HEADS UP:

You would pay attention to a 'TV Doppler' Weather Alert about an approaching STORM ; like HURRICANE IKE - OR -   especially if you were on the BOW OF A CARGO SHIP STEAMROLLING TOWARDS A MASSIVE HURRICANE-LIKE BELOW-RIGHT?

One of first of 300 Texas Families/Founder of Lynchburg Ferry/Town of Lynchburg...Nathanael Lynch

• In 1822, Nathaniel Lynch built a ferry to cross the San Jacinto River just below where Buffalo Bayou flows into it.
•  The ferry connected what would become the community of Lynchburg, on the east side of the crossing with the road to Harrisburg. At the western landing is the location of the San Jacinto Battlefield where Texan forces under Sam Houston defeated Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican forces in 1836.Your
  

LYNCH, NATHANIEL (About 1790–1837).

• Nathaniel Lynch moved to Texas from Missouri in 1822. As one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists he received title on August 10, 1824, to a league of land in the area that became Harris County. In 1825 Lynch was in a dispute over land boundaries with James Strange.
•  The census of March 1826 listed him as a farmer and stock raiser aged between twenty-five and forty. His household included his wife, Fanny, three sons, a daughter, and two servants. The settlement that grew up around his head right and steam sawmill at the juncture of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River was called Lynchburg. On February 1, 1830, Lynch presented to the ayuntamiento of San Felipe his application for permission to operate a public ferry.
  
• On September 5, 1831, the ayuntamiento fined Lynch for selling merchandise and liquor without a license and ordered the fine collected on November 7, 1831.
  
• The General Council in November 1835 appointed Lynch second judge of the municipality of Harrisburg. He petitioned the ad interim government for permission to transact business at Lynchburg in May 1836 and was listed as postmaster there in October of that year. During the Runaway Scrape fleeing Texans congregated at Lynch's Ferry, which lay on the principal land route between south Texas and the Mexican border, in an effort to escape the approaching Mexican army.
  
• When Lynch began charging a higher toll, President David G. Burnet threatened to seize the ferry for government service.
•  Lynch died on February 17, 1837. His widow later married Martin Hardin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

• June A. Begeman, "Lynchburg, Cedar Bayou and Morgan's Point Ferryboats: Historical Highlights," Touchstone 7 (1988).
  
• Andrew Forest Muir, "Humphrey Jackson, Alcalde of San Jacinto," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 68 (January 1965).
  
• Marilyn M. Sibley, The Port of Houston (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968). Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Steamboat 'Lizzie' Unloading Cotton at Bagby Wharf [Now Bagby Street in Downtown Houston]...

I found this information on the T.M. Bagby in the steamboat registry.  Side-wheel packet. Wooden hull built in 183_.  132 feet in length.  Owner and Master unknown.  Cargo: Passengers, cotton bales, general freight goods.  Service: Ran as a packet from Houston to Galveston in the Buffalo Bayou trade.  River and Year: Buffalo Bayou 1837, Harrisburg and Houston, TX; and Galveston Bay 1837. Texas Steamboat Register 1829 to 1998  Compiled by Virginia White Lasworth & Earl James Lasworth  Lib Of Congress # VK24.T4

According to research completed by my Lynch Cousins, our Great-or maybe-Great-Great Grandfather Lynch piloted Steamboats 'Lizzie' and 'Bagby' from Lynchburg to Bagby Wharves at the end of what is now Bagby Street; as you can see one of primary products hauled was cotton which often caused explosions destroying products and vessel.