By Rusty Dawdy
Jacks and reds were running the beach. “Just look for pelicans and frigate birds,” is what I was always told.
Frigates are cool, they don’t lie, and they’re hard to miss, with their huge ominous silhouettes and split tail feathers. The one documentary I dared to watch on them wasn’t for the faint of heart; they are cruel and ferocious predators, looking more like the 1988 Batmobile than a typical seabird. Their gothic lines and behavior are strait out of a Tim Burton movie.
With the Calcasieu muddied up, we drove down to Sabine Pass a couple of Sundays in row in hopes of getting into some nice action with topwater schooling gamefish.
On our first trip, we got a late start, at midmorning. As we traveled Gulf Beach Highway from Holly Beach to Sabine Pass, the water was high; large trash littered the beach and roadway. We saw everything from scattered Styrofoam and discarded crab traps to an abandoned crushed tent, broken ice chest and a baby stroller. I guess what we lack in etiquette we make up with variety.
The Louisiana side of Sabine launch wasn’t much better. Cardboard litter, monster can, dead fish from cast netting, and a discarded pile of monofilament all added to the “ambiance.”
The launch was too steep, and our trailer bottomed out, so I drove to the Texas side of the bridge to release the boat. There was a night-and-day difference between the Texas and Louisiana side. The Texas side had public bathroom facilities, well maintained grounds, palm trees, cement parking lots, a country store and little restaurant. It was a sobering contrast to Louisiana’s sparse gravel, massive potholes, standing water and single portapotty.
To put it simply, it was their clean vs. our dirty. Texas is dealing with plenty of industry and growing pains, too, but it was abundantly clear that we as Louisianians need to do better. Much better.
After running the absurdly long Sabine jetties, we only saw one school of fish all afternoon, but it broke up before we could near it. The water, however, was cleaner than I have ever seen, and I’ve spent a lot of time offshore. There was crystal-clear, 15-plus-foot visibility at the six-mile buoy.
I couldn’t help but think prior to modern meteorology, our coastal population would have been fleeing for high ground. Traditionally, water that clear along the coast is indicative of a hurricane coming. Not this time; it was just a weird anomaly, but it was cool to see.
The wind kicked up and the seas got funky, (wind, current, waves all headed in conflicting directions), so we called the trip short but vowed to get an earlier start the next weekend.
Exactly seven days later, we arrived at Sabine Launch pre-dawn. The amount of lovebugs and dragonflies we massacred on the way down was truly disturbing. I’ve pressure washed and scrubbed the boat three times since then, and it’s still stained.
We never saw the large schools we were pursuing, but we enjoyed a nice day trout fishing under the close rigs and along the beach rocks. We fought through the lady fish and hardheads and managed to catch a nice tripletail and a few small reds. We even spent close to 10 minutes fighting and ultimately breaking off a huge drum on very light speck tackle. Heading home, we slowed down to snap a few shots, and I started reminiscing about the Sabine Lighthouse.
Decades ago, as young single guys, my buddies and I would bring our girlfriends for a drive down the beach and hike out near the iconic structure to take pictures, never completely reaching it. Most of time we would see dolphins at some point. Like so many things of the past, that adventure would be impossible now, since the Cheniere plant was built.
It had been years since I saw the old lighthouse. It sounds cheesy now, but back in the ‘90s, if you showed a girl who wasn’t from here an alligator, a porpoise and a lighthouse, you could score major points.
I made that circle many times in my old F150 — summer evenings, windows rolled down, listening to Van Morrison, and watching the sunset over the Sabine Wildlife Refuge while heading home, driving North on 27. We were young and broke and hoping we had enough gas to make it back to civilization.
Thinking back, it seemed like I entertained girls from all over the world: London, England; Dallas, Texas; Queensland, New Zealand. I think they all really enjoyed seeing a different side of “my” Louisiana.
As my fishing buddies and I were talking, on this recent trip, I remembered there was a second lighthouse off the coast. A secret lighthouse that rarely gets mentioned and seems to have been forgotten by time.
Sabine bank is a mud reef that starts seven miles offshore near the state line and runs southeast 27 miles to just west of the Calcasieu Pass buoy chain. It’s the reason our channel doglegs. It serves as a wave break for West Cameron resulting in limited surf along our coast. This massive mound, averaging 15 feet in depth, was responsible for multiple ships running aground; three wrecks occurred between 1899 and 1901. By the late 1800s, the U.S. Lighthouse Board recommended a structure to warn large vessels headed for Port Arthur; in 1906 the 18-mile light, or Sabine Bank Lighthouse, was constructed.
According to the Texas Maritime Museum:
“The Sabine Bank lighthouse was built using ‘caisson’ construction, involving a series of large watertight cylinders sunk into the ground and filled with concrete. This was the first Caisson lighthouse in the Gulf of Mexico. The lower portions were assembled onshore and towed offshore in the summer of 1904. A wharf was constructed to house supplies and workers. Once built, the lighthouse was painted red and outfitted with a Daboll trumpet for a fog signal. The beacon was 72 feet high. On March 15, 1906, the Fresnel style lens was lit.”
Because of its isolation, keepers spent long hitches at the light without relief. Sometimes months. This made staffing difficult. In August of 1915, a Cat 4 hurricane hit Galveston, leaving the 18-mile light right in the path of the volatile East side. Keeper Albert Modawell and his assistants rode out the hurricane at the station. The structure was completely washed over by waves, causing damage and contaminating the freshwater supply. They managed to keep the light burning for days until they could be rescued. That wasn’t the only time Modawell was rescued by the Coast Guard. He was rescued after being lost at sea for days, having had an engine of his small boat fail while on a routine medicine run.
In 1922, an automated acetylene beacon was installed due to staffing shortages. Sabine Bank saw men again, when it was used as a World War II observation post. By 2001 the structure was falling into disrepair. The Coast Guard solicited bids for a new 55-foot-tall skeleton tower on the main deck, and by 2002, the work to reconfigure the light began and the top section of the lighthouse was removed.
While much more practical and efficient, the new tower lacked the soul and mystique of the 100-year-old iconic spark-plug-shaped light. The lantern room and top section were refurbished and can be seen today at the Lions Park in Sabine Pass, and the original lens can be seen at the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur.
Driving home, I stopped at the only Johnson Bayou gas station to fill up the truck, only to find the electricity out. A construction crew had accidentally knocked out the power along the coast. I had worked late the night before, and our predawn start left me with about 38 miles to empty. We really didn’t have a choice — my length with trailer is too long for the ferry, so I couldn’t go to Cameron. If we would have known at the launch, we could have easily driven up through Nederland.
At that point, we had no other choice but to chance the drive up to Hackberry. As the long drive grew silent and my friends quietly settled in, I once again found myself soaking in the evening, driving North on 27, listening to Van Morrison, watching the sunset over the Sabine Refuge, and praying I didn’t run out of gas.
No, I wasn’t filled with the anticipation of young love, the exciting search for someone to spend your life with.
But….
None of those girls would have been a damn bit of help syphoning gas out of my boat on the side of the road like my buddies were. They actually laughed at the irony. No, we didn’t run out of gas, not even close. We had plenty of gas, probably 40 gallons. It was just in the boat, not our truck. Ultimately, we all made it home safely, and we had a great time. As for as the 38 miles? Not while you’re pulling a boat, and the Toyota dash computer doesn’t have an ADHD buffer. Apparently, they don’t procrastinate in Japan. Hope to see you all on the water.
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