There I stood in the middle of Tres Palacios Bay, part of Matagorda Bay, aboard a sailing vessel named La Petite Belle. The crew and I had set out from Palacios into the same gulf waters that French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, had sailed 338 years before.
Hopefully, our seafaring adventure wouldn’t meet the same fate as the French explorer’s crew.
Our expedition started in the town’s historic district at the City by the Sea Museum, where every era of Palacios’ colorful past is brought to life through exhibits and artifacts. Most interesting (and tragic) is the story of La Salle’s doomed voyage to Texas. La Belle, one of his four ships, wrecked on a sandbar and sank into the bay’s muddy bottom in 1686. Luckily the Frenchman was already on land, exploring Texas.
In the 1990s, archaeologists found the ship and resurrected its hull along with 1.6 million French artifacts. The preserved remains are on display at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.
La Petite Belle, a half-sized, 30-foot-long re-creation of the original, now sails the high seas of Texas, giving tourists a taste of maritime history and adventure. The jolly crew of museum volunteers seemed seaworthy as they called out commands across the deck and navigated our ship using 17th-century techniques.
I simply walked around, rattling ropes and trying not to expose my greenhorn lack of sailing knowledge. While this isn’t a pirate ship, I jumped with excitement when the crew announced it was time to fire the cannons. We loaded them up with pyrotechnics and yelled “fire in the hole” as we shot at imaginary ships.
The ship is small, but the adventure is surely Texas-sized.
