It's official: Corpus Christi will junk replica Columbus ships

Photo by Joe O'Connell

The Columbus ships were once a source of pride for Corpus Christi, Texas. But now two of the three will go to the junk heap.

Read my story in Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine for the full history of the problem/lost tourism opportunity.

Here's the gist of it:

"Over at the museum, the Pinta’s paint is chipped, but the deck looks solid. The Santa Maria’s hull has taken on a greenish hue, with rot so severe that tourists are no longer allowed on board.

The vestiges of decay tell a story with only the bleakest hope for any kind of happy ending.
“There’s not a future for them,” says Wes Pierson, Corpus Christi assistant city manager. “We’re talking about significant dollars to do anything for those ships. It would cost more to restore the Santa Maria than to buy a new one.”

Pierson thinks the ships are irreparable, citing the original Spanish shipbuilder, who went to Corpus Christi to assess the ships.

“He said they’re in really bad shape,” Pierson recalls. “I think his word was ‘deplorable.’”
It’s an unlikely fate for once-international icons of American and Spanish history. The ships were built in Spain using materials and methods matching those of the 15th century. While there are unknown details about the appearance of the original ships, the replicas were designed with meticulous attention to research. For example, hand-forged nails replicated those found in shipwreck remains.

A few modern adaptations were made. Additional headroom was provided for today’s taller sailors. The sails were made of linen, though the originals were hemp. Modern engines were added for emergency use.

The ships, which are surprisingly small, toured Spain, France, Italy and Portugal before crossing the Atlan­tic for a tour of the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and finally a string of coastal U.S. cities. The first stop was Miami, where a thousand private boats guided the replicas while a crowd of 5,000 cheered from the shore.

The Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria weren’t originally scheduled to go to Corpus Christi, but a Quincentenary Commission was formed to lure the ships to Texas. Nelida Ortiz was a member of that group and recalls watching the ships sail in to town.

“It was a hot, gorgeous, sunny day,” she says. “People were standing in line to get on the ships for more than two hours at a time. I’ve been here for 30 years and I haven’t seen a turnout for anything like that.”

Corpus Christi crowds were estimated at more than 100,000 over 10 days. The celebration went on for a month, and the excitement led to the formation of the Columbus Fleet Association, which put together a proposal for a 50-year lease of the three ships from the Spanish government. Local beer distributor/developer Dusty Durrill gave the group $1.1 million for the effort, and local schoolchildren wrote pleading letters to Spain. Corpus Christi won.

Read the rest.

Texas as seen through recent fiction

I regularly interview Texas authors for the San Antonio Express-News. Tomorrow they'll run my interview with Bret Anthony Johnston, a Corpus Christi native who sets his debut novel Remember Me Like this there. Here's how my piece begins:

Bret Anthony Johnston's fiction shapes Corpus Christi into a literary character, but he has a confession: He hates the beach. The sand itches; the salt water clings.

“I never felt the pull that everyone else had,” Johnston said by phone from New York City, his latest stop on a whirlwind national tour for “Remember Me Like This,” a deeply human novel that follows a broken, battered family dealing with the return of a son four years after his kidnapping in a fictional Corpus Christi suburb.

The beach may get short shrift, but the Sparkling City by the Sea glistens in Johnston's taut prose.

“The longer I'm away from South Texas in general and Corpus Christi specifically, the more clearly I see potential for stories that can only happen there,” said Johnston, who was born and raised in the city but now directs the creative writing program at Harvard University.

Read the rest here.

I also recently interviewed Jim Sanderson, whose two new books are set in West and East Texas. Here's a taste:

East Texas and West Texas might as well be on separate planets, but Jim Sanderson straddles the divide and puts both under the microscope in his two recent books of fiction.

The San Antonio native's “Nothing to Lose” is a mystery novel set in Beaumont where Sanderson, chair of Lamar University's Department of English and Modern Languages, has long taught writing. The story collection “Trashy Behavior” is primarily set in Odessa, where he was a college instructor for seven years before that.

Sanderson evokes the names of other Texas writers — Tom Pilkington, J. Frank Dobie and Billy Lee Brammer — who saw the state as a borderland with a mindset focused on the “end of things.”

“Within 200 miles in much of any direction you're almost in a different state,” he said. “The geography changes, the culture even changes a little.

Read the rest here.

Dry-docked dreams

I was in Corpus Christi last summer when my family visited the crumbling Columbus ships. I learned they were soon to be scrapped and sensed a story, which finally appeared this month in Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine.


Here's how it begins:

As a child, Louie Cortinas researched Christopher Columbus’ journey from Spain to the New World and constructed a model of the Pinta, one of the adventurer’s three famous ships. He dreamed of sailing on those ships, as children often do.

