Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 422 - The Battle of Galveston

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys GET JOE'S BOOK: Ebook, Audiobook, and Paperbacks now available! https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ Or you can buy the ebook and audiobook directly from us: https://www.llbdpodcast.com/products/ Get Nate's band's debut album here! https://secondhomesband.com/ The Union takes over the island of Galveston, Texas, and the Confederates aim to take it back with quite possibly some of the dumbest armored ships the world has ever seen. SOURCES: R. Thomas Campbell. Fire Over Texas: Galveston in the Civil War. April 2006. Military Heritage. Volume 7, no. 5 https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1983/january/battle-galveston https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/magruder-john-bankhead https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/great-hanging-at-gainesville https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/galveston-battle-of https://web.archive.org/web/20011115111011/http://history.navy.mil/photos/sh-us-cs/csa-sh/csash-ag/bayou-ct.htm

Hey everyone, it's Joe. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you access to our entire bonus episode catalog, as well as every regular episode, one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you e-books, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available, and also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys and join the Legion of the Old Crow today. To the crack of rifles and the acrid stench of sorcery, a sun invasion sweeps through the highlands of the Confederation, and Syatt's peaceful village life breaks with the dawn.

A sole survivor amidst the smoking ruins of all that he held dear. Siyat must make a choice, is pursuing revenge against the mercenaries that took everything from him, worth becoming one himself. As his escape pushes him into the gruff and brace of the foundling, Brigade. He must learn to tread a path between his need to understand why his people were targeted for destruction and the new responsibility of his soldier's life, even as each new encounter with the horrors of battle force him to confront the terrible cost of his oath. Before long, the shifting fog of war casts old certainties into a haze of doubt, while the stuff of legend seems clear

as day, and Siat finds himself drawn into a much larger conflict that he could possibly imagine. My debut fantasy novel, The Highlands Burn, is now out on e-book, audiobook, and paperback. Much like our podcast, this book is a totally independent production, and I hope you'll give it a try. As always, you can find the links where you can get it in the show notes below. Hello and welcome to the Lions at By Donkey's podcast, the only military history podcast in the entire known universe. I'm Joe. With me is Tom and Nate. Fellas. How are we doing today? I'm doing good. I'm extremely tired because I got home at like 1 a.m. last night after my flight, I had a family wedding last week and experienced

the delights of an Irish family wedding, which is just like, do you want to hear goats don't shave hills of Duny Gull with fellas with ties wrapped around their heads? That's a big ass tie. Fuck you, you cut. At one stage, I was doing a new dance move. My brother invented called the harpoon on the dance floor to which my mother was very disappointed but other than that I'm doing good. I'm back from the US. I had a lovely

time back in the motherland of Detroit. I'm severely jet lagged but it did come with a pretty big upside this time around because the World Cup's going on obviously in the US, Mexico and Canada. And for us Europeans, it means

the games are coming at like 3 and 4 a.m. sometimes. So I got to wake up I got to watch the Dutch versus Morocco match and the Dutch lose. So that sucked. Finally, anti-colonial justice through the medium of football.

I have no dogs left in this fight. I hope Cabo Verne wins. By the time this episode comes out, everything I just said about the World Cup will no longer matter. Everybody can see how wrong I'm going to be just like I was during ice hockey in the Olympics. similar to how Irish people during the Obama presidency

fully welcomed the minuscule amount of Irish heritage to Barack Obama had to the point that we named a large petrol station in the middle of the country after Barack Obama, aka Barack Obama Plaza. He got a gas station named after him. That's like more than dudes who win the Medal of Honor get in Indiana. Like there is a bronze statue outside this giant petrol station of Barack and Michelle. Obama. I can't wait to visit it and get like total whiplash like when I was in Tbilisi and was walking down George W. Bush Avenue. But it's more so that Irish people are like so

desperate for representation on the international stage and obviously we didn't make it to the World Cup. But there's a footballer from North Dublin City called Pico Lopez who's playing for Cabo Verde. And everyone just has Jersey supporting him. Actually, this is somehow going to loop back around, not Cabo Verde. But, but the World Cup is currently happening in Texas. Part of it. I regret to inform everybody that today we're once again talking about Texas. Now for the World Cup of context. That's right. In my defense, though, because I know I have fallen into the Texas hole,

quite a bit in the year 2026. But in the period that we're talking about today, the Republic of Texas is no more. America has taken it over. And we're talking about the U.S. Civil War, so Texas then leaves the United States, it joins the Confederacy, and Mirabeau Bonaparte, Lamar is dead. So I will not be talking about him today. Okay. Our favorite guy dead. You know, sometimes our favorite ones get smote from the earth by cancer. Just the dark souls text coming up on screen, Bonaparte defeated. And that's just a question mark. Yeah, you're going to have to be more specific about the Bodepart. Our story takes us to the Battle of Galveston, sometimes known as the second Battle of Galveston.

But don't worry, we're going to be talking about both of them. And for my fellow Texas heads out there, you probably know the island of Galveston, off the coast of what is today, Houston, mostly known for being a cheap vacation spot for people who can't afford to go to Mexico. And also a place that got hit by a fucking hurricane and basically wiped off the map in like, what, 1900, I think? That too. And also more recently being terribly polluted thanks to industrial runoff and repeated oil spills. But once upon a time, it was also the front line of the U.S. Civil War. And I should pause here and point out something for clarification. There are kind of two Galveston's.

