CSS Texas - CSS Texas in Fiction

CSS Texas in Fiction

In some editions of the novel Sahara (pub. 1992) by the adventure writer Clive Cussler, President Abraham Lincoln is kidnapped by a group of soldiers who impersonated a Union cavalry detachment. They overpowered Lincoln's military escort in early April 1865 as the Civil War was drawing to a close. Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, took the lead in arranging a cover-up supposedly posing John Wilkes Booth as a patriot who quickly brought the situation to an abrupt conclusion–supported by Stanton—and then destroying documentation and concealing the accused conspirators under heavy hoods so no one really knew who they were, but of importance here is that the real Lincoln was supposedly spirited out of the country on the CSS Texas.

Casting off at night after loading Confederate gold and government files, the ship steamed downstream in the dark, but then she got caught in a running gun battle with Union ships and suffered from some damage.

The Texas avoided a pounding and a probable sinking by Union batteries at the mouth of the river when her captain of the boat raised a white flag. He displayed Lincoln on top of the pilot house as the warship escaped into a fog bank.

The story resumes in modern times with the CSS Texas being discovered in the sand of the Sahara Desert. She had become grounded in a branch of the Niger River. On board were the bodies of fifty men plus the remains of the ship's captain and Lincoln, all of which had been preserved in the dry desert heat.

After running the warship aground, her crew had to trade the gold with the Africans for food. Having realized that there was gold on board, they blockaded the boat, starving to death all but one member of her crew.

The single surviving man, out of four who started in his group, escaped in a small boat and then he was rescued by English traders.

In the 2005 feature film Sahara based on Cussler's novel, the CSS Texas figures more actively in the action sequences.