Footnote to history: A Marine Corps? Texas once had its own.

In 1835, a war to win independence from Mexico seemed inevitable. The General Council of the Provisional Government arranged to buy four ships to form a navy. It also asked the Council to create a "Corps of Marines."

The Marines were to provide security and ceremonial guards on Navy ships and to be the nucleus of landing and boarding parties. They had no central command, but each naval ship had one or more Marine officers aboard. They probably were the only such unit in history to be issued a tomahawk as a sidearm.

One mission of the Texas Navy was that of privateer, and piracy was one of its functions. The Texas government was broke. Facing a life-or-death fight for independence, it issued "letters of Marque and Reprisal" authorizing both the Navy and merchant vessels to capture other ships and take their cargo. Vessels captured by the Navy became Texas property. Privateers who took other ships on the high seas were ordered to pay 20 percent of their loot to Texas.

The first recorded piracy involving the Marines came in December 1835. Capt. S. Rhodes Fisher took his unit ashore from a Texas privateer and recaptured a beached merchant sloop from the Mexican crew that had taken it as a prize.

Once the Battle of San Jacinto insured Texas independence, the Marines were never officially recognized as a part of the defense mechanism of the new Republic of Texas.  However, they continued to function as a part of the Navy until 1843, when the Republic offered its navy for sale.  By 1845, when Texas joined the Union, both its Navy and its Marines were only a memory.