There is Galveston Island, which is where the city of Galveston sits. What we're talking about today. There's also the county of Galveston, which covers the island and a chunk of the two. Texas mainland. So with everybody's Texas geography lesson done for the day, let's move on to the cotton text because it's the South. Get it? I promise I'll actually be more important than that. Okay. I don't remember that from the Glenn Campbell song. It's 1862. Texas leaves a union and joins the Confederacy in order to preserve their total and complete dependence on slavery. One of the first things the U.S. does in response to the birth of the Confederacy is start a total and complete

blockade in southern ports. We have talked about this a lot. I'm not going to go into it again. But since this is the South we're talking about, we should talk about what they were blockading. Cotton. Obviously, this is the main thing that drives the southern economy. They hold an international monopoly on the cotton trade. And the Confederacy knew this. And they were banking on it. They called it King cotton diplomacy. They believe that other nations would have no choice but to recognize the CSA and do business with them,

thanks to their stranglehold on the cotton trade. This turns out to be a very stupid idea. Yeah, it's very hard to fight off your enemies with a giant cotton swab. Actually, Tom, fuck off! No, hold that thought. I swear to God, I swear to God, hold that thought. When we get to this,

someone the other day, or it was like last week, sent me an extremely rude DM that absolutely read my ass for Phil and said that I laugh like Johnny Knoxville and like, nice, Irish Johnny Knoxville. This is going to send me into fucking space. No, this is not real. This is not true. I regret to inform you. It is. Now, to make a very long story short, King Cotton Diplomacy does not work. And countries use the U.S. Civil War as a an opportunity to break the southern monopoly and expand cotton production into other places, mostly the colonies they control.

Like, this is with the British expand cotton into India because it's their way to, they have an opening effectively. And eventually, the U.S. Navy blockade works to the point that 95% of southern trade is stuck in the port. One of those ports was the port of Galveston, a huge hub of the cotton trade, and, of course, resulting smuggling during the war to try to get out of the blockade. And Confederates knew how important this place should be, so they began digging in and ordered it protected from Union attack.

By the time we're talking about, though, it's kind of understood that Galveston is virtually indefensible from a military standpoint, because if you look at a picture of Galveston or if you've ever been there, it's not very big. The island of Galveston is quite small, and it's connected to the mainland by a bridge, just like it was back then.

So it kind of makes it a death trap. And the Confederate Department of Texas commander, General Paul Octave Hebert, who also happened to be the former governor of Louisiana because Confederate reasons. What a fucking name, by the way. Octave Ebert. Okay.

He is the one that's like, you know, we should probably cut our losses and kind of abandoned Galveston. Slowly as the union blockade settled in, more and more Confederate artillery and soldiers were redeployed away from Galveston. And when a union fleet of five whole ships under the command of Commander William Renshaw rolled up on October 4, 1862, all as it took was a couple of cannon shots between them and the defenders,

and a truce was struck. During that time, the Confederates evacuated virtually everything they could off, the island and across the bridge onto the Texas mainland and then the city surrendered to the union. Nobody died. There was something of an argument about like, hey, we didn't say you could just take everything out of the city, but that was pretty much it. They didn't realize that cotton is not an offensive material. It's defensive. If you wrap your battlements in cotton, you can just like have the cannonballs just lightly bounce off it. Tom, you're getting warmer. Fuck. You're kidding me.

This is bad shit. Warm as if you're wrapped in cotton. So bulletproof cotton insulation. Is that what we're getting at? Kind of. Kind of. Yes, we've invented racist Kevlar. But when I say fleet, these are quite small ships. Like, the U.S. Navy isn't sending in battleships here. They're mostly considered ocean-going gunboats. Because a lot of the fleet, so to speak, involved in a lot of the Civil War is riverbound.

Like, they can't go. into blue water. And that's something that the Confederates would deal with not so great during the war, but it's also not thought of as a position that's really worth fighting too hard over. The Union eventually sent ashore an occupation force, but the force

they set ashore also underlines how kind of sideshow the whole venture to take Galveston was. Their occupation force is 250 men from Massachusetts. That's it. Okay. The naval doctrine of If it's the color of mud, you're all good.

Like I said, Galveston is not very big. It's only about 27 miles long and 4 miles wide at its widest point. So the Union believes this is probably good enough. It's not as though the Texas front of the Civil War is popping off. Like there's no major military engagements whatsoever in mainland Texas. Galveston's about as close as it gets. Iber looked like a real idiot though and then got fired, but not for this. He actually went on to commit horrific war crimes.

Ah, of course. Now, that normally doesn't get you fired if you're a Confederate or a union man to be fair, but he committed them against Texans. White Texans. Uh-huh. Oh, no, not the most oppressed people on the planet, white Texans. That's right. Specifically, because of him, we have an incident known as

the Great Hanging, which is exactly what it sounds like. He ordered dozens of men to be strung up for opposing the conscription act, conscripting white men into the Confederate military. And he hung them with the accusation that they were all union sympathizers actively organizing against the Confederate state. The Confederate state of Texas investigated this and found none of this to be true, while they did oppose the conscriptive. Act. It was mostly based on the fact that they did not want to join the military. And that being

said, there was actually quite a pro-union anti-slavery element within Texas at the time. It just wasn't those guys. It was mostly the Texas German population. Right. And if you remember back to our live show in the Hague, in the Netherlands, we talked a lot about Germans and their role in the American Civil War. They were the most active militantly pro-emanscipation forces in the entire United States, and Texan Germans were no different. They went so far as to attempt to declare themselves officially neutral within Texas. Okay. And that's not how anything works. So they face pretty severe persecution from the Confederate state of Texas, and a lot of them packed their shit and move to Mexico to get away from a possible death sentence.

Hey, I'm going to ask, what do you think a 19th century woke Texan German would sound like? Karl Marx, because Karl Marx wanted to become one. That is true. He was denied a passport. There was a specific dialect of Texan German that they spoke, which sounds marketably different. It's interesting to say the least. Also, bears mentioned that German wasn't quite as standardized back then. So if people were like primarily from a particular region,

then their dialect is going to sound like regional German, which is very different. It can get weird. We'll put it that way. And this guy was eventually replaced, you know, it's not like he was to prison. He was just fired for hanging a bunch of dudes. He was replaced by Confederate Major General.

John Bankhead Magruder. Oh, yes. Name alert. He was a guy from Virginia, born from Scottish immigrant parents who happened to own a giant plantation. Hmm. But don't worry though. His dad was so bad at running his plantation.

