And then there’s La Salle, the French explorer whose expedition accidentally mistook Matagorda Bay for the mouth of the Mississippi River, and established an ill-fated, short-lived settlement there. When the last of La Salle’s four ships ran aground in the bay during a storm in 1686, the doomed adventurers were left short of supplies and unable to return to France. The remains of the ship, a two-sail, four-gun sloop known as La Belle, were excavated last year, and a small but tantalizing sampling of its 300-year old contents has already hit the road as a traveling exhibition. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas Museum in Austin (512/339-1997) is currently showing one of the ship’s beautifully decorative 800-pound canons; glass beads intended for trade with the Indians; various pins and buttons; eating utensils; rapier hilts; hawk bells; one shoe; a photographic documentation of the excavation; and portions of a journal written by one of La Salle’s men (the leader himself was murdered by a disgruntled expeditioneer). The Texas Historical Commission has published a fabulous web site on the whole shebang, or go straight to the traveling exhibit schedule to learn when the exhibit will visit nearest your town.

Though the booming cannon on La Salle’s ship surely impressed the Karankawa Indians who met them on shore, these 17th century pea shooters look like the proverbial ants on an elephant’s derrière when compared to the armored hulls and fourteen-inch guns of the massive battleship USS Texas, which now serves as a permanent floating museum on the watery edge of San Jacinto Historic Battlefield and Park. The "Mighty T", commissioned in 1910, served in both world wars and was a product of the feverish naval arms race that engulfed the world in the years before and after World War I. We visited her every summer when I was a kid. I fondly remember sitting behind her anti-aircraft guns, rat-tat-tatting pretend Japanese Zeros and gawking up at those awesomely huge turrets, big-as-telephone-pole guns that fired explosive shells weighing as much as a small car. The USS Texas home page has some nice components, but most of the site is under construction. You can also visit the battleship at another site, also under construction, but it gives good content and leads to some neat links, including some smashing photos, both contemporary and historical. The battleship itself underwent a massive restoration in 1990, and preservation-restoration work continues today; ironically, right now, it looks as if the ship is in better shape than her web sites.

Going to see the Battleship her bad self at San Jacinto should be your number one goal. But if that isn't possible and the above sites don’t satisfy, try the USNM Online History Center. This is a great site for naval buffs, offering a wealth of naval history, going all the way back to the American Civil War.

Finally, before dropping anchor on the old browser, I highly recommend paying a visit to the site devoted to the first US battleship named after the state of Texas. This USS Texas, commissioned in 1895, was the sister ship of the ill-fated USS Maine, the ship that blew up in Cuba and started the Spanish-American War. The first USS Texas fought in that war and was, in effect, America’s first battleship, having been commissioned a year before the Maine. These ships, and America’s victory in the war against Spain, marked the United States’ emergence as a world power at the beginning of the 20th century. The web site gives a good brief history of the ship and sports a spiffy color illustration of the USS Texas in all her armor-clad, tubby glory that makes a great desktop background.

I’ll be back in two weeks with even more nautical links to Texas’ storied past.

(2/1/98)