DICK DOWLING.

Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., n.d. [1937]. xiv,80pp. Frontis. portrait of Dowling. Blue pebbled cloth, title in gilt on the cover. First edition. INSCRIBED. Slight soiling to the perimeter of the book, overall, very good+. On September 8,1863, four Union gunboats and 4,000 troops attacked Fort Griffin, a Confederate position controlling the Sabine River Pass, dividing Texas and Louisiana on the Gulf Coast. These forces were opposed by forty-five men, one engineer, and one doctor under the command of Lieutenant Rickard William (Dick) Dowling. In what became known as the Second battle of Sabine Pass, Dowling and his Davis Guards fired 107 times in 35 minutes, a rate of fire almost unheard of for heavy artillery. The result was the disabling of the Union gunboats The Sachem and Clifton, and the crippling of the Arizona along with 350 prisoners, thirteen cannons, and a large quantity of small arms, ammunition, and provisions. There is information the Dowling family, his marriage to Anne Odlum, their family, the recapture of Galveston, the First Battle of Sabine Pass, and Dowling’s postwar carrier as a successful businessman in Houston. Dowling would die of Yellow Fever on September 23, 1867. Unlike many books on Dowling, this one provides material beyond his military exploits.