He racked up so much debt that a judge even repossessed his slaves. I'm sorry. This is really fucked up. I'm really sorry. There's an extent to which I just can't believe that's possible. But I guess when you think about sort of property law and whatnot, okay, I understand it.

but still like, we've repossessed your slaves. Yeah, they get to send out their Virginian slave repo, man. Exactly. I mean, if you were so shit that you couldn't, your family, it couldn't even be planters in Northern Ireland, that you just went to America and you were just so bad at the bank was like, nah, you got to give us back those slaves. Your family does not have the business acumen for the new world.

Now, John eventually got into West Point, thanks to his uncle, who was a congressman. and he graduated sadly middle of his class, so he's not the usual guy we talk about who graduates at the bottom. He was eventually posted to Maine, which he hated, which is about probably the only thing I agree with him on. I've been to Maine once, I did not enjoy it. So he demanded a posting to Texas, which the U.S. had just annexed, and the war with Mexico was on the horizon. So he goes and fights in that war, and owing to the fact that he liked to read, he dressed, quote, flamboyantly. and love having giant parties, people nicknamed him Prince John.

Okay. I don't know what they mean by flamboyantly in this sense. I assume that means he occasionally bathed. It's the Homer Simpson line about being a big fat party animal. How one describes it because like you said, it can be, oh, this person took the mildest bit of personal care. Or it could be they're like, I want to dress up in the style of Frederick the Great or something like that.

I want to wear a Prussian uniform everywhere I go, despite it being way too hot. You know, it can be any of those. I like to believe that he refused to go into combat unless he was wearing a privately tailored all-linen military uniform. And they say that autism didn't exist 200 years ago. When the Civil War starts,

he joins the Confederacy, just like his home state, and he was immediately promoted to Colonel. Before his posting to Confederate Texas, though, he fights in the Peninsula campaign. He gets promoted to Major General, thanks to the fact he is actually really good at one specific thing, logistics, because occasionally a Confederate is good at their job, unfortunately. Once again, Nate, I'm going to come back to your point of they said autism didn't exist

200 years ago. I mean, look, sometimes people use it in their favor. I mean, like, I want to plan these details and make sure that every single person has exactly, you know, the allocations for four pairs of socks and 600 bullets and three days of rations or whatever, and sometimes they fixate on like, I'm going to recreate the costume from Chrono Trigger 200 years before it's even created. We don't know he wasn't dressed up like Krono, to be fair. That is true.

Or when he did something that pleased him, did he make a gesture that looked like he was elbowing himself in the dick? Yeah, it's possible. Entirely possible. Entirely possible. We cannot confirm or deny, therefore I'm choosing to believe. By the time he arrives in Texas, he finds Texas defenses had just been left to rot. The Union controlled virtually the entire Texan coastline.

The Texan military had been pulled back mostly to center on San Antonio, and the largest garrison of men he had to work with outside of that to counter any union advance was in Brownsville. For people who don't know, that's on the Mexican border. And just to underline how big Texas is, that is 400 miles away from Galveston. Things didn't look great. But Magruder had a few things going for him. For one, the union was not really worried about Texas at all. They controlled Galveston port. The Confederacy itself didn't see Texas as a major theater of war at the time because it wasn't.

Texas was not the scene of any major battle during the war whatsoever. So when the Union forces occupied Galveston, they just did nothing with it. For example, that bridge I talked about that goes from Galveston Island to the mainland, which has railroad tracks on it, they didn't even bother to destroy it. They just left it intact. They barely reinforced their positions. at all. Then the union occupation force in Galveston was just

kind of hanging around. They arrived and just immediately did a beach episode from One Piece. Pretty much. They hold up in the wharf and occasionally patrol Galveston City. It sounds like they're basically, they're like, they suck, but also

they have my work ethic, so I can't really hate them too much. They did the Civil War version of an anime filler episode. Mugruder saw all of this as an opportunity, though, and he began to plan to take Galveston back, though obviously it's not like he had a lot of resources either. The Confederacy used Texas in a lot of the same way it used Louisiana, which we talked about before during our Battle of New Orleans. It was a place

that they considered behind the main lines to extract resources from and shove into the front lines in the north. Texas regiments were stood up and marched right out of Texas, same with any anything that could be considered war materials. So he scrambled around the state, trying to find any fighting men he could. That landed him squarely in front of a man we've talked about before on a bonus episode. Colonel Henry Hopkins Sibley, the leader of the Confederacies, hilariously failed attempt to invade New Mexico. Because if there's one thing Texans love doing, it's dying while trying to take over

Albuquerque. Right. This episode and his campaign was from a few years ago, but here's a short reference pressure for those at home. Sibley was a U.S. Army officer prior to the war, and he invented a tent known as the Sibley tent that the U.S. Army would

use all the way up until World War I. This is something that Sibley never made a fucking scent off of due to the fact first he was an officer in the army and couldn't benefit from it, and then he joined the Confederacy, which allowed the government to stiff him on the bill once it became

a civilian. He tried to sue the government and failed. So, yeah. That's kind of funny. Then he convinced the Confederacy that invading New Mexico was a good idea. He slapped an army together out of men not otherwise needed for the war effort, meaning dude's so old or kids so young or people so fucked up that they were concerned unfit for service in the Confederate military in the 1860s. Ah, you ought to have like no legs in one arm to be that bad.

we call them the crawling core I know the casino core they didn't even have standard issued weapons they used guns they just had lying around when they invaded they didn't bring in a food or water because of course they didn't and they marched in New Mexico

where they were fucking obliterated by Union forces all while Sibley got so drunk he could barely stand let alone command them in combat McGruder quickly brought together the survivors of this New Mexico campaign and

reinforce them with other elements of the Texas militia that he had kicking around in order to build an army of maybe 380 men, though the numbers are a bit hazy. What isn't hazy, though, is that these guys are not exactly the crack troops of the Confederacy. Unlike Sibley, though, McGrooter was good at his job. He wasn't going to try and march these guys 400 miles north to Galveston and take the island. Instead, he turned to the Texas Marine Department, which was in charge of patrolling the Texan coast. The Confederate government had just supplied them with two river steamers, and just so you can take this picture and rotate it in your head, these are the kind of shallow watercraft that had the big old wheel on the side of them. Ah, the Mark Twain boats.

