Gary Cartwright

“Most of the other ships in the U.S. fleet had retreated out to sea, but the USS Westfield had run aground. While another officer negotiated a truce with CSA forces, Captain Renshaw decided to blow up the Westfield rather than surrender it to the enemy. The U.S. commander and some of his men laid a trail of gunpowder leading to the ship’s magazine, lighted it, and took to the lifeboats. But something went wrong. The Westfield didn’t immediately explode. Renshaw went back to check the fuse, at which point the ship blew to bits, killing Renshaw and fourteen of his men. When word of Renshaw’s death reached the fleet, Renshaw’s second-in-command ordered it to set sail for New Orleans. The federal troops on Kuhn’s Wharf, abandoned though not defeated, had no choice except to surrender. The Confederates had captured six ships, sunk one, run another aground, and taken nearly 400 prisoners. They had lost 143 men, killed or wounded, and one ship, but they had won the Battle of Galveston and secured the Island, for whatever it was worth.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island

“In their compromise with the peculiarities of Island living, Galvestonians learned to tolerate degrees of squalor. The sweet, heavy smell of oleander and the exotic fragrances of green bananas and South American oranges swirled with the scent of fish, decaying weeds, and open sewers. Originally, the Galveston sewer system had consisted of pigs that ran wild and ate all forms of human waste, including excrement. Things had improved, but not much. Until the 1890s, when water and sewer service became generally available, citizens still stored the products of their outhouses in barrels, which were collected by night in horse-drawn carts and dumped into the Gulf.”
― Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island