{"id":252235,"date":"2026-04-16T07:59:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T07:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/252235\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T07:59:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T07:59:19","slug":"u-s-navy-ships-parade-through-texas-gulf-coast-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/252235\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Navy ships parade through Texas Gulf Coast city"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cars littered the road approaching Galveston’s\u00a0Seawolf Park<\/a> on Wednesday morning as hundreds of onlookers gathered for the parade of ships that marked the beginning of Fleet Week Houston, the Texas debut of the annual weeklong joint outreach campaign by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard. (Galveston hosted Navy Week<\/a> in October 2024, but this is different.)<\/p>\n

Things were behind schedule, so remarks by Galveston Mayor Craig Brown and U.S. Fleet Forces Commander Adm. Karl O. Thomas turned into time-killing speeches by Texas Navy officials and patriotic tunes from Navy Band Southeast while the crowd craned their necks toward the horizon. One member of the crowd was Mike Smith, a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard who was visiting from Florida.<\/p>\n

“Seeing these ships go by is an amazing thing,” Smith told Chron. “I get chills, as they say, when you watch that stuff happen.”<\/p>\n

Eventually, a squadron of fighter jets shot overhead, and there they were: the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsage, followed by the USS Minneapolis-St. Paul and USS Cooperstown. The latter two are Freedom-class littoral combat ships, which prioritize speed and agility for operations in near-shore environments. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Edgar Culbertson rounded out the procession.<\/p>\n

Navy veterans Dwayne Sanders, of Angleton, and Barry Manning, who drove down from Katy, wanted to come because “it’s our guys,” Sanders said. Manning drove an assault boat for the USS Trenton (“I put Marines on the beach”), while Sanders loaded bombs onto aircraft on the USS Coral Sea.<\/p>\n

“I’m glad they’re coming here, because they only pick one or two places [a year],” Sanders said. “I’d like the local Texans to see what the Navy has to offer. I’m sure it’s kind of a recruiting tool [but] it’s good to see our guys. We always see the Marines and the Army most of the time, but I’m glad that Galveston was made available for this. Looks like they had a good turnout today, too.”<\/p>\n

“They ran out of parking,” Manning added.<\/p>\n

Fleet Week Houston runs through April 22 and includes more than 20 events at area locations, including Avenida Houston, Lone Star Flight Museum, Houston Maritime Center and Museum, Discovery Green, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Sylvan Beach Park in La\u00a0Porte. Public tours of the ships are available by signing up during Saturday’s Fleet Week Expo at POST Houston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cars littered the road approaching Galveston’s\u00a0Seawolf Park on Wednesday morning as hundreds of onlookers gathered for the parade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2084,1704,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-252235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-chrongulf","9":"tag-chronstaff","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}