Right. Okay, yeah. And they were using a lot of the same language that Mark Twain would have. Ugh. He's got fucking Arthur Morgan and Dutch Vandling Robin shit off of it. I don't know Dutch. A lot of racist people on this boat.

These were the CS Bayou City and the CS Neptune. Obviously, CS because they're Confederate. All under the command of an interesting guy named Leon Smith. Smith is interesting to me because he's not from the South at all. He's from New Hampshire. And like a lot of dudes who maybe weren't from the South and joined the Confederate war effort, It's some connection to the south.

He had none. He wasn't even an officer in the U.S. Navy at the time. Instead, he was a mailman. Okay. He was in charge of a U.S. male steamship running the line from Panama to San Francisco. Once again, it's that axis of you can be called Leonidas or you can be called Al Focke, but you're also equally as insane as each other. He was also allegedly the half-brother of Abraham Lincoln's secretary of the interior.

the wonderfully named Caleb Blood Smith. God, I love these names, man. It's so great. Going to get invaded by Captain Postman. Like, what the fuck? Yeah, we really have no idea how Leon Smith ends up being a naval commander for the Confederacy. It sounds like you could just show up and do it if you wanted to.

Yeah, you could just show up like, I know boats. I got boat smarts. And they're like, well, that's more than we have. Have a boat. Because the Confederacy really didn't have a Navy. Most of the U.S., we've talked about this board, but the vast majority of the U.S. Navy remain loyal to the Union. So, like, the Confederacy kind of had to beg, borrow, and steal anything that resembled a Navy, uh, and or get a mailman to do it, which is just as good.

Yeah, like, when you think about it, who is more uniquely positioned to run the logistics of, like, a ship that's going to be used in combat other than a mailman? Like, he has to keep track of all those letters. Yeah, we found the perfect example of not all mailmen are cool. The best I could find as to how he ends up in Texas. There are reports of him fighting in the Texas Revolution. However, there's no historical evidence to confirm them. But the best I can find is Magruder met him when he went to California

and was just personally impressed by Leon Smith's apparent just shit hot steamboat skills and hired him onto his personal staff, brought him back to Texas, and there he was. Okay. So he was good at boating, and that got him the job,

not just boating, but directing a lot of other boating. He was whipping shitties off the bay at his fucking wheeled steamship, and McGroeder's like, God damn, hire that man. Water boats, if not float. letters. They would also be the slowest shitties that have ever been with.

Yeah, no kidding. You have to wait a really long time. It's like waiting for someone to do a trick is like waiting to get a picture taken with a daguerre type. You just got to sit there emotionless. I see, I'm thinking about a, you know, that movie Black Knight with Martin Lawrence, where he gets

transported back in time. Instead, you get like a UPSPS postman and he falls through wormhole like has to do this guy's job. Oh God. becomes a Confederate mailman war commander. Do not become addicted to post. But these two boats are not just any steamers.

Oh no. We've talked about ironclads during the U.S. of war before. But don't get your hopes up. These aren't ironclads. Magruder looked around Texas a place with virtually no industrial capability at all, even for the Confederacy, and recognized that there was no way he was going to get enough kind of metal of any kind smashed into the right shape to armor these fuckers.

That's out of the question. And since he planned on loading hundreds of men onto these ships, he was leaving them unprotected was equally out of the question. But there was one material that Texas had plenty of. He could slap onto the side of these bad boys. Cotton. Okay. Fucking quitting this show.

I hate this shit. They're going to put cotton on everything. That's right. We got cotton armored steam shipships. otherwise known as the cotton clad. Wouldn't that make them quite flammable, though? I mean, in a way, it's sort of like, okay, they do provide some degree of protection, insulation, if you will,

but like cotton when, you know, spun and whatnot when processed is typically dry and it's a fiber, which means you get one of it lit in close proximity to other bits of it. It's going to catch them all on fire. This feels like you're setting yourself up to do unintentional fire ships on yourself. See, nay, all you're going to take a different tact, and go the opposite way, in that you went hot, I'm going to go wet.

Cotton absorbs so much water that if it gets wet, you are fucked if you've covered the entire boat in it. I will say those are both legitimate concerns. However, guys, I feel like we're all probably wearing cotton shirts right now.

Or some blend. If I shot you right now, would it go through your shirt? Yes. Yeah, the same thing's going to happen to these ships. So I assume they're not like packing like super dense quantities of cotton onto this. They're just like doing like a smattering. Oh no. So it's whole bales. So this is from the article Fireover, Texas by R. Thomas Campbell.

Quote, workers stripped off Bayou City's upper cabins and pilot houses. And cotton bales are placed on their sides and stack three tiers high. Another row two bales high back these and provide a fortified firing platform for sure. sharpshooters. Boarding planks were constructed on each side of the boat and hoisted amongst the smokestacks, where they could be dropped onto an enemy vessel. Mounted on a pivot point and protruding from among the cotton bales on the bow was an old 32-pounder cannon that had been reworked to being a rifle. I am just going to say is like all the people who, you know, the Confederate flag, just like, oh, you know, it's a better history and all this sort of stuff. This is your history. Your history is

being a fucking moron. And also, speaking of the Confederate flag, if you want to see a Confederate flag at a place that you really did not expect, come to our live show in Cork on the 26th of September because, oh boy, you might see one. In Cork. Why?