In 1992, when Cortinas was 23, full-size replicas of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria arrived in Texas as part of a U.S. tour honoring the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage. He yearned to be a sailor on one of the ships, but his volunteer application was rejected. Disap­pointed but still fascinated, the young man could only watch as los tres barcos (the three boats) sailed up to Corpus Christi. “I went on a tour, and they were brand-spanking new,” Cortinas recalls.

One day last winter, Cortinas, now a professional diver, took another guided tour of the Pinta, resting beside the Santa Maria on a concrete slab behind the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History.

“All of this was varnished and shiny,” he says. “It’s changed so much. It’s heartbreaking to see.”

Tourists probably won’t be able to view the two replicas for long. No exact date has been set, but the two ships are expected to be removed from the museum, their remains carted away as junk.

Read the rest here.

'Corpus Christi' is back in development hell

The word was Richard Kelly would shoot his next film Corpus Christi in both Corpus Christi and Austin in the summer. That would the summer of 2012. Clearly it never happened. Here's the first real mention I've seen of an obvious why--which beats the conjecture on imdb.com that the film is about Jesus and his "roving band of homosexual apostles"--from Variety: "the cast never came together and the project remains in development."

Sounds simple enough. Here's betting the film pops up to ride a tasty wave again in a year or two.

David Gorden Green's 'Joe' with Nicolas Cage gets ready

A casting call held this past weekend in Austin, Texas, for the film Joe gives a clear sign David Gordon Green is prepping to shoot his film Joe around these parts shortly, which also means Nicolas Cage sightings will soon become common.

Cage has been cast as Joe, an ex-con who “becomes the unlikeliest of role models to 15-year-old Gary Jones, the oldest child of a homeless family ruled by a drunk, worthless father.”

The film is set in Mississippi and based on Larry Brown's book Joe. Financing is from Worldwide Entertainment, which says in a press release that filming will start in mid-November in the Lone Star State.

Green moved to Austin recently, where he's closer to his mentor Terrence Malick. The move and the new film probably mark a shift back to more artful entertainment for Green, whose career took a Pineapple Express detour. Once upon a time Green moved in with then St. Stephen's Episcopal School English teacher Joe Conway as the two refined Conway's Undertow script.

Malick is a St. Stephen's alum and major supportor who put Conway and Green together for the project. And, interestingly, this latest development likely means Green and Malick will be in production on Austin-based films at the same time.

Now if only Richard Kelly would follow through on his apparently stalled  plans to shoot Corpus Christi in Austin (and, of course, Corpus Christi), Austin could truly become an independent film mecca.

'Corpus Christi' coming to Austin this summer

I wrote last year about Richard Kelly's plan to shoot a film called Corpus Christi, which is, of course, set in Corpus Christi, Texas. Looks like the latest from the Donnie Darko director will film there some but primarily in Austin this summer, my sources confirm. Why Austin? The movie shoot is being financed by Robert Rodriguez's Quick Draw Productions.

Edgar Ramirez is set to star as "a mentally unstable Iraq war veteran named Paciencia 'Patience' De La Rosa, who forges a strange friendship with his boss Ralph Salverson, the wealthy and politically ambitious owner of a supermarket chain."

Don't expect many more details from the filming given Rodriguez's love of having anyone who comes near him sign a confidentiality agreement, but maybe Mr. R. will be too busy with his own projects. He announced during SXSW that Machete 2 would start production this month and Sin City 2 should--finally--shoot this summer.

Darko's Richard Kelly headed to 'Corpus Christi'

UPDATE: It's finally being made and shot in Austin and Corpus Christi. Read more recent news here.

Certainly the next big film to be made in Texas, Richard Kelly, the guy behind Donnie Darko, is writing and directing the thriller Corpus Christi, Variety reports. And, yes, the film is set in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The story is about: " a mentally unstable Iraq war veteran named Paciencia "Patience" De La Rosa, who forges a strange friendship with his boss Ralph Salverson, the wealthy and politically ambitious owner of a supermarket chain."

It's expected to shoot in Corpus in July, with casting happening right now.

Sounds like potentially the best art about Corpus since Bret Anthony Johnston's short stories.

'Benavides Born' brings South Texas to Sundance

I have to admit I'd never heard of Benavides Born before it was announced today as a competition film in the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. Why? Because it was shot primarily in South Texas in small towns (Benavides, San Diego, Alice, Carrizo Springs) near Corpus Christi earlier this year, and I frankly don't expect a lot of films to be shot there. Thus it's a nice surprise.

Here's the story: “Benavides Born is a drama about Luz Garcia, a fictional high school senior who desperately wants to go to UT Austin and has earned admission by being among the top in her class. The problem is her family cannot afford it. She therefore pins her hopes on a scholarship awarded to the winners of the State High School Powerlifting Meet. When her powerlifting plans don’t work out as she hoped, she has to find a different kind of strength to keep her dream alive. “

We'll be hearing a lot more about the film and it's director Amy Wendel in coming months.