The cannonballs smashed into houses, sending bits of broken boards and roof shingles everywhere while the Union guns continued to boom from the water.

The Civil War had been raging for more than a year when two federal ships steamed into sight just off the coast of Port Lavaca on Oct. 31, 1862.

Thursday marks the 150th anniversary of the end of that battle.

The town was known as Lavaca then, a small port town two days sail from Galveston that might have been left entirely unprotected if it weren't a hub for shipping cotton, the export that fueled the entire Confederate economy.

The U.S. Army had started a blockade of Southern ports in 1861, but it took until October 1862 for federal ships to reach the Texas Coast. The federal troops had already captured Galveston and moved into Matagorda Bay to take Lavaca as well.

Robert Rhodes, executive officer of the U.S. steamer Clifton, wrote about what they saw moving through the green waters of the bay in a letter reprinted in the New York Daily Tribune.

"It is a beautiful bay, and it is full of oysters, and very nice ones at that," Rhodes wrote.

Rhodes allowed his men to go oystering whenever they pleased and he sent a boat ashore to kill a steer and bring in some beef.

They had just come from Indianola, a bustling port town, where the people had promptly surrendered to them. The Clifton then chased down a schooner loaded with 18 bales of cotton. When they crossed the bar and anchored in the waters near Lavaca, an officer was sent to shore with a flag of truce and orders to demand surrender within an hour and a half.

The town was guarded by Capt. Daniel Shea's company of Texas Light Artillery, a small outfit that had been decimated by yellow fever. Shea, flanked by four residents of the town, met the Union officer as he came ashore with his order to surrender. Shea said he was there to defend the town and would do so to the best of his ability and by whatever means he had, according to a report filed by Lt. George Conklin of the Confederate Army.

Shea asked for time to get the people still in the grips of the yellow fever epidemic out of town and the officer gave him an hour and a half.

When the time had passed, the Union troops opened fire. There were still women and children in town as cannonballs came flying in, smashing homes and businesses to pieces. Shea's men, many still weak from the fever, returned fire, and the battle lasted until night.

While the soldiers worked to defend the town, the women served coffee, bread and meat, according to Conklin.

The Union soldiers couldn't see any Confederate soldiers on the battlements, but they could see a Confederate flag and they watched it, hoping to see it lowered as the two sides exchanged fire. They watched as their shells shattered houses, turning the structures into shards of boards and shingles.

The next day they began firing again, but Rhodes recorded that the Confederate flag was still flying and their ammunition had been exhausted. The federal ships steamed away and the battle was over. The town was damaged, but the only death reported was that of a St. Bernard dog, according to one newspaper account.

The battle was one of many that occurred as the Union attempted to take control of the Texas Coast.

Rhodes, the Union soldier on the Clifton, became commanding officer of the ship before he was killed at the Battle of Sabine Pass. Union troops had captured Galveston, but the port was recaptured soon after the Battle of Port Lavaca, the only major Confederate port reclaimed during the war.

When the battle was over, those who had fled their homes came back to find cannonballs lodged in their attics and their living rooms.

Repelling the Union Navy helped keep the town out of Union hands for another year, George Anne Cormier, director of the Calhoun County Museum, said.

"It kept Lavaca out of Union hands until 1863. They would take your food and take whatever they needed to feed and clothe their men. It was like any other war," Cormier said.

On Saturday, Port Lavaca will commemorate the anniversary with Blast the Bay, a festival featuring live music, concessions and various activities including a kite flying contest and fireworks.

The town has changed a lot since the Union ships first came into sight 150 years ago, but it's important to keep the history of that battle alive, Port Lavaca Mayor Jack Whitlow said.

"It tells where we came from and how the town developed," Whitlow said. "There are a lot of deep roots here, people who's ancestors were in this battle, and it's important to remember those times."

Cormier agreed.

"It's celebrating the tenacity of the people of Lavaca and the Port Lavaca it became," she said.

• • One of the townspeople, Edgar Singer, a businessman and Mason of Ohio, helped man the guns during the fight. Singer, nephew of the inventor of the Singer sewing machine, swore Union ships would never be able to get into a Confederate harbor so easily and joined the Army, according to an article by Mark Ragan on history.net.

  • Singer invented a floating torpedo that would be submerged in the water and triggered by a passing vessel. Singer went on to work on the H.L. Hunley, one of the first submarines created and the first vessel of its kind to sink an enemy warship. Singer worked on inventing various types of torpedos throughout the war and recruited Masons to help produce the torpedos. At the end of the war, he walked into a Federal office in Port Lavaca and signed his parole papers.

  SOURCE: History.net