The Ballad Of Dick Dowling
By A. M. Sullivan
Before the oil-stained eddies glistened
Along the steaming Sabine meadows,
Before the wildcat drillers listened
For the belch from the earth's deep shadows,
The sleepy silences had heard
Below the shell road to the Pass
The sound of many an angry word
From lips of steel and from tongues of brass.
The year was eighteen and sixty-three,
The first week of a hot September.
A copper mist burned on the sea
And the sky was stained three shades of umber
When sentinels on Fort Griffin's wall
Saw light flash through the murk and haze,
Red and green and blue, then all
The spectrum set the sky ablaze.
The guards who saw the colors flame
cried alarum to the drowsy men,
And one, Dick Dowling was his name,
Studied each flash with a soldier's ken.
"The lights are talking and what they tell
Have an ugly meaning for the Davis Guards,"
Dick Dowling whispered, "and I can spell
Trouble ahead in the rainbow words."
Dick propped the rampart for his fighting brood
With iron rails and with broken logs,
And the bastion built of rubble and wood
Leered with defiance across the bogs.
Fort Griffin hunched at the Sabine Pass,
Blocking the Yankee road to the west;
The water darkened like leaden glass,
And that night no man took his rest.
The Union gunboats came on in force
To clear the river and take the land
Wth fifteen hundred men and horse
and General Franklin in command.
Confederate Chieftan was J. B. Magruder,
With Lieutenant Odlum at the Sabine post,
And young Dick Dowling at the fort and leader
Who measured the need against the cost.
General Magruder was in Houston town
When he heard the news. Time was short.
Should they fight or run? With a sudden frown
He scribbled a message to the fort:
"The foe are many and we are few,
Lieutenant Dowling, yours the voice
To spike or fire the guns, and you
Alone can make a soldier's choice."
The Davis Guards, they were Irishmen
Who spoke with a soft and singing tongue,
From the Dublin quay and the Kerry fen,
Peasant and scholar, and all were young.
They left their land in the days of famine,
Away from hunger the men took flight.
They left forbidden pools of the salmon,
They left their fields in the hour of blight.
Dick, red-thatched and twenty-two,
Spoke to his merry and quiet men,
"They are many and we are few.
Now is our chance - and never again.
"Who stands with me? And leave who will
Leaves now before the foeman speaks."
And no man moved from the sodden hill,
The color rose in Dowling's cheeks
And the fire sparked in Dowling's eyes,
"Here we stand when the gunboats come,
Here we fight till the last man dies
Or the Yanks march in to a captive drum."
At dawn Dick Dowling sat by the kettle
Munching dark bread, sipping dark tea
When a cannon boomed and red hot metal
Splashed the cinders on Dowling's knee.
The ball from the Clinton came sudden and rude
And no man asked for his second sup,
Dick Dowling murmured, "His aim is good.
Man your stations. Up, men, up!"
Balls hit the bastion and disappeared
Like marbles hurled at a giant sponge,
The Clifton's gunners cursed and jeered,
Heard the silence and thought it strange.
Back drew the Clifton from the Oyster Reef,
Back to the waters where the transports tossed,
And Dowlings gunners aired their grief
At Dick for the fight moments lost.
At three the boats crept back for duty,
The Clifton first and the Sachem second,
The Arizona and the Granite City
Pushed their bows where the Lone Star beckoned.
The gunboats belched and the sky rained iron,
Hot and cold, but the range grew dim
As dust clouds swarmed on the fort's environ
And Dowling's gunners looked at him.
"When shall we answer?" "Not now," he said,
"Our range is only a mile and a half.
I'll tell you when," and he risked his head
For a look at the foe and a gentle laugh.
"The Yankee guns spill more in a minute
Than we can answer with all our powder.
This is our game and we can win it;
They talk loud, but we'll talk louder
"With a range point blank and no gun misses.
Closer they come. Now watch my fuse.
