in 2004.

The operation was the culmination of hundreds of hours of planning over many months. It was all over in about 30 minutes.

We chose the attack periscope because it was lighter than the #1, or search scope, and because the hydraulic piping was easier to access.

The periscopes aboard USS Razorback are the original periscopes installed when she was built in 1943 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, ME. They were built by Kollmorgen Optical Corporation at their facility in Brooklyn, NY.

After the periscope was raised, all the volunteers got a chance to look through the periscope. The optics remain crystal clear, and the zoom and tilt functions still work smoothly. Everyone agreed that the preparation work was time well spent.

In other news, I’ve added a link to Jared Wasser’s new blog, Boatswains and Bacteremia: Maritime History, The History of Medicine, and Other Paradoxical Thoughts. . . .” Wasser, a medical student, appears to have been bitten hard by the maritime history bug. Regular blogging is going to be a challenge for someone in Jared’s position, but he’s also uniquely situated to make a great contribution to our understanding of health and medicine at sea in the age of sail. Good stuff, and a blog with great potential.

A narrow-guage U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 0-4-0 locomotive and workmen’s car on the South Jetty at Galveston, 1916. This image was probably made during reconstruction and repair work after the 1915 Storm. National Archives Southwest Region (Fort Worth).

Cynthia Woods, Galveston Ship Channel, January 2007. Photo by Andy Hall.

Couple of notable news items today. The Galveston County Daily News reports that the widow of Roger Stone has reached a settlement in her lawsuit against the builder of the TAMUG boat Cynthia Woods, sunk during an offshore race in 2008.

On a more pleasant note, J. R. Gonzales writes in his “Bayou City History” blog in the Houston Chronicle about the time a captured First World War U-boat, UB-88, visited Houston in 1919 – with lots of great pictures.

Photo by Allen, Houston Chronicle.

Prior to visiting Houston, UB-88 spent three days open to visitors at Galveston. The Galveston Daily News previewed the boat’s visit on July 24, saying

During its stay here the submarine will be open to inspection by the public at certain hours, and it is expected that thousands will take advantage of the opportunity to view the vessel. Posters announcing that the vessel will arrive here today have been placed upstate and a large number cf visitors are expected to come, to see the vessel. When the vessel arrives an effort will be made to retain it in the harbor over Sunday [July 27] if the delay will not Interfere -with the boat’s sailing schedule. An average of 5,000 people a day have seen through the boat in every port the submarine has visited, according to a statement of its commander, Lieutenant Commander J. L. Nielson, in a letter to Mayor [H. O.] Sappington.

There’s a great website on UB-88 here, outlining both its history and its wreck in the Catalina Channel off Long Beach, California.

Fun fact: During her exhibition tour, UB-88 was painted green.

Postings have been light around here lately, but I did want to note the recent passing of Carroll Lewis, a fixture on the history scene in Texas for decades. I first became familiar with Lewis through his book, The Treasures of Galveston Bay (Waco: Texian Press, 1977), but he led a remarkable, eventful life. Lewis. . .

. . . was known at an early age as the Poet Laureate of Poe Elementary School. This was not the end of his literary career for he later wrote numerous magazine and newspaper articles, a definitive history of Fort Anahuac (The Birthplace of the Texas Revolution), enjoyed the fifth printing of his popular book The Treasures of Galveston Bay and is included in the American Diaries of WWII. Also excelling in art, when attending Lanier Junior High School, he won a four-year art scholarship at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. At Lamar Senior High School he formed his own twelve-piece dance band and was the founding president of the MAC (Make Actions Count) Club-a quasi fraternity. While studying chemical engineering at Rice Institute, he continued his musical activities with the Rice Band and the Knight Owls dance orchestra. When World War II interrupted, he flew twenty-five missions as a B-17 bomber pilot in the Eighth Air force; being shot down twice over Nazi Germany.

Returning to Rice he was founding president of the Rice Veteran’s Association, Student Council chairman, re-organized and led the Knight Owls dance orchestra, and was president of the Rice Owl Band where his outrageous innovations created a spirit that was thereafter adopted by the MOB (Marching Owl Band).

There is a legend at Rice University, that one Friday afternoon, before a Rice/A&M football game, Lewis secretly flew an airplane from Houston to College Station and dropped a large stink bomb and one hundred pounds of rice on an Aggie pep rally. [Ahem. "Yell practice."] The 1947 Rice yearbook shows photos of the mission.

