Galveston and a Shrimp Boat Disaster

Friday we drove our bikes in to the west end of Galveston, where there was a lot of free parking along the seawall.  We parked the truck, unstowed the bikes, and started a day of pedaling around Galveston. Here's Kathy readying her bicycle for the ride:

Galveston is a typical seashore resort town.  The seawall is about 9 miles long.  We pedaled its length and then a couple miles further out to the eastern point of the island.  The center of Galveston stretches for maybe 15 blocks either side of the amusement pier, which is at 25th Street:

From the pier, you can get a good look back at the city and the beach stretching west along the Gulf of Mexico:

The seawall was built soon after the 1900 "Mighty Storm" that decimated most of the original City of Galveston.  For the time, it was a huge effort to construct 9 miles of concrete seawall, some 17 feet high - two feet higher than the crest of the storm surge in the 1900 storm.  The seaward side of the wall is curved - concave, to reflect the energy of storm waves back out away from the island.  Below the wall is heavy riprap of giant boulders of pink granite or basalt, chiseled into big cubic chunks, and in some places like key-shaped stone pavers to prevent the waves from dislodging them.  Much of the beach is so narrow beyond the seawall that there is no sand - the waves crash directly on the boulders below the seawall.  However, down by the amusement pier and in other places nearby, and especially to the west, the beach widens and is actually a typical tourist beach.

As we bicycled to the east past the center of town, the development gave way to salt marsh.  By the time we got out nearly to East Beach, we saw lots of fishermen.  Most were fishing from jetties or rocks, but one enterprising fellow had brought his flotable device and was getting up close and personal with the fish:

East of the island is Galveston Bay, with channels deep enough for huge oil tankers to pass.  Standing out on the point overlooking the Bay, we noticed a boat wreck about 100 yards north along the shores, sitting up on a stone breakwater.  A Coast Guard boat was cruising slowly in the area as well:

A young man had a sophisticated video camera on a tripod and was filming, and we realized he may be a news cameraman.  We asked him how long the wreck had been there, and he said only for a couple of hours.  He said it was a shrimp boat whose engine had caught fire out in the Bay.  Luckily, a pleasure boat happened by and rescued the shrimp boat crew, but the boat itself was engulfed in flames.  A fireboat, he said, had come along to douse the flames but also used the power of the water from the hose to push the shrimp boat over to the shore until it perched up on the breakwater - presumably to keep it from damaging other boats, and to preserve it for an investigation.  There was nothing left to salvage from it.

Bicycling back into Galveston, we headed for a couple of historic and museum sites we wanted to see.  We stopped first at the film, "The Great Storm," a documentary using actual narratives, journals and interviews from people who survived it, telling the details of the 1900 hurricane.  Finishing this stop, we wandered over to the "Ocean Star," an oil drilling rig that has been installed on the harbor side of Galveston and has been remodeled so that people can tour it.

Here's a photo of the drilling rig as we approached it:

It was huge and slept a crew of 49 people.  The equipment, plaques, displays and videos explained the design, operation and features of drilling rigs and life aboard them.  The exhibit also explained technical aspects of exploration and drilling for oil.

By the time we finished our tour of the oil rig, it was nearly 5:00 pm, and we cycled the 6 miles or so back to the truck, fighting rush hour and the increasing numbers of tourists who had either been walking around Galveston that day, or were just down to start their visit on Friday afternoon.

The visit reminded us how much we enjoy the more bucolic setting of the campground in Jamaica Beach and how lucky we were to find a campground right by a stretch of sand that was so clean and unpopulated.  That evening was clear and warm, and the wind had died down.  The Gulf waters were a beautiful sapphire blue and calm as could be.  With some wispy clouds painted across the sky, sunset was quite a show, and we took it in from the campground hot tub before retiring to the rig for our evening wind-down.