Cork is called the Rebel County. And like, because it was opposed to the treaty in 1921. and in general was like the cultural antithesis of Dublin. They call themselves like the real capital. And yeah, if you watch a Cork-GAA matches on telly, you will occasionally see the rebel flag. That is shit. Yeah, that sucks. I mean, I guess I'm not surprised because the German neo-Nazis do this. So it's like appropriating the Confederate flag for your own whatever bullshit like is a thing. The swastika's banned. It's for the stupidest reason possible. It is like completely decontextualized

from what it stands for and they're like, oh, the rebel flag, we're the rebel county. Yeah, because there's never been any other rebels in history of a flag you could pick from. Yeah, all right. Well done. I look forward to being horrified. That Neptune

had similar modifications done to it, though it would end up with a few more cannons at the end of the day. So there's a lot of cotton packed onto these cotton clads. And along with them would be two more transport steamers, though these only had their engines reinforced the cotton armor because they had run out of that too. Since the men on board came

from several different cavalry units mostly, they got the nickname Horse Marines, which is funny, but not all of them were part of these horse marines. Somewhat ironically, some of these men came from the newly raised and untested 21st Infantry Battalion, who were meant to be sent to the Confederate War up north, but had gotten stuck in Texas due to a lack of transportation on account of all the boats being taken by Magruder. So they also got this brand new force of actual soldiers. And with all of that, they have about 500 men. That leaves their land-based fire support. Like everything else, Texas had a lot of their cannons either sent forward to the war or a raid around San Antonio. So Magruder went to the cannon bone yard and found 16 cannons lying around that were either

too old to be used in the war effort or so broken that the defenders in San Antonio didn't want to use them. Okay. So they went about just kind of repairing them the best that they could, which isn't great, to be fair. One of these was a really old Dolgren gun, which is a kind of canon that if you see a picture of it, it looks like you would imagine a lot of cannons look like big, fat end that tapers down.

It's sometimes called like the soda bottle cannon because of its taper design. And it was invented because the guy who came up with the idea, a wash a cannon explode and kill a guy. Right. So he believed the tapered end with the big fat breach would lessen the dangers. And they took this cannon and slapped it on a flatbed rail car. So it could be used on the railroad tracks that went across the bridge and on to Galveston Island. But they only had one flatbed rail car.

So all of the other canons would just have to be dragged. We're creating the Texan Gustav. And notice how I said rail car, not train. Oh no. Because this is also going to run on human power. Right, okay. But this kind of troop buildup eventually got to the union men on Galveston. You can't move this many people around without someone noticing.

Right. So they actually begin digging into the wharf area. News of this in turn gets back to Magruder, as did intelligence from Confederate spies that said the union was going to send reinforcing. since to Galveston, which would make his whole plan a lot harder to pull off. So he began rushing to launch his operation. Even though Union Force has had been warned that an attack was coming, Magruder managed to move his cotton armored strike force up the coast

and shove his artillery teams into position on the mainland, waiting for the night of December 31st, 1862 to begin moving. While the Union men, both on the island and in the ships, because the union flotilla there hasn't left. There's still five ships in the port of Galveston. Everybody's asleep. And that's when Confederate forces begin to drag their artillery pieces towards and then across the long railway bridge

that the union men had left in place. But they couldn't use it as a rail bridge. Thanks to, like I said, they only have one flatbed car and no engine of any kind. Right. So they're shoving their cannons. forward on the rail car that they have, and then behind it, rebels are putting down planks of wood, so the other cannons could then be dragged over the train tracks.

Behind the cannons come the 500 or so infantry that would be used for the ground attack portion on the Galveston Island. I mean, the union literally left the front door wide open. Nobody's even guarding the bridge. That is connected to the country you're at war with. The goal of most of these cannons, once in place, was to open fire on the Union gunboats that were stationed in and around the harbor, while another team of six siege guns were to target the Union troops at the Wharf. And I should point out here, they are bringing their artillery onto the island of Galveston itself.

They're pulling it very, very close. And like I said, this is because there are no Union troops around the city of Galveston. they're all hunkered down at the wharf, leaving effectively the entire island undefended outside of this one sliver. The idea was to hit the union at the wharf with artillery, which would pin them in place, and then send infantry and distort the positions. Meanwhile, the cotton clads positioned themselves to wait for their signal, which was the sound of the artillery opening fire at midnight. But to the confusion of everyone, Magruder didn't order his guns to open fire. He waited four hours. hours after midnight before finally ordering the artillery to go to work on New Year's Day of 1863. He said it was because he was worried that nobody was in position and he needed to wait to make sure

everybody was in the right place. But nothing really happened. At one point, the Union ships even spotted the cotton clads. Because like the moon is at like it's apex so it's quite bright. And but the Union doesn't do anything. Yeah. Like the Cotton. cladge just pull away. Does giant fucking white ball floating in the bay? Do you guys see that? Or did I accidentally drink the wrong grog?

Try, drink the wrong grog and you just see giant marshmallows floating in the water? It would be even funnier, too, if for some reason your perception of like how far away they are is off. So it seems like they're moving really, really fast. It's like you've invented 1860s DMT. Going back in time,

but only to hand the Union Navy as a fistful of Corosite and coffee. and cold. Soon the artillery duel began and ripped through the town and harbor of Galveston. And once the Unionmen realized what was going on, they began alternating, returning fire

with solid shot and canister rounds at incredibly close ranges, because that's how close the Confederates dragged their cannons, they could just start out firing canister rounds. Now it turns out canister shot was not something the Texans had. You know what?

They also didn't have. trained artillery crews these were just repurposed infantry guys who had been kind of given a crash course on how to use cannons and it cannot be stated enough how important a trained and well-drilled artillery team

is when you're in a what amounts to be point-blank cannon duel yeah and the Texans are being ripped to shreds seeing what was happening the Union gunships swung around to support the infantry on the wharf, adding their cannons, blasting the Confederates with multiple broadsides, churning everyone into thick human molasses. Well, these are Texans we're talking about, so maybe a chunky human Tex-Mex.

Where was the Confederate artillery that was meant to hit the gun ships? You ask? Well, like I said, none of them were trained artillerymen. So they tried to hit the ships, but they really didn't hit anything. Right. Right. Okay. So they were sort of making noise to show they were giving it their best attempt, but they weren't actually launching large cannon ball in such a way as to hit something. Yeah. Hitting a moving target is quite hard. As hitting any target with a cannon is actually quite difficult.

