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Ah, Corpus Christi, the “Sparkling City by the Sea.” We reluctantly left our lovely island RV spot by the Gulf for the mainland. If the weather had been better and if we hadn’t had an appointment to attend we might have stayed indefinitely in Port A (Port Aransas for those of you that are just joining us). It is a laid-back, small town populated with unusual but charming characters and stocked with all the basic supplies necessary for life. And when you really break it down, there is very little that you actually “need” to survive and be happy.

The change in location is not lamentable for we enjoyed our time in Corpus even if the weather was still chilly and wet. Did I mention that this has been the coldest and wettest winter along the Gulf Coast of Texas in over 100 years? Of course, Texas was not the only place whose weather broke records. I think it would be safe to say that all weather records (not just the hot ones) will be shattered in the coming years as the climate changes. Life is change, but I digress.

Though well protected from the wrath of nature by the barrier islands of Mustang and Padre, Corpus Christi has received several damaging swipes by hurricanes. In response to the devastating unnamed 1919 hurricane Corpus erected a seawall¹. Finished in the 1930s, it not only protects the city, it provides an outdoor area for gathering.

Atop the seawall at various intervals along the broad esplanade are “Mirador del Flor” gazebos² that offer shade, water fountains and historical information. The Shoreline Boulevard median is broad, tree and grass covered and punctuated with works of art. The large marina is host to what locals call the T-heads, t shaped docks that are home to trendy restaurants and shops. The area ends at the cultural center of museums, arenas, and ballfields near the Shipping Channel. All in all it is very inviting and enjoyable.

I do not know how Corpus got its nickname “Sparkling City by the Sea” but it lives up to it. We enjoyed several afternoons of wandering downtown and we found the waterfront area to be quite European. It reminded us of Alicante, Spain where we spent part of a lovely week this past May. What gives it its European flair? It is pedestrian friendly, there is ample green space, and public art.

I did learn how the city received its descriptive name. For those of you who do not know Latin, the name means “Body of Christ.” The area was named by Pineda, a Spanish explorer, in 1519 because he discovered it on the Catholic feast day of Corpus Christi. After Pineda left, nothing really happened until 1839 when Henry Lawrence Kinney and William P. Aubrey went into business at the mouth of the Nueces River. The lyrics from “Everybody’s Got a Cousin in Miami” by one of my favorite artists, Jimmy Buffett, tell the story: “It’s hard to believe the city started as a trading post…” The founders prospered and the town flourished through extensive illegal trade with Mexico.

Corpus is not all sparkling water. It is the fifth largest deep water port in the U.S., and since the Gulf is rich in oil and natural gas deposits, the port is extremely busy. Thankfully the refineries and docks are located just inside the mouth of the Nueces River, out of sight from the downtown area. The port, which opened in 1926, exports mainly cotton, grain sorghums (grain grass that requires less water than corn to grow and is used as livestock feed), wheat, crude oil, and natural gas.

Under the sparkling bay the sea-floor is crisscrossed with lines that transport petroleum products from the platforms that line the Gulf Coast. Of course you never even think about them until one breaks, as happened near Galveston Island shortly after we left there, in December.

Our RV Park was at the north end of a peninsula across the shipping channel from downtown. We were on the far end of the Corpus beach which stretches for over a mile. Corpus Christi’s beach is the center of controversy; well not the beach exactly but what floats up on it. In the summer months huge mats of Sargassum weed wash ashore from the Sargasso Sea (between the U.S. and Africa in the Atlantic Ocean).

The weed is actually a floating algae that provides critical habitat and food for many species. The mats even help control beach erosion and create sand dunes. How is that an issue? It is unsightly and stinks. Since many people come to Corpus to relax and play on its beaches the city is caught between losing tourism money or losing its beach (which would lose tourism money).

The city adopted a typical bureaucratic solution that satisfies no one, they clean the most popular sections of the beach every morning and leave the rest. Of course, Sargassum can’t tell time and it continues to wash ashore throughout the day and not everyone likes the same section of beach. See, living next to the water ain’t all its cracked up to be.

In order to reach downtown we hopped on a old fashioned trolley which took us over the second tallest bridge in Texas. The bridge has to be that tall in order to allow the huge ships to pass beneath it. Speaking of ships, Corpus is famous as the home of ships other than just freighters and supertankers but I still don’t understand why.

Corpus has the USS Lexington, a WWII aircraft carrier and full-size replicas of Christopher Columbus’s three ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. As interesting as they are they have no historical connection to Texas so it is a bit puzzling why they are there. As the lady at the Visitor Center put it nobody else really wanted them. Well, that makes sense then.

Whether they were wanted or not, we wanted to tour them. We walked down the beach to the “Blue Ghost” as the USS Lexington is called. A National Historic Landmark, the 872’ long Lex was painted Sea Blue and launched in 1942. She was immediately assigned to the central Pacific to aid in the fight against the Japanese.

She cruised at 33 knots, had a crew of almost 3,000 men and held almost 100 planes. She could launch a plane every 20 seconds and land one every 30, I find that mind boggling! She is 19 stories tall from top to bottom and three city blocks long. At the time of her decommissioning in 1991 she was the last of the WWII era aircraft carriers. The Lex had served longer than any other carrier, over 45 years, and she had traveled 209,000 miles.

The Lex was given the name the “Blue Ghost” by female Japanese propagandists, referred to collectively as Tokyo Rose, who in efforts to demoralize our troops announced her sunk again and again, only to be proven wrong every time. In all those years the ship was only damaged twice, once by a torpedo and once by a kamikaze pilot in 1944. Did you know that kamikaze is Japanese for “divine wind?” I learn something new every day.

I am not a big war buff but I found it all fascinating. About 20% of the ship is open to the public and it took us all day to tour. The lower decks were the most interesting to me, trying to imagine how that many people lived and functioned. The ship had its own barbershop, dentist, hospital and post office. The hardest part to get used to was the steep, narrow ladders. They were not easy to navigate, and we weren’t even in a big hurry and our lives were not on the line.

The next day we tackled some much simpler ships, the Pinta and Santa Maria at the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History. In 1992, to commemorate Columbus’s voyage of 1492, Spain sailed full-sized copies of his three ships across the Atlantic following Columbus’s route. The Niña is also in Corpus but she’s anchored over at one of the T-heads downtown.

The ships are amazing in how small they were. The Santa Maria, the ship Columbus piloted was a nao and was the largest of the three with a crew of 50. The Niña and Pinta were caravels and carried crews of about 30. The crews were all male as it was considered bad luck to have a woman on a ship. The ships were so small that the crew slept above on the deck with the waves splashing over them.

The hold was reserved for the massive amounts of foodstuffs they needed to make the trip. Mostly salted meat and fish, ship’s biscuit bread, garlic, water, and wine. The wine was mixed with the water before drinking because it masked the rancid taste of the water (and unbeknownst to them, killed some of the germs too). Columbus, of course, did not find what he was looking for but something just as wonderful. That’s happened to me a few times…

When he left Spain he first sailed south to the Canary Islands before heading west. As it was later told to other captains, “Sail south until the butter melts, then turn west.” The voyage, although clearly not the first European one to reach the Americas, was still historical and obviously had the most impact on the future of the continents.

I am delighted that these pieces of history are preserved, no matter where they make berth. After visiting places like this I have an urge to dig out that old history book and give it another read. The school of life, may it never end.

Photos: View our photos from Corpus Christi, Texas.

Notes: We stayed in Corpus Christi, Texas from 01/22/2007 to 01/28/2007.
[1] The Corpus Christi seawall was designed by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor that carved Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
[2] Mirador is Spanish for lookout.