Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire This morning at the Alamo

The dawn volley, fired at 6am, commemorating the 181st anniversary of the Fall of the Alamo.

It was the possibility of doing this that got me into reenacting the in the first place. After 5 years still a high point of my year.

A short pre-dawn remembrance ceremony for the men on both sides who fell, 800 killed or mortally wounded within a space of ninety minutes.









Couple of interesting points about this last photo.

First off, me (the guy in the straw top hat) and the guy next to me on my left were shooting rifles with double set triggers, when the command to "aim" was given both of us set the triggers on our rifles such that a mere touch would set the front trigger off. Both these rifles have very fast lock times such that when the front trigger was barely touched upon the command to "fire" ours were the first to go off by likely hundredths of a second.

The guy in the near end of the line with the brilliant flash in the pan was using my smoothbore, it has a big clunky lock with a long arc plus a heavy trigger. A microsecond later fire would come out the barrel.

Down the far end of the line are the guys playing the Mexican Soldados, their clunky Brown Bess muskets are barely starting to fire even though the actual command was given in Spanish from their end of the line.

Next thing to notice is the apparent airburst in front that other rifleman to my immediate left. I head that go off, it was loud. His powder had gotten damp this rainy weekend, musta been a little chunk of powder that cleared the barrel before detonating.



Birdwatcher

Well done Birdy!

That is great! I had no idea that y'all had re-enactments of the Battle of the Alamo.
I would love to see that.
Glad to see that y'all are keeping history alive there in San Antonio.
I will drive through San Antonio once again on Wednesday in the big truck. Would love to go by and see the Alamo but no way in the big truck.

How do you go about getting involved in this ? I'd like to participate if possible.

So now that Trump is President, does that mean the Texicans win the re-enactments...

Thanks, Mike. I really hope that someday I'll be there to attend the ceremony, and pay my respects.
7mm

Awesome man!

Thank you for keeping history alive.

Well done.

Very nicely done, Birdwatcher!

Was down that way visiting my nephew and niece Christmas before last. Couldn't miss seeing the Alamo for anything. Would have loved to have see a reenactment or remembrance of any sort. Mayhaps next year...

Tip-o'-the-hat to ya, Mike. Remember The Alamo!!

Thanks for posting those pictures, Mike! And whom ever took the photos did a great job also! One of these days, I'm going to make it down on another March 6th to see the ceremony.

its cool

For twenty years they had a reenactment of sorts on the Alamo Plaza, scroll through the 55 images on this link...

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Story-of-Alamo-still-changing-10978968.php

...the last one was 2015. What happened was the city got worried about liability, and I'll agree it was pretty crowded and close although great fun for us reenactors (we used to die heroically at 11:00am and again at 2:00 pm, the hard part being pratfalls onto concrete while protecting the expensive firearm, and if ya gotta be massacred it might as well be by some of your buddies in fancy uniforms :grin).

The BIG problem though was every time the cannons went off, little bits would fall from the roof of the Alamo church itself on the inside. They used sophisticated equipment on the walls and found they were riddled with voids, the soft limestone blocks having crumbled and dissolved in places over about the last 280 years since its construction. So now they are all injected with silicon but the structure remains intrinsically fragile.

Anyhoo... our big annual reenactment shindig is at Goliad in two weeks where everyone camps out inside the walls of the old Spanish fort. There'll be cannons and cavalry...



The other big one is San Jacinto in Houston in April....





Compared to Goliad though that one runs hot, muddy and with a lot of bugs.

Birdwatcher

Excellent!

Typing this near Fannin.

Thanks Bird Man!!

The most expensive part is the firearm, the hardest part is the footwear. "Jurying" (passing inspection that your gun, clothes and gear are really pre-1840) is pretty lax, although the hard core that show up every year are pretty serious about their stuff. That being said, the Second Texas Revolution is about the easiest reenacting outside of buckskinning there is because everything from 18th Century flintlocks to Paterson Colt revolvers were present in Texas, and at least a few of just about every group of people under the sun.

My own interest is the settlement of a few hundred Irish Catholics around San Patricio just south of present day Mathis near Corpus.

Most guys were still using flintlocks out here in Texas although percussion weapons were present, but if ya ran out of caps back then it was a long walk to get more.

Half-stock percussion plains rifles like TC Hawkens are doable even though they were mostly 1840's - 1860's as long as you remove the factory rear sight for a simple notch or buckhorn.

Hard part about the shoes is finding ones that fit since you buy 'em sight unseen for the most part over the 'net. Most guys in the 1830's were wearing straight-last shoes (ie. both identical no right or left) but these are expensive and the one company that has 'em (CD Jarnigans) don't offer them in my size.

Most of us use plain 'ol Civil War brogans which, other than being right and left, look pretty much the way shoes looked for the fifty years prior to that war. I get mine from Fall Creek Sutlers....

https://fcsutler.com/fcshoes.asp

The BIG plus of Fall Creek is that if they say they are size 10EEE they really are that size.

And a word of advice: if you go for historically-correct hobnails on your boots or shoes be aware that they can chew up floors and offer little traction on concrete or asphalt.

So if you show up with a correct gun and clothes you're in, that's all there is to it.

'Nother plus about 1830's Texian is they were all a bunch of individuals rather than soldiers, consequently no wool uniforms, marching, drills, command structures etc etc....

Its about the most laid-back form of reenacting there is outside of Mountain Man rondys.

Birdwatcher

Mike- Really appreciate your your Texas history posts and pix like these. I've only made it to Texas once....never as far as the Alamo. Both of my (older) boys have lived down there. I would like to go down and spend some time. It's a special place.

Remember the Alamo!!

Remember Goliad