Now it's floating in the water. It's shooting back at you now. Several of the Confederate cannons got knocked the fuck out as well. and things were getting even worse for the Confederates. The ground troops that were meant to assault the wharf were attacking a place known as the Strand, which is pretty much at the heart of downtown Galveston. The wharf comes up against the Strand like a wall. During peacetime, this isn't an issue because there's a walkway that connects the to, and you can just walk right up it. But one of the few things the Union did in order to better position themselves was to tear that walkway down. The Confederates did know about this thanks to their spies, though,

So good news, they brought ladders to help them climb up and attack. Bad news? The ladders weren't tall enough. All right. All right. Now, this had less to do with bad Confederate planning and just mother nature hating the confederacy. Because what happened was, it's a wharf, right? It's on the water.

The strand is most like its base is sand. And the water, thanks to the tide, had raised. much higher than they originally thought. It made the sand much wetter. So their ladders just kind of sank in. Oh, that must have been so funny to see. That is extremely funny. Wow. Okay. And they only learned about this when they put the ladders in place and began sinking into the sand, all while Union dudes are just raining lead down on them. This is a fucking Charlie Chaplin ass invasion. They're going up each subsequent wrong on the ladder and it's going down one wrong.

So they're just perfectly staying in place. Yeah, just put a cowboy hat on Charlie Chaplin rather than a bowler. And you're all good. All right. Seeing the situation was becoming seriously fucked. And now the sun was coming up. Magruder ordered his forces to pull back into the town and stop attacking the warp. And then the ride of the cotton clads began.

Okay. So their mission was to directly fight the union. ships. They charge right at the Union gunships. Firing their cannons as they go, remember, they're lined with sharpshooters too. Their sharpshooters start firing at the Union ships. And these are comparatively small gunships, so this kind of thing can work. The USS Harriet Lane was hit badly. And then as the CS Bayou City readied for the killing blow, they brought their cannon to bear. The cannon exploded and vaporized several Confederate sailors. But the ship just kept going.

Yeah. Kind of sucks to suck, I guess. Yeah, I love the idea that, like, this ship just a mushroom cloud forms at the very front of it. And, you know, these guys are definitely blaring free bird from a boom box, just screaming towards their target. Because at least two guys are killed by this, and it doesn't even slow them down. They're surrounded by sharpshooters as well.

So a lot of them get wounded from shrapnel from the cannon. and exploding. I mean, the CS Bayou suffering the same fate as the members of Leonard Skinner is very funny. I knew I shouldn't have taken the steam wheel powered plane. Damn, I guess our steam power plane ran out of steam. We're just going to have to go down wherever. Swamp. It's always a swamp.

Now the sharpshooters on board the Bayou City begin unloading. And then the boats captain Henry Lubbock order the man behind the wheel to ram the lane so they could board it. Because that was their goal. Wasn't to beat the Union Navy in like a slug match. It was to charge at them as fast as they can and try to board them. And I know what you're thinking. Henry Lubbock, is that where the town and county of Lubbock in Texas gets its name?

No. It's actually named after his brother, Saltis Lubbock. Saltis? Saltis. Okay. I love these people. Everyone in Texas at this time just sounds like a character in like,

in like Gene Wolfe's book of the new song. Like, there's definitely going to be a dude in an episode in like six months time that you are going to in all seriously tell me his name is Severian. And a long enough timeline that'll probably happen if I keep talking about Texas.

Small problem with the ramming attack though. You know, if you were to say, what's the most important part about ramming a boat? What do you think it would be? I think it would be making sure that the thing you're ramming it with is strong enough to not have your boat get damaged in the process?

Close. Tom. Okay. I would say do your best to hit the boat in the middle of its broadside. You got it in the first half. Hit the boat. Because the Bayou City fucking missed. No.

Oh, come on, man. It just kind of sideswipe the Harriet Lane and bounced off. Oh, my God. Like the cotton bale. and shit managed to get the other boat tangled up in it. Okay. So Captain Lubbock was like, fuck it, drop the boarding ramps were close enough. Mind you, the two ships are not touching one another.

So the Confederate switch from the rifles to double-barreled shotguns and swords and try to board. But then as they do, the ships come apart and the boarding ramp falls off. Several men hit the water. But then the boarding ramp falls directly into the steam. of the ship. Uh-oh. Charlie Chaplin ass fucking Buster Keaton ass bottle.

This is the same as jamming a stick into the spokes of a bicycle. I was going to say it's more like it's the equivalent of like you were wearing sandals or fucking you know or flip flops while riding a bike and you jammed your into like your front wheel and threw yourself off the bike. But with a boat it's a bit

more dramatic. Yeah, the boat doesn't flip over at least. It just kind of stops. Though it would be very funny if the boat just completely does a front flip. Yeah, the boats going so fast just cause it to flip completely. Yeah, like one of those fucking speedboats they try to break records on in the local lakes of the Midwest that they catch a gust of wood and just start doing backflips. Like physics itself has broken. Then came on the CS Neptune charging for the exact same boat.

The Harriet Lane poured gunfire into the Neptune and the Confederates learned real, real quick that cotton is not a substitute for armor plating. Roops. The shots tear straight through the cotton bales, sending a mix of cotton fluff, wood splinters, and human remains flying into the hair. Also, it's like, obviously it's not going to be bleached cotton, but the fact is it's still going to be a general kind of beige color. So if you score a hit on this boat,

it's going to look like the boat is alive and is bleeding. It looks like you're just pouring gunfire to the world's weirdest-looking sheep. Yes, exactly. This is a really fucked up whale. they've managed to tame. I assume this is just like a Kiwi national sport of shoot the sheep, but you know, romantically. This is the last episode of Sean the

sheep that they aired once on like BBC or Channel 4 and never could air ever again. That's for our like five listeners in New Zealand. We love you. No, that's for all the listeners in the UK who have kids. But the Neptune kept going and this time it slammed directly into the Harriet lane. Rebels try to throw grappling hooks overboard and attach the two together. As another Union boat, the USS Awasco pulled up to the Harriet Lane's aid and began dumping cannon fire into the Neptune. The Neptune was fatally wounded. So the captain pulled it away to shallow waters where it got stuck in the mud and everybody could just climb out into ankle deep water.

All right. But from there, the sharpshooters kept firing at the Union boats. Sort of like, okay, boat's over, end boat. Let me park this bitch real quick. Like, you didn't even have to worry about sickings. Like, let me just pull this over. Don't make me pull the cotton clad over, kids. And as ridiculous as all of the sounds, it is working.

