Zavala

See also: Zavala, Mozambique and Zavala, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The Zavala was a Texas Navy ship after the Texas Revolution.

The official Texas Navy launched in January 1836, with the purchase of four schooners: Invincible, Brutus, Independence, and Liberty. They helped win independence by preventing a Mexican blockade of the Texas coast, seizing Mexican ships carrying reinforcements and supplies to its army, and sending their cargoes to the Texas volunteer army.

By the middle of 1837, all of the ships had been lost at sea, run aground, captured, or sold. The Zavala got its start in 1836 as a ship named the Charleston; in 1838 the Republic of Texas started to rebuild its fleet and purchased the Charleston for $120,000 and renamed it Zavala (in honor of Don Lorenzo de Zavala, the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas).

Zavala was laid up in Galveston harbor after a single cruise as a warship, where she deteriorated and was eventually run aground purposely to prevent her sinking. Zavala then sank into the mud of the harbor, and was eventually filled over.[1]

Clive Cussler, founder of NUMA, claims to have located the hulk of the Zavala beneath a parking lot in the former Bean's Wharf area of the harbor in 1986 [2].

External links

• Texas Navy hosted by The Portal to Texas History. A survey of the Texas Navy during the Texas Revolution and the Republic Era. Includes maps, sketches, a list of ships of the Texas Navy, and a chronology. Also includes photographs of 20th century U.S. Navy ships named after Texans or Texas locations.