Thoughts and Ramblings: Battle of Sabine Pass; Dick Dowling Days; the veil is thinning; God save the Queen

This week was the 159th Anniversary of the Battle of Sabine Pass, where 46ish Irishman defeated a Union flotilla of 5,000. They also had Kate Dorman in reserve just in case they couldn’t handle it themselves. A twenty-three-year-old lieutenant named Richard Dowling took out the flotilla by practice and planning. He was also at the Battle of Galveston. His history is fascinating because he arrived in New Orleans at around age four from a poor family, but if I remember correctly, he owned three bars in Houston by age twenty-one. The Bank of Bacchus is my favorite one of his establishments. He died of yellow fever at twenty-eight or twenty-nine (his birth records aren’t very clear.)

In 2013, during the 150th anniversary of the battle, when it was alright to explain history’s sour past, there were many reenactments for each significant battle, and Sabine Pass was no different. This was the last reenactment battle and the 50th Anniversary of Dick Dowling Days, which was a thing since 1967. I was new to the Historical Commission, which I joined in 2012, and was wondering how I would take off three days of work for this, but I did, and it was worth it that year. Since it was the 150th anniversary, more reenactors were on the Union side, and many were dressed as Navy guys (300, actually!).

It was good to listen to some of them and their stories of past reenactments, letting the history and the hilarity flow. Past battles may or may not have included stuffing a beer can with concrete inside a cannon or firing blanks at a foreign tanker that didn’t know what was happening and swerved to miss the (blank) round. I have some videos from 2013 of some of the staged events; I’ll leave the links to them.

As I look back at the photos, I’m reminded that we’ve lost many of these guys in the past few years. Pictures are great, but their families would rather have them in their lives.

It seems the veil is thinning earlier than usual on the research front. I’ll get into more of this in October, but sometimes when you start researching someone with the hope of bringing their stories to light, and you know there are dead ends everywhere, you reach a point where you ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Then things get wibbly-wobbly, and people unexpectedly start to appear, and suddenly you have new, accurate information that you treasure. My Florence Stratton research was like this, and it is still ongoing; each year, we find more info to sift through for twenty hours over a weekend. I’m not complaining; I like doing this because it answers questions about our past. It is evident that I have a new research project for this winter, and hopefully, we will get more history on someone who I think deserves it.

Well, the Queen has died. This is not SETX related, but I’m going to ramble anyway. My interest in history spans different areas, and Rule Britannia is a big one. It is incredible to me that I have no interest in Dickens on the Strand in Galveston though—but I digress.

Growing up, my TV choices were limited to three channels, but thanks to Channel 39 out of Houston, the Benny Hill Show was available.

On PBS, Channel 8 out of Houston was also a window into different things. Toby Charles’s Soccer Made in Germany was a great program for Americans who couldn’t see a decent football match because the US soccer/football team was nonexistent. This is why I latched on to the English national team back in 1982. Rooting for the English national team is like rooting for the Astros (before they saw the sign) or the Oilers. After forty years of pain, I have switched to the Welsh team.

Queen Elizabeth ruled longer than any of her predecessors. As a princess during the war, she was a truck mechanic. Lilibeth, as her sister Margaret called Elizabeth because she couldn’t pronounce her name, was ultimately groomed by her father, King George, for a role in the monarchy. I can’t speak for Britannia, but in my opinion, she did as well as she could. God save the Queen!

As far as Charles goes, I side with Diana’s kids.

I once asked someone from the UK to explain to me the difference in how the US and Great Britain rally their people. He told me, “The US rallies around its flag while we rally around the Queen.”

Seems legit. Rest in Peace Ma’am

Until next week, cheerio!

Dick Dowling Days 2013:

Photos: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjJ35YXp