Jim Bradshaw: When schooners hauled lumber to 'Island City'

The railroad that was finally built across the southwest Louisiana prairies in 1880 united two halves of the region that were growing independently, and quite differently, from each other before it came along.
One half faced toward the east and New Orleans for most of its commerce, but most of the communities west of the Mermentau River did as much, or more, business in Galveston. A lot of that trade was built around lumber.
In 1868, three years after the close of the Civil War and a dozen years before the first railroad, a letter to the Lake Charles Echo, signed only “Calcasieu,” noted that “the 20 steam saw mills of Calcasieu Parish furnish the chief supply of the Galveston lumber trade.”
In those days “Imperial” Calcasieu — so called because it was said to be as big as some European empires — also included what are today Allen, Beauregard, Jeff Davis and Cameron parishes.
Fourteen of the mills “Calcasieu” wrote about were on that river, the other six were on either the Mermentau or the Sabine.
The writer said 30 sailing schooners carried lumber to Galveston and brought all sorts of things back home.
That number of schooners seems low to me. By the late 1860s Calcasieu mills were turning out more than 1.5 million board feet of lumber each month, which seems to me to be more than 30 boats could easily haul. But it may not have required many more than that.
The schooners used in the lumber trade could typically carry from ten to sixty thousand board feet of lumber each trip.
The keeper of the lighthouse at the mouth of the Calcasieu kept a record of boats entering and leaving the river and of what they were carrying.
In each of the first three months of 1869, according to the Echo, he logged 100 or more boats heading into the Gulf, together carrying about 1.2 million feet of lumber each month. He also recorded more than 100 boats entering the river from the Gulf in each of those months.
Those numbers, the newspaper pointed out, “only refer to the Calcasieu River. Both the Mermentau and the Sabine Rivers do considerable business of the same nature.”
One hundred trips does not require 100 boats.
A good many of the goings and comings counted at the lighthouse were almost certainly the same boats going back and forth. With a steady breeze a one-way trip took 26 hours, according to “Calcasieu,” so they could make several round trips to Galveston each month.
However many there were, the south Louisiana boats helped make Galveston a busy place.
“It seems strange that the largest parish in Louisiana should be restricted in its commercial interests almost exclusively to Texas,” “Calcasieu’s” letter continued, “and yet this has always been the case. … At present, with the exception of one or two schooners making an occasional trip to New Orleans, the merchants and farmers of Calcasieu have no freight communication with the Crescent City except by way of Galveston.”
It appears, if the writer can be believed, there wasn’t much that New Orleans offered that couldn’t also be found in the “Island City.”
“The Galveston market with its separate flesh, fish, fruit and vegetable stalls, its refreshment stands, and, at sunrise, its thronging masses of buyers representing many nations and almost all colors reminds you forcibly of the French Market in New Orleans,” the writer said.
The shipping in the harbor, the elegant street cars, the rush of drays, the numerous restaurants, lager beer, liquor, and ice cream saloons, and the daily and nightly auctions are to the Louisianian so many reminiscences of his own Crescent City.”
And, if a bit of family history is any indication, food, liquor and other fine amenities were not the only good things to be found in Galveston.
My grandmother’s grandfather, Daniel Goos, was one of the pioneer Calcasieu millers and the owner of a fleet of schooners that hauled his lumber to Galveston, Matamoras, Mexico, and points west.
He was also the proud father of 10 daughters.
Half of them married men who lived in, worked in, or sailed from “the beautiful Island City.”
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.