PRINT THIS PAGE | E-MAIL THIS PAGE

Thursday, September 25, 1997

Searchers say they've found Texas Navy's flagship

By ROBERT G. WIELAND / Associated Press Writer

DALLAS (AP) -- Divers are "95 percent sure" they've found the wreck of the Invincible, a flagship of the first Texas Navy that ran aground off Galveston Island in 1837, a shipwreck hunter says.

The National Underwater & Marine Agency, a private nonprofit organization founded by best-selling adventure author Clive Cussler, said in August 1995 that it might have found the shoal where the Invincible and several other ships sank.

Divers returned this summer and eliminated other possibilities in the area, Cussler said Tuesday at a reception to promote his latest novel, "Flood Tide."

"We checked every magnetic anomaly, every major target in the area. It's within one-quarter mile of where the Invincible is reported to have gone down," he said.

"The wreck is an old one, we know that for sure. The construction is a Baltimore clipper, which is right. We found stone ballast, which is what a ship from Baltimore would have had, and the iron strap ballast is indicative of the era."

However, all of the evidence so far is circumstantial, Cussler lamented.

"We haven't found many artifacts because it was so heavily salvaged at the time," he said. "If we could just get something, even a cannonball, we could be 99 percent sure. Right now we're 95 percent sure."

The wreck is about a mile offshore and in about 20 feet of water. However, it is also covered by up to eight feet of clay-like sand that must be laboriously dredged away, Cussler said.

Nonetheless, divers from Austin-based NUMA plan to return to the site in the spring because of the historical importance of the Invincible, Cussler said.

"Of the 12 ships known to have served the Republic of Texas, all but three were either lost at sea, transferred to the U.S. Navy when Texas became a state and ultimately scrapped, or vanished from recorded history," Cussler wrote in "The Sea Hunters," a book about his expeditions to find historic shipwrecks.

Remains of the 180-foot schooner Brutus, grounded by a storm in October 1837, are believed to lie beneath a Galveston warehouse. In 1986, Cussler determined the 201-foot steamship Zavala lay beneath a parking lot on the island.

Bought by Texas in 1838, the Zavala barely survived a storm in February 1841 and was run aground on Galveston's mud flats to keep her from sinking.

Since finding the Zavala, NUMA had hunted for the Invincible, an 86-foot schooner that helped Gen. Sam Houston before the battle of San Jacinto by capturing arms and other supplies from two Mexican ships and delivering them to Texas troops.

The speedy 125-ton vessel, armed with two 18-pound cannons, was built in Baltimore in 1835 for the slave trade.

It was purchased in January 1836 for the Texas Navy at a cost of $12,613 and was refitted with additional cannons, according to the Handbook of Texas.

In 1837, a year after Gen. Houston won Texas independence by defeating Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto, the Invincible helped break a Mexican blockade of vital shipping routes between Galveston and New Orleans.

During a three-month foray with the Brutus, the Invincible, under the command of Commodore H.L. Thompson, captured or destroyed a dozen Mexican vessels from Texas to the Yucatan.

The Invincible ran aground on Aug. 28, 1837, after a daylong battle off Galveston with two enemy ships.

The crew was rescued before the schooner broke up and sank in a storm, according to historical accounts from those aboard.