 Sabine
Pass Lighthouse
Key To Tone Of Famous Battle Story By: William D. Quick 8, 1863. On that date, a small Confederate force repelled and attempted invasion including 5,000 Union troops and 27 ships. While the Battle of Sabine Pass did not affect significantly the outcome of the Civil War, it did prevent a bloody invasion of this area. Capt. Charles Fowler, a Northerner who had come South, never witnessed the Confederate victory at Sabine Pass. But Fowler, one of the war's unsung heroes, was a leading actor in a drama that took place almost in the shadow of the lighthouse that marked the entrance of Sabine Pass from the Gulf of Mexico. The loyalty of Dick Dowling and his Irish marksmen to the one-time leader might have helped inspire the blistering fire that defeated the invaders. Fowler was born in 1824 in Guilford, Conn. As catpain of the brig Mary, he came to Galveston when he was 25 and became a pilot. At 27, he became the first agent for the newly founded Morgan Steamship Line, where he worked when the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter. Fowler chose to serve with the Convederate Navy. Three of his brothers were fighting with the Union forces. Two would die of battle wounds, and a third would loose his right arm. On Jan. 23, 1862, Rear Adm. David Farragut of the U.S. Navy noted, "I am informed by a Mr. (G.W.)Plummer, who was the lighthouse keeper at Sabine Pass under the Federal govern ment, that these vessels have been in the habit of running the blockade from time to time..." But by late 1862, with the arrival of Conferderate Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder, new comamander of the District of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, some action was in store for the bored troops at Sabine Pass. Magruder, who led the recapture of Galveston on New Year's Day 1863, was determined to strengthen Sabine Pass and break the Union blockade. He put Fowler in charge of marine operations in Sabine Lake and transferred from his staff in Houston Maj. Oscar M. Watkins to command the artillerymen in the blockade-breaking effort. Fowler chose the 182-foot Josiah H. Bell and the 135-foot Uncle Ben to attack the blockaders, and the work of transforming the 10-year-old river boats into gunboats was begun at Orange. Meanwhile, the Federal blockaders - the warship Morning Light, commanded by Capt. John Dillingham, and the schooner Velocity - lay at anchor before Sabine Pass. Fowler chafed at delays, hoping to trap the invaders in the pass. As the work on the boats neared completion, an artillery company made up entirely of Irishmen, the Davis Guards, was assigned to the Bell, while detachments from Spaight's Battalion and Pyron's Regiment were asigned as sharpshooters. Company B and Capt. George W. O'Brien's Company E were assigned to the Uncle Ben. Cocksure and obstreperous, the Davis Guards were captained by F.H. Odlum, but under 1st Lt. Dick Dowling, they had seen service in the recaputre of Galveston from the Yankees. Disciplined they were not, but they would follow the man who gained their loyalty to hell and back. Further, Fowler exerted a special influence over the guards. He was "...their leading spirit and the only officer to whom they looked for orders" worte a Houston Daily Post editor in 1891, "for he was in fact commander not only of the maneuvers of the ship but likewise of the men on board. It was only to such an intrepid, manly soul that the untutored but brave Irish soldiers of the Davis Guards would yield obedience and become docile while yet valorous."By the time the converted river boats reached Sabine Pass, the Morning Light and Velocity had moved out of the pass and were anchored about 5 miles off the coast. At daylight on Jan. 21, 1863, the Josiah Bell and Uncle Ben steamed into the Gulf to attack the Morning Light and Velocity. The Yanks, thinking the boats were ironclads, attempted to flee, keeping up a running fire at their pursuers. With only a light breeze to fill their sails, the Yankee sailing ships soon were overtaken by the steamboats. After disabling the Morning Light's forward port gun, the Bell closed in, and its marksmen delivered such a blistering fire that the decks of the Light were riddled and her men driven below. Dillingham, the Light's commander, ordered the Union flag hauled down in surrender to avoid further loss of men and then stood coolly upon his quarterdeck awaiting a Confederate bullet. With one brave man's appreciation of another, Eowler shouted to his men to hold their fire and pushed those within his reach back down behind the barricade, tumbling officers and men together, as he accepted the surrender of the Morning Light. The Velocity followed suit. The jubilant Confederates returned to Sabine Pass with their