The Bayou City had managed to get the plank free of its wheel. And in the meantime, the small arms fire from the horse marines kept the cannon crews of the Harriet Lane and the Owasco pinned down. Now freed the Bayou City wheeled back around. and crashed into the Harriet Lane for a second time, this time successfully. The two boats were locked together, the wreckage tangling into a nod of steamship and human flesh. That's one on the knot counter for today.

The rebels charged the Union boat armed with swords, pistols, and shotguns ready to fight, but found the ship was pretty much already defeated. Yeah. Union soldiers, Captain included, lay all around the deck, dead from rounds they had taken from the sharpshooters. A random union sailor crawled out from behind cover and surrendered the boat.

Then the Owasco began firing on both of the boats, which were now locked together. Rebels tried to use the cannons on the Harriet Lane, but found the boat leading so badly to one side they couldn't aim. Instead, they opened fire with the rifles once again, and the Owasco escaped. You might be wondering, there's supposed to be five ships in this Union flotilla. Where the fuck is everybody else? Did they get lost? Namely, where's its flagship, the USS Westfield,

and the flotillas commander, Commander Renshaw? Well, he tried to sail into battle, but he got stuck in the fucking mud and had been there ever since. Right. Okay. This is where shit gets really weird, though. Captain Lubbock and two other men got into a rowboat and just paddled over to the nearest union gunboat,

climbed aboard, and demand everybody. surrender. Like everybody, the whole flotilla. Okay. Though he was nice enough to point out that like we don't want to keep you as prisoners, you can keep one of the boats and fuck off, but just get out of Galveston. The captain of that boat told him, well, I don't have the authority to do that. I have to ask my commander Renshaw. Luppick agreed and the two men shook on a three-hour truce to figure it all out.

Okay. Now, while this was happening, the Confederates began pulling the union dead and wounded from the boats and onto the shore. The wounded, at least those that could be saved, were brought in for treatment, and the dead were given a proper military burial. This is when one Confederate officer, Albert Lee, noticed what of the fatally wounded men

was lieutenant commander Edward Lee of the U.S. Navy, his own son. Oh, God. His son, being in the Navy, remained loyal. Neither man knew that the other was present at the battle. Edward Lee died in the arms of his own father, who played a role in his death. Oh.

That's Greek tragedy shit. Yeah, this is dark. Meanwhile, at the war, the Confederates also demanded a surrender from the men stationed behind the walls. Now, the men there had a strong position. They had been fighting off to Confederates largely without a problem.

But then they looked out into the harbor, and they saw white flags flying from the Union flotilla. Now, the flotilla hadn't surrendered, but the flag was meant to show the Confederates they were observing the three-hour truce window that Lubbock had given them. But the infantry captain didn't know that because nobody had told him. He assumed the U.S. Navy had surrendered, leaving him and has been completely alone on Galveston with no way to get out.

So he said, fuck it and surrendered to the Confederates. Okay. By 7 a.m., the three-hour window closed and nobody had heard a single word from Renshaw. They just forgot to respond to the deadline. He had been busy just kind of losing his mind. Okay, I mean, relatable, but... Just like me for real. I feel like about to get worse, a lot worse.

His boat had been stuck in the mud ever since the battle began, like I said. And he refused anyone permission to surrender. Instead, he ordered everybody that could to pull up anchor and get the fuck out of Galveston, which, to be fair, is exactly what the Confederates were asking for anyway. They obviously also wanted to capture the union ships because, you know, the Confederates kind of, their ship wallet is running low here. Yeah. But they'd probably also be fine with this, right? Like, whatever, we still win either way.

And he calls for a transport ship to pull up to the USS Westfield. He orders everybody off other than himself and his first mate. And he prepares to blow his ship up so it doesn't fall in the Confederate hands because it's clear he's not getting it unstuck. Normally, this kind of thing is done with a timed fuse shoved into the magazine, right? But Renshaw didn't know how to set a timed fuse. So he came up with a plan B, which also happened to be just about the worst thing he could have done. Yep. Now, we've talked a bit before every time we bring up the union blockade, that a lot of these ships carry turpentine.

Now, the turpentine is used to throw into the boilers because it burns explosively. It makes the ship go way faster, right? Okay. So he takes all of that turpentine. He dumps it all over the deck of the ship, leading back to the magazine and back to the boiler. Then he lights it on fire while he's walking over to the transport that was meant to take him and his men away.

What Renshaw didn't know is that turpentine burns faster than that ship and himself could get away. Within seconds, the Westfields, explodes into a mushroom cloud as the magazines go up. The explosion is so large it destroys the transport ship that was pulled up next to the Westfield,

killing everyone. Oh my God. This explosive-based whoopsie accounted for almost all of the union losses during the battle. Holy shit. So for the want of not letting

the ship fall into Confederate hands it's like let's just murder suicide ourselves? Yeah, let's invent the union's first suicide bomb, but also fail in doing that. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Lubbock, looking at the explosion, was completely and utterly confused, having no idea what the fuck could have happened. Then he watched as the surviving Union flotilla pulled up anchor and began to run away so

fast, they didn't even bother to take down the white flags they were flying. So he ordered his ships to chase after. After them, he ordered his artillery to open fire, but the Union ships were very easily able to get away because the Confederates didn't have any ocean-going blue water ships with them. They couldn't chase them into open water, and their artillery hasn't hit shit all day. After six hours, Galveston had fallen back into the hands of the Confederates, where it remained until the end of the war. And this is also the lone victory of the cotton-clad war steamer. Because this is not the only time that this would be used. But it's the only time it was ever used arguably successfully.

So weird, man. It's just so fucking strange. It's a concept so incredibly stupid. It had to work out at least once, I guess. Yeah, fair enough. I could respect that in some way. You know, this is like the Bob Semple tank of the 1860s, except it saw combat and had the same.

end result of someone, you know, fired a pistol at the Bob Semple. Yeah. You know, the Kiwis said, we have a lot of aluminum siding and a tractor. We got to make this work. And the Confederate said, we got a steamship and a bunch of cotton. Let's see what happens. And it turns out a cannibal cuts right fucking through that shit, which I really feel like they should have known about in the first place.

