'Remember the Alamo......'

I have just been reading a review of a new book about the Alamo, ‘The Blood of Heroes’ by James Donovan. It has a rather different take from what we have been led to believe.

The conventional view is that the heroes were Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie (although I thought that one or other of them played little part in the final battle, being sick with fever).

The book asserts that Travis was the real hero, whereas he has been presented as a somewhat foppish and ineffective officer. But it is said that what he commanded was a rabble of ne’er-do-wells, outlaws, misfits, riff-raff and general  larrikins - the GTT brigade. He forged this unlikely shower into a disciplined and very brave force that held out for 13 days against an army ten times its size.

Donovan also says that the ‘line in the sand’ was no myth, and only one man failed to cross it.

The real significance is that the battle was no defeat but a decisive action that delayed the advance of Santa Anna, enabling Sam Houston to train and equip his raw army. Santa Anna then made two basic military errors in outstripping his supply lines and dividing his force.

Houston then gave Santa Anna a whacking at San Jacinto at unfavourable odds of 2 to 1, and so we have Texas.

It seems also that the lost settlement of Roanoke might have been identified. A map of the North Carolina coast line made for the first expedition in 1585 has a small patch on it which nobody thought to lift, although it has been in the British Museum since 1866. Under the patch is what appears to be the settlement. It’s underneath an Arnold Palmer golf course, which the archaeologists will now be digging up!

Fascinating stuff!