The trouble began with customs duties. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, it opened Texas to Anglo immigration through empresario contracts. But by 1830, alarmed at the growing number of English-speaking settlers, the Mexican government reversed course -- restricting immigration, canceling contracts, and establishing military garrisons to enforce tariff collection. In 1832, a log stockade rose on the flat ground near the mouth of the Brazos. Its double walls were packed with sand, earth, and shells. An inner embankment let musketeers fire with only their heads exposed. At the center sat a nine-pound cannon on a swivel mount that could sweep the entire river mouth but could not aim downward into close range. Colonel Domingo de Ugartechea commanded roughly 100 troops inside. The fort's purpose was simple: control every vessel entering or leaving the Brazos from the Gulf of Mexico.

The fuse was lit at Anahuac, on Galveston Bay. There, the deeply unpopular garrison commander Juan Davis Bradburn -- a former American citizen serving Mexico -- arrested William Barret Travis on charges of insurrection, a conviction that would mean execution. Travis's business partner was jailed next. Armed Texians gathered, skirmished with Mexican troops, and retreated to Turtle Bayou, where they drafted resolutions declaring themselves loyal Mexican federalists opposing centralist tyranny. Then they sent John Austin to Brazoria to recruit reinforcements and fetch privately owned cannon. On June 20, Brazoria's residents held a town meeting and appointed a five-member committee. The committee voted unanimously for war. Austin was given command of 100 to 150 men. He proposed attacking Fort Velasco. It was the second time he had asked -- the first attempt, on May 11, had failed by a single vote. This time, the company agreed.

The cannon were loaded onto the schooner Brazoria, and roughly 40 men boarded for the trip downstream while the rest marched overland. Only three volunteers knew how to sail, so a professional seaman from the Brazoria's crew agreed to help navigate on the condition that he would not have to fight. On the night of June 25, the Texians split into two ground forces. Henry Brown's men circled the fort and approached from the Gulf side, sheltering behind driftwood. John Austin's men came from the north, where the sand offered no cover. They built portable cypress shields on movable legs and pushed them forward across the open ground. Shortly before midnight, the attack began. Mexican marksmen shredded the cypress palisades -- one shield alone was counted afterward with 130 holes. Austin's men dug trenches in the sand to survive. Mexican fire cut the Brazoria's mooring lines, running the ship aground on the riverbank. The Texians' cannon ammunition ran out, but riflemen aboard kept firing at close range. Mexican troops charged the stranded schooner and were driven back.

Thirty minutes after sunrise on June 26, a downpour drenched both sides. The Texians pulled back and sent for reinforcements from Brazoria. But Ugartechea's garrison was nearly out of ammunition and no reinforcements were coming. He surrendered. The Texians rejected the first terms and negotiated harder: Mexican soldiers could march out with their arms and baggage to a ship bound for Matamoros, but the fort's cannon and swivel gun stayed with the Texians. Wounded Mexican soldiers would remain in Texas under 'good treatment and hospitality.' Five Mexican soldiers were killed and sixteen wounded. Seven Texians died and fourteen were wounded. Among the Texian dead was the seaman who had been promised he would not have to fight. When the battle started, the ship's commander sent him below decks for safety. A Mexican cannonball punched through the hull and killed him there. The sustained bombardment left the Brazoria too damaged to transport the captured cannon, and the Texians prepared to march overland to Anahuac -- only to learn that Bradburn had already resigned and the prisoners had been released.

The Battle of Velasco occupies a peculiar place in Texas history. It was fought not in the name of independence but under the banner of Mexican federalism -- the Texians claimed to support Santa Anna's revolt against the centralist government. The Turtle Bayou Resolutions that preceded it explicitly declared loyalty to Mexico. Yet the shots exchanged at the mouth of the Brazos on June 25-26, 1832, were the first real military engagement between Anglo settlers and Mexican forces in what would become the Texas Revolution. The log stockade is long gone. Surfside Beach now covers the site. But the flat coastal terrain, the wide mouth of the Brazos, and the shallow Gulf waters remain unchanged -- the same landscape where a handful of colonists, armed with borrowed cannon and homemade shields, decided they would no longer accept a garrison at their river's mouth.