At the Civil War battle of Sabine Pass on September 8, 1863, Lieutenant Richard W. Dowling and fewer than 50 troops of the Davis Guards won a victory by preventing Union gunboats from advancing up the pass. The U.S.S. Clifton and the U.S.S. Arizona ran aground early in the battle, and the Clifton and the U.S.S. Sachem, both disabled by cannon fire, surrendered, while the Arizona and the U.S.S. Granite City returned to federal headquarters at New Orleans. Afterward, more than 300 Federal troops became prisoners of war, while others were killed or missing, many from the Sachem when its boiler exploded after a direct hit. John Marshall Carson, a Confederate commissary sergeant aboard the C.S.S. Uncle Ben, helped tow the captured gunboats to shore and aided with other crew members in removing the dead. Confederates then dug a long ditch near the Dorman Hotel on the northern edge of the Sabine Pass townsite and near what would become the Port Arthur Canal, where they buried a reported 28 Union troops; many others were never recovered, and 20th-century excavations later confirmed the burial location, much of which has since eroded away. Today, the U.S. soldiers and sailors killed and missing at the pass are remembered along with the Confederate troops who fought them there.