Look for the moment when my powder hisses
And the rich man falls for the poor man's ruse."
Rumor was rife on the Union craft
That dummy cannon were guarding the fort,
And gunboats drinking a shallow draft
Bellowed their challenge without retort.
Close to the shore the Sachem drifted
Five hundred yards from McKernan's gun,
Clear as a picture as the warm wind shifted
And the bright brass glistened in the turning sun.
Dick Dowling, who came from Tuam town
In Galway, signalled above the noise.
He lit his taper, waved up and down.
"Now is the moment. Blast 'em boys."
The Sachem strummed a piosonous lyre
Of grape and cannister like a siren draft
Michael McKernan was the first to fire
And he centered his sights fore and aft.
"Make this count, Mike," Dowling shouted
Over the whine of the Sachem's shell.
His eye was keen and no man doubted
His gun would sound the Sachem's knell.
Mike hit the mark as the fort spoke thunder,
And the Sachem reeled with a massive shock,
Her boilers blew, and her bow went under,
And her bridge deck scattered like a broken crock.
The white flag climbed the Sachem's mast,
Asking pity for a mortal wound
And the Clifton met the second blast,
Withered in anguish and ran aground.
The gunners in the fort took careful aim
At the Arizona's cushioned hide,
And her cotton bakes leaped high in flame
When the red hot metal burst inside.
The gunboat ran with a crippled gait
Tossing her store to the muddy water,
And none of the troopships dared to wait
As the Clifton and Sachem asked for quarter.
The gunboats totaled their fatal toll -
One hundred killed, three hundred taken,
With cannon lost and the easy goal
To clear the Sabine Pass forsaken.
The fight was over in half an hour
When the Granite City ran for the sea,
But not in glory as Fort Griffin's tower
Lifted the banner of victory.
Twenty two transports with mud-churling wheels
Scurried from the battle like a harried pack
As six iron terriers barked at their heels
And barked so loud they never came back.
Dick Dowling's loss was a single man
Nicked by a splinter in the hand and knee;
None other hurt since the fight began
And nothing spoiled but porridge and tea.
Crocker, captain of the Clifton, asked,
"Who leads the gunners of the deadly aim?"
A young man spoke, his visage masked,
"Lieutenant Dowling, sir's my name."
"You lad? And where are all of your men?"
"Here they are all forty-seven,"
Dick Laughed, "We were all sitting at breakfast when
You tried to send us to Hell - or Heaven,
"And all hands quit to answer back
And since Fate picks our side the winner,
Captain, t'would be a social lack
Unless we asked your boys to dinner."
Dick and his Jefferson Davis Guards
Will live forever at the Sabine Pass
Inviting the ghosts of the Irish bards
Who sing by the sandless hourglass.
He stands in bronze and he stands in granite,
Facing the river where the fleet turned tail;
The stone lists the Davis Guards upon it,
Names that rhyme in the songs of the Gael:
Daugherty, Delany, Donovan, Degan,
Hennessey, Hassett, Drummond, and Flood,
Higgins, and Huggins, Fleming and Eagan,
And Hurley who boasted his royal blood,
Monohan, Plunkett, Gleason and Powers,
And Sullivans three from the town of Kenmare,
McDonnell and Wilson from Antrim's wet bowers,
Malone from Wexford, O'Hara from Clare.
McKeever from Louth and Wilson from Derry,
Walsh out of Wicklow, McNealis, McGrath
From the mountains of Cork, and Fitzgerald from Kerry,
And Michael McKernan, the lad from Armagh.
In bronze and granite men sing of their glory
From Beaumont south to the wide Rio Grande.
If you pause at The Pass you can read the proud story
Of young Dick Dowling and his stalwart band.
A. M. Sullivan was an award winning American poet and the Secretary-General of the American Irish Historical Society. He wrote The Ballad Of Dick Dowling in 1954. He stated "The ballad story sticks as close to the details of the battle as the limitations of space and the dictates of rhyme permit."
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