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  • Texas | Columns | "Texas Tales"

    Texas Navy vs The Press

    by Mike Cox
    Mike Cox

    A war of words that could have escalated into real violence broke out in the spring of 1840 between the Texas Navy and a Galveston newspaper editor.

    To set the scene, the generally busy, generally underrated and sometimes controversial sea arm of the Republic of Texas had found itself becalmed. The glory days of the 1836 revolution had played out four years before and at least for the moment the Galveston-based fleet did not have to worry about Mexico trying to regain its lost province because that nation vigorously sought to put down a rebellion in the Yucatan peninsula.

    The Texas Congress, ever mindful of not spending too much public money (the Republic didn’t have much if any to spend) had passed a bill in February 1840 semi-mothballing the Texas fleet. President Mirabeau B. Lamar, of course, still had the authority to use the young nation’s ships of the line as he saw fit.

    But while he watched the revolution in Mexico, Lamar did not see fit to use the navy in February, he did not see fit to use it in March and he had not yet seen fit to use it in April when H.R. French fired the first volley at the Texas Navy in the April 10 edition of his newspaper, The Galvestonian. What French did was report an outrageous incident that had reportedly occurred aboard the Austin, the Navy’s heavily armed 600-ton flagship.

    Later that morning, the editor received a short note from one E. Kennedy, who held the rank of first lieutenant aboard another Navy vessel, the Texas.

    “Sir—You having thought proper to publish in your paper this morning, upon the testimony of an irresponsible person, an article most insulting to the officers of the Texas navy generally, but most especially so to those of the Ship Texas—as the 1st Lieutenant of the Ship Texas, I call upon you sir to correct your statement, otherwise, I shall be under the necessity of holding you personally responsible for the obnoxious article.”

    Though the communication seems polite enough to the modern reader, in so many words, particularly “holding you personally responsible” the officer was threatening the editor either with an informal butt-kicking on behalf of the officers and gentlemen of the Texas Navy or a more formal challenge to a duel.

    To his credit, French published Kennedy’s letter in the following day’s newspaper. But the editor also unlimbered his journalistic guns and made ready for action.

    First, he raised the flag of freedom of speech and government accountability.

    “We hold this fact to be self-evident,” he wrote, “that the people have a perfect right to know everything with regard to the proceedings of officers of government, be they good or be they bad, and as a public journalist, it is our right, as well as duty, to place them before the public.”

    Further, the editor wrote, while he had no intention of besmirching anyone, “we are determined not to be bullied by any man, or any set of men….”

    Parsing words like a politician but with the skill of a clever wordsmith availing himself of the services of a good lawyer, French noted that since Kennedy had not “seen fit to deny said statements himself,” he would not correct anything.

    Not all bluster, the editor repeated that he had not intended to insult the entire officer’s corp of the Texas Navy. “No man can consider himself insulted unless he was party to the affair,” French wrote.

    French went on to say that his information had come from a man he presumed to be an officer serving on the Colorado, another Texas warship then in port. And while not naming that man, French alluded to the fact that someone had already revealed his identity to the other officers.

    Unfortunately for posterity’s sake, no where in the cannon blasts of verbiage published in the April 11, 1840 issue of The Galvestonian did editor French or anyone else repeat the details of the alleged incident aboard the Austin. The only clue is French’s mention that he had heard from an officer at the Navy Yard that “the whole affair was a hoax, got up by the officers themselves, for their own purposes.” If that proved to be the case, French continued, “We have but assisted in propagating the hoax and the originators of it have nothing to complain of.”

    The hunt continues, but so far, the April 10 edition of The Gavlestonian containing the original account of this carefully unrepeated incident has not been located. Given that the officers and sailors of the Texas Navy clearly were men of action easily bored by inaction, and further given that alchohol in that era was almost universally used and abused, whatever triggered the incident may possibly have originated in a bottle – or several of them.


    © Mike Cox -
    March 8, 2012 column
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