Hathcock History:

Fred Avery from Norman, Okla. sent me the following email:
“You might vaguely recall me as the teacher from Oklahoma who occasionally shows up in your shop with out-of-print and hard to find Texanna and Mexican War books to unload on you while stocking-up on some you may have that I lack. I missed you this year amongst hubbub but will no doubt see you later.
“Anyway, we (immediate family and I) rode out Alex on the island recently while on vacation. A couple of days later we made a day of it driving to the Mansfield Cut, picnicking and kite-flying along as we went.  On the way back down the beach I noticed some weathered wooden beams and planking or decking sticking up out of the surf line at low tide.  This isn't something we'd ever noticed before and I stopped to wander around and take some photos, three of which are attached.  This collection of beams (and there might very possibly have been a small metal (iron?) pipe bent over knee high in the surf close by – I didn't bother to wade out and investigate – it was a bit farther out in the water) was exactly 14.2 miles north of beach access #6.  I'm very curious if you happen to know what this is, was, or might have been.”
I do remember Fred and his family. As a hobby, Fred, who has been visiting South Padre Island for over 20 years, frequents used book stores, picking up any volume he could find on Texas history. He would bring the duplicates which he then either traded or sold out right. Many of his finds are part of my personal library.
Fred’s photos show the bare skeletal remains of a craft of some sort, a shattered hull, the stub of a mainmast, planking and other debris.  
It would be wild speculation on my part to make any kind of attempt to identify this wreck but the general area Fred talks of, brings to mind an article from, ironically, the July 4, 1860 issue of the New York Herald. The reporter referred to a most disturbing trend that had gained a foothold on Padre Island in the preceding 10 years.
“Let me draw your attention,” the reporter wrote, “to a deep and abrupt pocket or indentation in the coast of Texas, about 30 miles north from Brazos Santiago. Into this pocket a slaver could run at any hour of the night because there was no hindrance at the entrance and she could discharge her cargo upon the projecting bluff and again proceed to sea.”
Thus landed, the victims of this evil business, usually black people from Africa with an occasional Caribb Indian, could be marched a short distance across the Island to the Laguna Madre where they were again placed in boats and concealed upon some of the small clumps of land that are scattered across the bay.
These islands, with their thick growth of brush and grass made a perfect hiding place from the glaring eyes of the public. After a short stay, the human cargo was marched north to the slave markets in New Orleans where they were sold into servitude.
In a 1935 interview, Alexander Singer, who lived on the island from 1847 to 1861, related how once, while engaged in investigating the business of some parties who had purchased stores from him on Padre Island, he came across a black man wandering in the dunes. After a few minutes it became apparent to Singer that the camp where the black man had been detained was only a short distance north.
It took a war, but the institution of slavery was finally ended in the United States.  
God Bless America