Corpus Christi mayor “kidnapped” by pirates, walks the plank<\/a><\/p>\nAccording to Dillon Beal with the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History, the Texas coast\u2019s geography actually discouraged heavy pirate activity for centuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re standing in an exhibit about the 1554 shipwrecks,\u201d Beal said. \u201cThese ships weren\u2019t stopping here. They were just trying to follow the coast, follow the winds. Storm came, blew them into the barrier islands. You get a shipwreck.\u201d<\/p>\n
The museum\u2019s exhibit focuses on three Spanish ships that wrecked along the Texas coast in 1554 while attempting to travel from Mexico to Spain.<\/p>\n
Beal said shallow waters, uneven sand bars and dangerous coastal conditions made much of the Coastal Bend difficult to navigate and unattractive for large-scale settlement until the 1800s.<\/p>\n
Still, the area developed a reputation for lawlessness.<\/p>\n
During the 1830s, the Nueces River region sat along the frontier between Mexico and the Republic of Texas, creating opportunities for smugglers, traders and opportunists looking to profit in a sparsely populated area.<\/p>\n
One of those men was Henry Lawrence Kinney, a Pennsylvanian trader who established a trading post that eventually became Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe kind of settled here, maybe with, maybe without the permission of a local Mexican owner at the time,\u201d Beal said. \u201cThe owner of the land grant actually came up with an armed party and was intending to throw them out. And they actually worked out a deal where he legally bought the rights to operate his trading post and to bring new settlers in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beal said frontier regions often attracted people willing to take risks in legally and politically uncertain situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were a frontier between two great political powers,\u201d he said. \u201cAnytime you get a frontier, you get people attracted to the opportunities that provides. And he was certainly someone here intentionally because it was a bit of an unclear situation, and you can make money in unclear situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
While pirate lore \u2014 especially stories tied to Jean Lafitte \u2014 remains central to Buc Days traditions, historians say the Coastal Bend\u2019s true history is less about swashbuckling pirates and more about shipwrecks, frontier trade and the rough beginnings of a growing port city.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Buc Days celebration continues through the weekend in downtown Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Historians say the Coastal Bend saw few real pirates. Instead, shipwrecks, smugglers and Corpus Christi founder Henry Kinney…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-283759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283759","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=283759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}