Conducting a sneaky survey

Even though Spanish adventurers had sailed through the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Mexico since the 1500s, the coastline of Louisiana was uncharted until the time of the American Revolution, when the British sneaked a survey ship west from Florida to look things over.

Britain owned Florida at the time because Spain made an unfortunate alliance with France during the French and Indian War, only to see her prized possessions, Havana and Manila, fall to the victorious British. At war's end, Spain had to give Florida to Great Britain to get Havana back. But when the British moved to Pensacola, they found out there were no good maps of the Florida coast, or, for that matter, for any of the northern Gulf of Mexico. To fix that, they picked a cartographer named George Gauld to make some.

He began mapping the Florida coast in 1764 at Pensacola, studied the Tampa Bay region beginning in 1765, worked in the Mobile area in 1768, and studied Key West and the Caribbean beginning in 1773.

Then, in 1776, with the outbreak of the American Revolution, the mouth of the Mississippi River became important to the British. They were thinking about sailing up the river and invading the American colonies from the rear. But they didn't know much about the river's mouth and weren't sure warships could get through.

In May 1777, Gauld sailed aboard the survey ship Florida to take a look at the river's entrance. He found 14 feet of water at Southwest Pass, then continued to examine the coast "a little to the Westward of the Mississippi," sailing at least as far west as Timbalier Island in Terrebonne Bay before heading back to British territory for supplies.

Then, sailing west again, he entered Atchafalaya Bay and sailed ten or more miles up the Atchafalaya River, noting deep water in the river itself but that "there is such a Ledge of Oyster Banks between it and the Sea, that it is hardly possible to find a Channel even for a small Vessel." He charted Vermilion Bay and mapped Marsh Island, noted an old wreck at the mouth of the Mermentau River, and, on July 20, came to the mouth of the Calcasieu River, which he properly identified as the "Northernmost Part of the Gulf of Mexico to the Westward of the Mississippi."

At the mouth of the Sabine River, near modern Louisiana Point, according to Gauld's journal, "We found the Wreck of a Sloop ... [and] took aboard three men belonging to her, the Captain, Passenger, & all the rest of the People being Dead. The Savages had stripped the Vessel of her Sails & everything they could carry away. They had sailed in Nov. 1776 from Montago Bay [Jamaica] bound to the Mississippi, but falling in to the Westward, they bewildered themselves on that desolate Coast, & were cast away.

"These three Men in a small Boat wandered along the Coast for some Months in quest of the Mississippi; but after a fruitless search they had returned to the Wreck for some Provisions, and were just going away again when providentially the Surveying Sloop Florida appeared and relieved them from their distress July 22nd 1777, after they had been eight Months from Jamaica."

On the trip home, Gauld ran into a Spanish ship and nearly had what he called a "scuffle," after which, he noted, "the Governor of New Orleans (who in several Actions toward the English on the Mississippi, seems to have been rash and ill advised) took upon [himself] to send down an Armed Brig with a Large Party of Soldiers on purpose to take or destroy us."

Gauld  didn't know it, but the rash Gov. Bernardo de Galvez was about to behave even worse. He and a little army that included Acadians, Attakapas Indians, and all sorts of other folk, were soon to seize Baton Rouge, Mobile, and Gauld's home port of Pensacola.

 

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You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.