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History | |
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Name | Constitution |
Owner | Sloo & Byrne, William Bryan (or Byrne) |
Operator | Captain Edward Auld |
Port of registry | New Orleans |
Route | New Orleans, Galveston, Texas, mouth of the Brazos River, Matagorda, Texas |
Completed | 1829 |
Out of service | June 1840 |
Fate | Stranded at Matagorda, Texas |
General characteristics | |
Tonnage | 262 |
Length | 150 ft (46 m) |
Draft | About 7.5 ft (2.3 m) |
Propulsion | Steam-powered sidewheeler |
Constitution is a former steamboat which operated in the Republic of Texas.
Constitution is a former steamboat, registered in New Orleans, but it primarily serviced the ports within the Republic of Texas. The steamer was 262 tons and 150-feet long. [1] Constitution was designed as a riverboat, and built at a yard in Cincinnati in 1829. It had a draft of seven feet and seven inches. [2]
Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen —the original developers of Houston —commissioned Constitution for a demonstration voyage to prove the navigability of Buffalo Bayou as far as their new town site. They had already dispatched the Laura for the same purpose, but detractors of the Houston town site objected that a truer test would be a much larger ship. [1] The Allen brothers accepted the challenge. They hired Captain Edward Auld to pilot the steamer from Galveston to Houston for $1,000. He successfully navigated Constitution through Buffalo Bayou and docked in Houston on 1 June 1837. However, unable to turn the steamer around at Houston, the captain ran the engines in reverse for six-and-a-half miles, turning it about at a wide segment of the bayou now named for the steamship and the event: Constitution Bend. [2] [3]
Auld did not take Constitution up Buffalo Bayou again. Instead, he offered monthly packet service between Galveston and New Orleans. He ran it aground in January 1838 near Sabine Pass, Texas, though the steamer limped into Galveston for repairs. [2] Francis Cynric Sheridan remarked in his journal that a steamer named Constitution was used for lightering freight and passengers from his brig, passing through shallow waters to gain access to Galveston Island. [4]
The city of Houston in the U.S. state of Texas was founded in 1837 after Augustus and John Allen had acquired land to establish a new town at the junction of Buffalo and White Oak bayous in 1836. Houston served as the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas. Meanwhile, the town developed as a regional transportation and commercial hub. Houston was part of an independent nation until 1846 when the United States formally annexed Texas. Railroad development began in the late 1850s but ceased during the American Civil War. Houston served the Confederacy as a regional military logistics center. The population increased during the war and blockade runners used the town as a center for their operations.
Charles Morgan was an American railroad and shipping magnate. He played a leading role in the development of transportation and commerce in the Southern United States through the mid- to late-19th century.
Harriet Lane was a revenue cutter of the United States Revenue Cutter Service and, on the outbreak of the American Civil War, a ship of the United States Navy and later Confederate States Navy. The craft was named after the niece of senator and later United States President, James Buchanan; during his presidency, she acted as First Lady. The cutter was christened and entered the water for the Revenue Service in 1859 out of New York City, and saw action during the Civil War at Fort Sumter, New Orleans, Galveston, Texas, and Virginia Point. The Confederates captured her in 1863, whereupon she was converted to mercantile service. Union forces recaptured her at the end of war. The U.S. Navy declared her unfit for service and sold her. New owners out of Philadelphia renamed her Elliot Ritchie. Her crew abandoned her at sea in 1881.
Buffalo Bayou is a slow-moving body of water which flows through Houston in Harris County, Texas. Formed 18,000 years ago, it has its source in the prairie surrounding Katy, Fort Bend County, and flows approximately 53 miles (85 km) east through the Houston Ship Channel into Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to drainage water impounded and released by the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, the bayou is fed by natural springs, surface runoff, and several significant tributary bayous, including White Oak Bayou, Greens Bayou, and Brays Bayou. Additionally, Buffalo Bayou is considered a tidal river downstream of a point 440 yards (400 m) west of the Shepherd Drive bridge in west-central Houston.
The Allen Ranch, or Sam Allen Ranch, was one of the first and longest running ranches in the history of the state of Texas in the United States. The ranch was started a few years after the Texas Revolution in what is now southeast Houston and Pasadena. The ranch itself extended from Clear Lake to Harrisburg. The cattle range covered much of southeast Harris County and Galveston County covering many of the modern communities around Galveston Bay.
The Runaway Scrape events took place mainly between September 1835 and April 1836 and were the evacuations by Texas residents fleeing the Mexican Army of Operations during the Texas Revolution, from the Battle of the Alamo through the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. The ad interim government of the new Republic of Texas and much of the civilian population fled eastward ahead of the Mexican forces. The conflict arose after Antonio López de Santa Anna abrogated the 1824 Constitution of Mexico and established martial law in Coahuila y Tejas. The Texians resisted and declared their independence. It was Sam Houston's responsibility, as the appointed commander-in-chief of the Provisional Army of Texas, to recruit and train a military force to defend the population against troops led by Santa Anna.
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The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado Railway, also called the Harrisburg Road or Harrisburg Railroad, was the first operating railroad in Texas. It completed its first segment of track between Harrisburg, Texas and Stafford's Point, Texas in 1853. The company established a western terminus at Alleyton, Texas prior to the Civil War. The railroad was sold after the war and reincorporated as the Galveston, Harrisburg, & San Antonio Railroad. This right of way was acquired by the Southern Pacific Railroad and is today a property of the Union Pacific Railroad.
Allen's Landing is the officially recognized birthplace of the city of Houston, Texas, United States, the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States. Located in Downtown Houston between the Main Street and Fannin Street viaducts, the landing encompasses the southern bank of Buffalo Bayou, the city's principal river, at its confluence with White Oak Bayou, a major tributary. Allen's Landing is located south of the University of Houston–Downtown Commerce Street Building.
Houston, the most populous city in the Southern United States, is located along the upper Texas Gulf Coast, approximately 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the Gulf of Mexico at Galveston. The city, which is the ninth-largest in the United States by area, covers 601.7 square miles (1,558 km2), of which 579.4 square miles (1,501 km2), or 96.3%, is land and 22.3 square miles (58 km2), or 3.7%, is water.
For a period of over 7000 years, humans have inhabited the Galveston Bay Area in what is now the United States. Through their history the communities in the region have been influenced by the once competing sister cities of Houston and Galveston, but still have their own distinct history. Though never truly a single, unified community, the histories of the Bay Area communities have had many common threads.
The steamboat Yellowstone was a side wheeler steamboat built in Louisville, Kentucky, for the American Fur Company for service on the Missouri River. By design, the Yellowstone was the first powered boat to reach above Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the Missouri River achieving, on her maiden voyage, Fort Tecumseh, South Dakota, on June 19, 1831. The Yellowstone also played an important role in the Texas Revolution of 1836, crossing the Texas Army under Sam Houston over the swollen Brazos River ahead of Santa Anna's pursuing Mexican Army.
William J. Hutchins was a businessman and a Mayor of Houston.
The Texas Marine Department (1861–1865) was formed in the State of Texas shortly after Texas came under blockade from the Union Navy in 1861. It operated under the control of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Leonidas R. Smith was an American steamboat captain and soldier. In the American Civil War he served the Confederate States of America as a volunteer; he was named Commander of the Texas Marine Department under General John B. Magruder. Smith was involved in most major conflicts along the Texas coast during the war, and was described by war-time governor of Texas Francis Lubbock as "undoubtedly the ablest Confederate naval commander in the Gulf waters".
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