The Zavala was a Texas Navy ship.
The official Texas Navy launched in January 1836, with the purchase of four schooners: Invincible, Brutus, Independence, and Liberty. They helped win independence by preventing a Mexican blockade of the Texas coast, seizing Mexican ships carrying reinforcements and supplies to its army, and sending their cargoes to the Texas volunteers .
By the middle of 1837, all of the ships had been lost at sea, run aground, captured, or sold. The Zavala got its start in 1836 as a ship named the Charleston; in 1838 the Republic of Texas started to rebuild its fleet and purchased the Charleston for $120,000 and renamed it Zavala (in honor of Don Lorenzo de Zavala , the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas).
