We could not remember ever having seen Fannin, usually so gallant and at times almost rash, so undecided as he was during the last eight days..... it seemed that one plan after another passed through his head. The large number seemed to confuse him and to hinder him in his usually prompt manner of reaching a decision on a given matter and putting it into speedy execution. Herman Ehrenberg.
Col. Fanning and Capt. Westover came to me, Col. Fanning asked me what I thought about retreating and leaving the fort; I told him that my opinion was that is was too late; for I made no doubt from what we had seen that we were entirely surrounded by the enemy, and that we had something like six weeks provisions and men enough to keep the enemy from breaking in for some time, as we had then about 360 men. Col. Fanning seemed to have his mind unsettled about it. Capt. Westover agreed with me, and said if we had left some three or four days before, he thought we might have escaped; but he made no doubt that we were surrounded now. Abel Morgan.
The only cavalry available to Fannin at this time were the Mobile Grays, twenty five to thirty men (depending upon the account) raised and financed by one Albert C. Horton, a wealthy planter from Georgia by way of Alabama who was termed their Colonel. By far the most famous member of this company had been the gallant and heroic James Butler Bonham, second cousin to Travis, who had willfully died with Travis at the Alamo, returning there to almost certain death just three days before the Fall, feeling obliged by honor to carry the message that no help was imminent.
The exact nature of the weaponry carried by the Mobile Grays is uncertain. Fighting as cavalry does seem to have appealed to those of the well-heeled Southern planter class, probably in part because of the implied romantic associations with knighthood, the works of Sir Walter Scott being very popular at that time. So we have Travis, Bonham, Horton and the future President of the Texas Republic, Mirabeau Lamar, all opting to go this route.
Cavalry represented a considerable expense above merely volunteering as a foot soldier. First was the cost of a good horse, the gear, and the upkeep. The single largest expense was the generally preferred weapon; a double shotgun, by this era either flintlock or percussion (worth noting here that the first user group to widely disseminate the new percussion cap technology had been bird hunters). Mirabeau Lamar's fine piece is currently on display in Austin, a custom weapon for which he famously paid $650 plus shipping, an exorbitant sum at the time.
To see his shotgun.....
http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/discover/artifacts/mirabeau-b-lamars-shotgunWe know that Travis brought a double to the Alamo, and was killed while firing it over the battlements on that last morning. Presumably a wealthy guy like Horton carried one too.
A double shotgun and a brace of horse pistols; interestingly the exact same weaponry some accounts say were carried by the famous trapper Jedediah Smith at the time of his fatal ambush by Comanches five years previously in present-day Kansas. While it doesn't seem likely that all of Horton's unit carried doubles, one can infer that they were heavily armed by the standards of the time, at least relative to De la Garza's vaqueros.
Texas, with its wide open spaces and vast distances, was a demanding location of horses and horsemen. Certainly the incoming Anglos would rise to the challenge, South Texas being where the classic cowboy culture, based upon the vaquero and ranchero model, would originate in the coming decades.
But overall, Horton's cavalry do not seem to have shone in their brief day of combat. One imagines too heavy and too slow relative to their lightweight and mobile opponents. Then too the well-handled rifle would turn out to be the queen of Plains combat, especially against opponents like Plains Indians and Tejano Vaqueros, neither of whom would stand to accept close combat with heavily armed cavalry.
On the evening of the 17th, while Urrea was actively closing the net around Fannin, Horton's reconnaissance of the area did at least discover Colonel Juan Morales and his 500 men, down from Bexar, camped on Urrea's orders just three miles above Goliad, but did not find the other Mexican forces gathering about them.
On the 18th, when Fannin had intended to evacuate, the garrison was distracted by a show of force by a large group of De la Garza's vaqueros openly appearing before the fort, across the river by the mission church. In response the Mobile Grays launched a furious charge, only to have the vaqueros predictably flee before them.
What followed was a protracted series of charges and counter charges, mostly for sport on the part of the vaqueros, and at one point involving the cannon of the fort and an infantry charge by the Texians, wading the San Antonio River up to their necks.
Few if any lives were lost, as Thomas Lindley of
"Texas Ilaid" fame pointed out, all that was really accomplished was to distract the Texians' attention and to wear out the Grays' horses.
Meanwhile Urrea continued his methodical preparations.
Birdwatcher
