Confederate Naval Works at Goose Creek

The plaque ends with the shipyard swallowed by oil field; the field began with the Gaillards too. In 1903 John I. Gaillard saw bubbles where Goose Creek meets the bay and lit them with a match: natural gas. Oil came in 1908, but the real strike waited until August 23, 1916, when Charles Mitchell brought in a 10,000-barrel gusher on Gaillard land. The field saw the first offshore drilling in Texas, and in 1917 the Sweet 16 well ran wild for three days at 35,000 barrels a day. Its salt dome sent oilmen hunting for others like it.

What the plaque says

Confederate Naval Works at Goose Creek In 1854, brothers Thomas and John Chubb bought land in the William Scott League on the east bank of Goose Creek at the mouth of Tabbs Bay. On this site, they established the Chubb Shipyard prior to the Civil War. At the time, Texas shipbuilding was a developing industry. During the war, however, in an effort to compensate for the Union's industrial advantage, the Confederate government encouraged Texans to engage in manufacturing ventures that would aid its miltary effort. The Chubb brothers responded to this call with the Confederate Naval Works at Goose Creek, which built and repaired vessels during the war. Thomas Chubb also served in the Texas Marine Department, an element of the Confederate States Army operating indepently of the Confederate Navy. He obtained the rank of Captain and later became superintendent of the Confederate Naval Works. The design and structure of ships built at the Goose Creek shipyard were integral to the Department's effectiveness in running the Union blockade. The shallow draft of the centerboard schooners made them suitable for blockade running in shallow areas of the Gulf of Mexico, where deep draft vessels could not pass. These successful ships included the Royal Yacht, Bagdad, Phoebe, Henrietta, Marguereta and Altha Brooks. An important contributor to the Texas naval and industrial effort during the Civil War, the Goose Creek shipyard later built ships for the federal government and private mariners until Thomas Chubb left the business in 1869. The following year, the Thomas B. Gaillard family purchased the former shipyard and established Gaillard's Landing. Later, the site became part of the Goose Creek oil fields. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 5.8 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Space Center Houston — 13 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 22 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 23 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.

More markers nearby

• Bayland Orphans Home — steps away
• Bayland Guards — steps away
• George Washington Carver High School — 1.3 mi
• Lee College — 1.7 mi