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Hydraulic dredge Comstock catches fire
On this day in 1913, the Comstock caught fire off the mouth of
the Brazos River. The hydraulic hopper dredge General C. B. Comstock
was built for the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1895 and named for
Cyrus B. Comstock, a prominent nineteenth-century corps of engineers
officer. The Comstock was ordered for service in Galveston and
designed for southern climates, with a metal-sheathed wooden hull and an
airy, well-ventilated superstructure. The vessel traveled to Galveston
on her own keel in the summer of 1895 and spent most of her career
there. The dredge was a very efficient machine that moved material at a
cost of approximately 7.4 cents a cubic yard. She could move four or
five full loads in a ten-hour day; the hoppers could be discharged in 7½
minutes. After being driven ashore by the Galveston hurricane of 1900,
she could not be freed until a channel fifty feet wide and eight feet
deep was dug to release her. After 1910 she was lent to the Wilmington
Corps District and sent to work first at Aransas Pass and afterward at
Freeport. On February 17, 1913, she caught fire and burned to the water
line. The crew was quickly rescued by fishermen from Quintana and the
life-saving crew from Surfside, but the Comstock was a total
loss. The wreck was relocated during jetty construction in June 1987 and
investigated and identified in 1988. The artifacts are in a collection
at Corpus Christi Museum.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- COMSTOCK
- GALVESTON, TX
- GALVESTON HURRICANE OF 1900
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Art museum chartered at crossroads city (1930)
- LULAC founded (1929)
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