Fort Manhassett

To protect Texas against Federal invasion during the Civil War, Confederate General John B. Magruder ordered the construction of a fort on September 4, 1863, four days before Dick Dowling and his small company won a Confederate victory against Union ships and gunboats at Sabine Pass. After the Federal retreat, the Confederate coastal defense program continued because Federal blockading vessels still patrolled Gulf waters and the threat of more invasions was feared. A storm on September 28 and 29, 1863, drove ashore the Federal ship Mannahassett, which was carrying 300 tons of coal, and Confederate troops seized the ship along with its cargo. Col. Valery Sulakowski, formerly of the Austrian Army, designed Fort Manhassett, whose name evidently was adapted from that of the captured ship, and Major Getulius Kellersberger, a Swiss-born engineer who had settled in America some years earlier, oversaw the construction. By October 1863, five companies garrisoned the fort's five redoubts and manned its ten cannon. Fort Manhassett soldiers also participated in the capture of two Union ironclad ships at Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana, on May 6, 1864.

Port Arthur, Texas · United States