Dick Dowling and The Battle of Sabine Pass

Andrew Forest Muir was graduated from Rice Institute, Houston, and took his doctorate at the University of Texas in 1949. A Guggenheim Fellow, 1957-1958, he has written for many scholarly journals. His grandfather was a Welsh immigrant who served in Cook's Regiment with Dick Dotvling, the subject of his article. Dick Dowling and The Battle of Sabine Pass ANDREW FOREST MUIR dick dowltng's mtlttart reputation has overshadowed his other qualities and performances—he was a shrewd and foresighted businessman, an early oil operator, and a public-spirited citizen—but his military exploits have never been described in detail. Some years after the end of the Rebellion , Jefferson Davis remarked in a public address in New Orleans that the Battle of Sabine Pass "was more remarkable than the battle of Thermopylae , and, when it has orators and poets to celebrate it, will be so esteemed by mankind."1 Davis was not the first to compare Sabine Pass with Thermopylae, for three days after the battle, the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph had remarked editorially, "Sabine Pass L· the new Thermopylae ."2 The present-day obscurity and low repute of the battle is probably the result of its having been treated exclusively by orators and rhymesters and never by historians. Out of obscurity, Richard William Dowling appeared, at the age of nineteen , in Houston. Texas, in 1857. He is said to have been born in Tuam, 1 Confederate Veteran, IX (March, 1901), 120. Davis also described the Battle of Sabine Pass as having "no parallel in the annals of ancient or modem warfare" and as "without parallel in ancient or modem war." Davis to John F. Elliott, Beauvoir, Miss., July 29, 1884, ibid., IX (August, 1901), 367, and Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols.; New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1881), U, 239. 2 Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, September 11, 1863. See also obituary in Houston DaUy Telegraph, September 25, 1867. 399 400ANDREW FOREST MUIR County Galway, Ireland, some time between May and July, 1838, one of seven children of William and Mary Dowling. The surviving five of this brood all lived later in Texas, but how or why or when they got there can not be determined.3 The first record of Dick Dowling is his marriage, on November 30, 1857, to Annie Elizabeth (or Elizabeth Ann) Odium, daughter of Benjamin Odium, an Irish Catholic who had participated in the Battle of Refugio against General Urrea during the Texan Revolution.4 The young couple exchanged their vows in a private dwelling in Houston before the Reverend N. Feltin, pastor of St. Vincent's Church.5 To this union, that appears to have been a singularly happy one, five children were born, the last twenty-three days before Dowling's death, but Dowling and his wife had the misfortune to bury three ofthem.6 Dowling was a handsome man. He had a fair and rosy complexion, blue eyes, and reddish brown hair. He liked people and got along well with them, and there was always a smile on his lips. Until his death at the age of twenty-nine, he looked boyish, and everyone thought him younger than he was.7 Two months before his marriage, Dowling had become the sole owner of a saloon. On October 6, he had purchased the lease and fixtures of the Lone Star Hall, a two-storied building on the southeast corner of Main and Prairie, where Schulte-United is now located. On the ground floor was the bar and above it "a PLEASANTAND CAPACIOUS BILLIARD SALOON, inferior to none in the State." The saloon itself was known as the Shades,8 in recognition, it is said, of the sycamore and cottonwood trees that lined the two streets.9 In a newspaper advertisement Dowling stated that he offered the drinking public a choice assortment of champagne, creme de 3 Frances Robertson Sackett, Dick Dowling (Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., c1937), pp. 1-5. Another account shows that Dowling was born in July, 1836, but this date does not agree with his age at the time of death as Sackett's does. See Mrs. R. F. Pray, Dick Dowling's...