Fort Manhassett

Fort Manhassett. (7.5 Miles West). 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 the famous Confederate victory won by Dick Dowling and his small company against Union ships and gunboats at Sabine Pass. After the Federal retreat, the Confederate coastal defense program continued, since 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 a Federal ship, the "Mannahassett" which was carrying 300 tons of coal. 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. 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 five redoubts of the new fort and manned its ten cannon. Fort Manhassett soldiers participated in the capture of two Union ironclad ships at Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana on May 6, 1864.