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Horse Marines splash into action
On this day in 1836, a mounted ranger company in the service of the
Texas revolutionary army captured a Mexican ship. The rangers, under the
command of Maj. Isaac Watts Burton, had been dispatched by Gen. Thomas
J. Rusk to watch a stretch of the Gulf Coast south of San Antonio Bay.
When they heard of a suspicious vessel in Copano Bay, the rangers hid on
the shore and sent up distress signals. The ship responded first by
hoisting American and Texan signals, which were ignored. Only when the
ship raised Mexican signals did the rangers respond. Thus tricked into
thinking the supposedly distressed soldiers were Mexican, the captain
came ashore and was captured. With him as hostage, sixteen rangers rowed
out, boarded the Watchman, and seized its cargo of provisions for
the Mexican army. Burton and his men employed this decoying tactic twice
more on June 17, when they captured the Mexican ships Comanche
and Fanny Butler. For these unlikely captures at sea, the mounted
rangers were dubbed "Horse Marines."
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- HORSE MARINES
- BURTON, ISAAC WATTS
- RUSK, THOMAS JEFFERSON
- TEXAS REVOLUTION
- COPANO, TX
- COPANO BAY
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Bilingual instruction mandated in Texas schools (1973)
- Convention meets to discuss sectional crisis (1850)
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