Fort Manhassett

Manhassett was a Boston-based collier under contract to supply coal to Union blockaders, and it had coaled the gunboats that attacked Fort Griffin two weeks earlier. After the storm of September 19, 1863, its seven civilian crewmen were taken prisoner and interned at Camp Groce, near Hempstead. The works were sand and oyster shell under sod, two redoubts, two redans and a lunette. Road work found them again: about thirty large shells in 1926, and about 200 32-pounder balls in 1970. The site is private cattle land now, with one redoubt under water.

What the plaque says

Fort Manhassett To protect Texas against Federal invasion during the Civil War, Confederate General John B. Magruder ordered the construction of a fort at this site on September 4, 1863, four days before the famous Confederate victory won by Dick Dowling and his small company against Union ships and gunboats at Sabine Pass (7 mi. NE). After the Federal retreat, the Confederate Coastal Defense program continued, since Federal blockading vessels still patrolled Gulf waters and the threat of more invasions was feared. A storm on September 19 sent the Union patrol steamers out to sea, but drove ashore their coaling ship, the "Mannahassett". Confederate troops dismantled the ship and seized its cargo. Col. Valery Sulakowski, formerly of the Austrian Army, designed Fort Manhassett, whose name evidently was adapted from that of the captured ship. Major Getulius Kellersberger, a Swiss-born engineer who had settled in America some years earlier, oversaw the construction. By October 1863, five companies garrisoned the five redoubts of the new fort and manned its ten cannons. Fort Manhassett soldiers participated in the capture of two Union ironclad ships at Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana on May 6, 1864. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sabine Pass Battleground State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A waterfront park at the mouth of the Sabine where the earthwork of Fort Griffin stood, with a Dowling statue, a Union memorial, wartime magazines and a walkway for fishing.
• Sea Rim State Park — 9.4 mi
  Texas's far southeast corner: nearly two miles of Gulf shoreline backed by 4,000 acres of marsh, reached by boardwalk or paddle trail, rebuilt after Rita and Ike.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 10 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 24 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• World War II Coastal Defenses at Sabine Pass — steps away
• Spanish-American War Fortifications — steps away
• Federal Fatalities at the Battle of Sabine Pass — steps away
• Capture of the USS Morning Light and USS Velocity — steps away