prisoners, the wounded and the two priye ships. Because the tide was too low for the Light to cross the bar, the ship was anchored there and her crew of 200 men and officers taken into Sabine Pass. But before the Light could be saved, four Federal gunboats were sighted. Deaf to the pleas of Pilots K.D. Keith and Peter D. Stockholm that the Light could be kedged over the bar and fearing its recapture by the Feds, Watkins ordered the ship put to the torch. This bitter defeat of his two blockaders rankled Farragut, who raged in his report to Cmdr. Alden on Jan. 27, 1863: "They are growing bold. I think your howitzers in the tops would be a fine thing for such fellows as the approach. I hope that our first success will be a total destruction of some of them. Now we are obliged to blockade Sabine Pass with gunboats..."In retaliation, the U.S.S. New London, commanded by Lt. Cmdr. Abner Read, and the Cayuga, under Lt. Cmdr. D.A. McDermut, were sent to Sabine Pass. As the Rebel gunboats figuratively humbed their noses from the comparative safety of the pass, Read and his men patrolled the coast. Read's prime objective was capturing shallow-draft boats, both in revenge for the Light and for use in capturing others. Read realized the abandonded lighthouse tower, isolated on the Louisiana side of the pass, was an ideal spot to watch the gunboats and the bustling around a fort the Rebs were building. On April 13, 1863, three months after the capture of the Morning Light and Velocity, Fowler, his pilot, John McLane, second mate Edward Lynch and Pvt. William Genty of Spaight's Battalion were mustered for reconnaissance. The sloop Don Juan was put into service for the short trip from Sabine Pass to the lighthouse. As Fowler and the other approached the lighthouse, using a skiff in the shallow bayou, they were ambushed by 20 Feds led by Lt. B.F. Day, there on a spying mission of their own. Fowler, who had led the humiliating victory over the Light, was an unexpected prize for the Yanks. The Men and the skiff were taken to the Federal fleet, and fearing that Fowler might somehow make his way back if sent to New Orleans, Read moved him, the mate and the pilot directly to a northern prison by the first supply ship. The failure of Fowler and his men to return alerted Col. W.H. Griffin to the Feds at the lighthouse. The unruly Davis Guards, still bivouacked on the Josiah Bell, must ahve been infuriated at news of the capture of their hero, Fowler. Griffin laid a trap for the Feds. He sent 30 men under Lt. W.J. Jones and 2nd Lt. E.T. Wright to the lighthouse to await another visit by the Feds. On April 18, the Confederates saw two whaleboats carrying 13 men beached not far from the lighthouse. They captured the three-man vanguard from the expedition, unaware that Read and McDermut were among the Yanks retreating to the whaleboats, firing as they ran. The Feds reached their boats only to find that McDermut's was stuck on a mud flat. "The New London's crew were ordered to jump into the water and to try to shove it into deeper water, which was done," Read explained in his report. "McDermut and two of his men were in his boat, and when we were about 10 yards from him, I saw him standing up and waving his white handkerchief to surrender, probably thinking that further attempt at escape was useless." The Rebs poured a murderous fire into his own boat, Read said. The Feds escaped and returned to the New London, all but one of the six men seriously wounded, Read with a gun shot wound that cost him an eye and James G. Taylor, the pilot of the illfated mission, with wounds of the hip, scrotum and thigh. McDermut died after he reached Sabine Pass. That skirmish and cavalry patrols ended Federal use of the lighthouse for reconnaissance. The men who had served under Fowler on the Josiah Bell had written him a letter after the engagement with the Morning Light. "... we take especial pleasure in tendering to you our sincere and hearty thanks for many acts of kindness bestowed upon us by yourself, and assure you that nothing would afford us a greater pleasure than in being able to reciprocate..." they wrote. "You gallantly walked your post, and although exposed to the galling fire of the enemy's batteries, which belched forth flames of desruction you never flinched a step." On Sept. 8, 1863, as Dowling and his men loked down the channel where the Yankee gunboats Sachem and Clifton were approaching the poles that the Confederates had set previously as range markers, the volitile Irish Guards may have been remembering the man held in a Federal prison. Taking careful aim, when Dowling gave the order, the artillerymen poured a deadly fire into the gunboats. *Dan ravaged Confederates until destroyed in battle.
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