But, uh, hey, sometimes you just got to try it, you know, wrap your car and cotton, you know, for reasons. I guess wrap your boat and cotton, wrap your whatever thing you want to protect in cotton. We'll make it work somehow. It'll at least be warm. The end. Okay. So fellas, how do you feel about the battle of Galveston?

Everybody in this episode is absolutely dumb as fuck. Yeah, this is so fucking stupid. Like, I guess I'm just, I feel as though I haven't really been able to react with my normal pace because it's just like, I don't know what to say to this. I genuinely don't know, like, how do you respond to something that. just make everything keeps not making any sense. They're like, I'll just do it anyway. Like the dumbest thing you can think of. The union absolutely snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by blowing themselves up.

Like to create a mushroom cloud, the explosion was like so strong that like Lovok probably like his fucking eyebrows were at least a little bit singed. His hair pulled back smoke gently rising from his cowboy hat. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of those episodes where it's an arms race of who. who can be the worst. And I think it's only the second time we've ever talked about the Confederates winning.

The first being the Battle of the Crater, which was probably in our first year of being a show. You got the union not doing fuck all with Galveston, not destroying the bridge, which is the first thing any military would do because they're not launching an offensive onto the Texan mainland. You got the commander getting his shit stuck in the mud. It's incredible.

I mean, the cotton clad speak for themselves. It's all around. Everybody's posting L's and eventually someone's got to win, you know? Someone has to post the capital Lail. Yeah. You know, if you just keep throwing people into a meat grinder, someone's got to win. And obviously,

Magruder was the better commander here on the kind of like, he didn't get, I don't know, stuck in the mud and unable to do his job and accidentally blow himself up. Yeah. But, you know, such as Galveston. But folks, fellas, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion.

If you'd like to ask us a question, support the show on Patreon. I think it's worth your time and money. And when you do, you can ask us a question on Patreon or in the Discord which you'll also have access to and we'll answer it on the show. Or failing that, wrap your question in cotton and run it directly into gunfire.

Today's question is, what is the thing that you say that has nothing to do with your accent that gives away where you're from? This could be slang, and I think that make things easier for all of us. in your own country, what would give you away? Since none of us live where we were born.

Oh, I mean, I think you and I might have the same one, Joe. I can't help myself. If I accidentally bump into something, I say, oh, I do that. That gives me Midwestern. But I think the thing that definitely underlines me is being from Michigan is saying pop for any kind of soda. We say that in Indiana, too. It always weirded me out because I moved there when I was in grade school.

And I was like, why are you calling it that? See, I've seen other people call it that. I've seen other people call it soda. But like every person from Michigan I know is always called it pop. Yeah. I know someone from Michigan's going to tell me, well, I don't. Well, whatever. Whatever.

Everyone said that in Indiana, too. From my experience, it was definitely something that I had in common whenever I ran in other people. The weird one from Indiana is playing Yucre. I don't know if they do that in Michigan. That's just Midwestern too. Oh, really? Okay.

Obviously, the thing that gives me away is not necessarily something that I say it's kind of something that I do in Michigan, especially amongst one another and sometimes to other Americans, when someone asks where you're from and you're from a place that like isn't Detroit, so therefore nobody knows where it is. They'll pick up their hand because Michigan is shaped like a hand and point to where it is. Now obviously this doesn't work if you're from the Upper Peninsula because otherwise you kind of got to do this number with both hands and nobody does that. That's just fucking ridiculous. But yeah, you point to where you're from. on your hand. That's stupid. That's really the only thing I can think of. Oh, also, maybe because

we know that a mile isn't that bad. Yeah, I mean, people get mad at me. This has happened to me before where people would be like, you're from Carmel, you're not from Indianapolis. And I'd be like, well, to anybody who's not from Indiana, I just have gotten used to saying I'm from Indianapolis, because I'm from literally a suburb of Indianapolis. And so it's like, but ultimately it's like no one outside of America really knows for Indianapolis is, unless they're really into IndyCar racing. So I just always say I'm from near Chicago. And that's good enough. Yeah. What about you, Tom? There's a few of them, aside from literally everything I say.

That's why I had to add in the no accent part. I was at home last week and I have spent the better part of a decade media training my own accent. Because if not, I'll be talking like this son. I'm here with Joe. We're recording a podcast. Like, that's fucking class. Yeah, that's just, to anyone at home, that just sounds like you had a stroke. but in terms of something that is said so come with me on a journey here in Wexford there's a specific part of Wexford

which used to be called the Baranese where a specific local dialect called Yolo was spoken which is a holdover of 12th century Norman English so there's a word that people from Wexford say and it's queer which is Q-U-A-R-E it means very and like you just say

like that's queer good that's queer bad you've heard me say this, but I have. I've said that to like in the company of, you know, English people or Americans. And I think they think I am saying something very offensive. And to my credit, I just rolled with it, didn't I? Yeah. I was like, well, that'd probably mean something else. I like, people still spoke Yola in Wexford up until like the mid-20th century.

But like queer and the distinct kind of like Wexford town accent are like the two things to have survived from it. So if someone heard me say queer, they'd probably think I'm from Wexford anyway. Interesting. That is interesting. I didn't know that. Adding something new to my Tom language lore every day. Another example of Wexford Excellence, or as I like to call it, Wexelance. Nice.

Well done. Hey, we are called the Wexicans in Ireland. Oh, my God. It's the warmest part of the country, so we're called the Wexicans. Oh, fellas. I believe we've made a podcast, but you host other podcasts. But look at those podcasts. I am the co-host of Trash Future.

I'm also the producer of podcast about the tech industry being bad. I'm also the producer of Kill James Bond, and I'm in a band called Second Home, so we have an album called Find a Way to Hate It that's out everywhere now, and you can listen, and if you like it a lot, you can buy a digital copy on Bandcamp. Listen to Bloodwork, a show about the economy of violence,

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