Before graduating from college he began investing in land; eventually developing the following subdivisions in the Houston Area of Memorial Estates, Shady Oaks, Karankawa Pines, Richmond Road Farms, Shamrock Estates, Battleground Vista, Belknap Acres, Braeburn Gardens, Pinegrove Valley, Lomax Gardens, Greendale, Richmond Road Estates, Skyview Farms, Captains Retreat, Pirate’s Grove and Battleground Estates.

Carroll Lewis (center, seated) at an encampment of the recreated Texas Army.

In 1969, he convinced Governor Preston Smith to reactivate the Texas Army, which had been inactive since 1845, and was appointed Commanding General in which capacity he served for 40 years. He was well known for his impersonation of General Sam Houston on television, the news media and at public events. Curly was dedicated to perpetuating the memory of early Texas heroes; as one journalist put it: “The General keeps Texas’ past alive!”

The Texas Army is a fixture around that state, appearing regularly at the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto and elsewhere.

There’s lots more. I only met Mr. Lewis once, but I can’t imagine there were many unchecked boxes on his personal bucket list.

I recently received this e-mail from Charlie Pearson, regarding my recent posting on the Navidad River Wreck. I don’t know Charlie personally, but I do know him by reputation, and he’s something of a legend when it comes to nautical archaeology in this part of the country. His follow-up, completing the story of Mary Summers, shows the typical dedication to the subject he’s known for.

I ran across your January 7 comments on the tragic death of the boater who struck the Civil War-era wreck in the Navidad River.  You mentioned our 1993 report with its assumption that the wreck was likely that of the “Mary Somers.”  I maintained an interest in that wreck after our initial work and collected information that proves beyond a doubt that the wreck is that of the “Mary Summers” (not Mary Somers).  Our findings were published in: “The Mary Summers:  An Early Iron Steamer in America,” The American Neptune 61(2):163-184, Spring 2001, by Charles E. Pearson, Stephen R. James, Jr., and J. Barto Arnold III.

In summary, the Mary Summers appears to be the oldest iron-hulled steamer discovered in this country.  She was a prefabricated vessel; her iron plates and frames were manufactured by the famous John Laird firm of Birkenhead, England, in 1838 and shipped to Savannah, where her owner, Gazaway Bugg Lamar lived.  Lamar had the pieces reshipped to Baltimore where the firm of Brown, Culley and Rogers put her together.  The Mary Summers‘ boilers were manufactured by James P. Allaire of New York and her engine by Watchman and Bratt of Baltimore.  Upon completion, the Mary Summers returned to Savannah and worked mainly on the Savannah River, where several other iron-hulled steamboats were working; apparently the largest fleet of iron vessels in the country.  Gazaway Lamar, by the way did have a Texas connection through his cousin, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, the second president of the Texas Republic.  Gazaway is supposed to have provided financial aid to the early republic.  Also, most of the men in the Lamar family tended to have rather euphonious names.  In 1846, the Mary Summers was acquired by the Quartermaster Department for service in the Mexican War and taken to the Gulf of Mexico.  She served as a transport and freight vessel along the Texas and Mexican coasts.  After the war, the Mary Summers was sold to private parties in New Orleans, ultimately going through a sequence of owners and, also, receiving a new name “United States,” apparently because of her former service with the Army.  By the mid 1850s, the United States was traveling between New Orleans and several Texas ports, transporting merchandise, passengers and live Texas cattle.  By the start of the Civil War, the United States/Mary Summers seems to have been consigned to peripheral trades, sailing principally out of Port Lavaca and other Matagorda Bay ports and on the Lavaca and Navidad rivers.  We lose track of her during the war, but I suspect she was run up the Navidad and scuttled and stripped of most of her valuable material by 1862.  The dimensions, construction and engine on the Navidad River wreck exactly match what we know of the Mary Summers, so there is no doubt that the wreck is the Mary Summers.  As we note in our article, the Mary Summers was a technological marvel when built, especially which her innovative iron hull.  However, by 1860 she was old and worn out and newer and more powerful steam engines were driving vessels.  However, her iron hull  is still in remarkably good condition, after more than 170 years, a testament to her builders.

I thought you might be interested in this, especially since what appears to be the oldest iron-hulled steamboat wreck found in the U.S. is resting in Texas waters.

Indeed. Thanks very much. The American Neptune manuscript Charlie cites is not available online, but I will see if I can get permission to post a copy here.

News items from various places:

It’s old news, but BMW/Oracle won the America’s Cup last week. There’s lots of speculation — and competition — about where the next race series will be held.

James Spithill, Russell Coutts and Larry Ellison raise the Hundred-Guineas Cup in Valencia, February 14, 2010. Photo: Pedro Armestre, AmericasCup.com.

The tug J. R. Nichols, which was sunk in the Houston Ship Channel several days ago, was salvaged and moved to a yard for examination. There was one fatality confirmed; the accident remains under investigation.

The Carnival cruise ship Ecstacy returned to Galveston Saturday, after a passenger was found dead on board earlier in the week. The FBI is investigating, but press reports say there is no evidence of foul play so far.

Susan over at Notes from the Wooden and Iron World provides an update on the arrival in Hawai’i of Black Pearl, preparatory to filming the next installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series and notes, dryly, that it’s a shame the local Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism “isn’t interested in a historic ship that already has ties to the people of Hawai‘i.” Probably something to do with having a real skeleton crew versus a special-effects one.

And finally, courtesy Old Salt, it appears that our friends the Sea Shepherds are now bombarding Japanese whalers with foam crocodiles. That South Park episode with the “stinky butter” is looking more and more like a documentary.

BMW/Oracles’s USA 17 (l.) and Alinghi 17 maneuver before the race.

The first race of the 33rd America’s Cup was held Friday afternoon (local time), after earlier events were called off due to a lack of wind on Monday and Wednesday. The challenger, USA 17, won easily, crossing the finish line a full ten minutes ahead of the defender, Alinghi 17. The Alinghi team incurred a penalty at the very beginning of the race, though, and after they had completed the turn required to clear it, crossed the finish line with an official delta of 15min 28sec. Although Alinghi started the race with a 660-meter lead over USA 17, the BMW/Oracle boat quickly closed the gap and passed the Swiss boat before the first half of the upwind leg. The American team held a comfortable, thousand-plus-meter lead when rounding the upwind mark, and added steadily to it during the downwind run to the finish. While it was gratifying to see the American boat walk away with the race, it wasn’t much of a competition.

Watch the highlights here.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The conventional wisdom leading into the race seemed to be that the Alinghi’s catamaran design would perform better in light winds that the wider, trimaran design adopted by the BMW/Oracle team. That didn’t prove the be the case. Almost the entire race, USA 17 was flying two of her three hulls, while Alinghi 17 was regularly dragging her weather rudder.

Winds remained relatively light through the race. Larry Ellison, the founder/CEO of Oracle Systems and the driving force behind the American effort, was himself one of the first casualties:

I think my emotions started when it looked like we were going to race in three and a half knots of breeze. [BMW ORACLE Racing Team CEO] Russell [Coutts] and I were on the boat and we were told that we might be sailing in 20 minutes then we had the call to get as many people off the boat and as much stuff as possible off the boat to sail as light as possible, because there was a very, very light breeze. I had to get off the boat and so did Russell. And so we sailed with a minimum crew. So I think it is more stressful to watch than to sail.

Cross-section of USA 17’s wing sail. BMW/Oracle Racing.

The conventional wisdom now, of course, is that the critical difference was USA 17’s semi-rigid, adjustable wing. One aspect of BMW/Oracle’s design that was only briefly highlighted in the race commentary: the individual segments of the wing were adjusted, like the corkscrew bracing of the squaresails of an old windjammer. That allows the American team to fine-tune the shape of the wing to exactly meet the wind conditions. It’s impressive technology.

But I don’t think most people watch the Cup races to see the technology. While folks can — and undoubtedly will — argue endlessly about twin-hull v. tri-hull designs, or fabric sails v. wings, it really misses the point. As magnificent as USA 17 is sweeping past, two hulls flying, I’d rather the Cup rules be tightened up so that the boats are really comparable, and the race becomes a test of crew skill and tactics, rather than a test of beautiful, brittle boats.

And on a personal note, I can’t stand the term “gennaker.”

Race 2 gets underway at 3:45 a.m. ET on Sunday.

The 56-foot tug J. R. Nichols sank late Wednesday evening in the Houston Ship Channel, near the Sims Bayou Turning Basin, reports the Houston Chronicle. Four crew members were rescued, while one remains missing early Thursday morning. The cause of the accident has not been officially noted, but one source suggests the tug was caught in the wake of a passing vessel. J. R. Nichols is operated by Kinder Morgan Bulk Terminals.