Bayou La Batre, Alabama

Aerial view of Bayou La Batre from the harbor entrance on the Gulf of Mexico.

A fishing boat at the dock

As part of the French settlement of the Gulf Coast, the bayou was originally called "Riviere D'Erbane" and acquired the present name from the French-maintained battery of artillery on the west bank ("bayou of the battery"). Bayou La Batre was the first permanent settlement on the south Mobile County mainland and was founded in 1786, when Joseph Bouzage (Bosarge) [1733-95] moved into the area and was awarded a 1,259-acre (509 ha) Spanish land grant on the bayou's west bank.

Born in Poitiers, France, Joseph Bouzage came to the Gulf Coast circa 1760, married Catherine Louise Baudreau (Boudreau) on June 5, 1762, and was the father of seven children, including one son, Jean Baptiste.

Hurricane Katrina

Cargo ship and boats aground at Bayou La Batre after Hurricane Katrina. The M/V Caribbean Clipper (left) was unloaded by crane six months later and refloated.

On August 29, 2005, the area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, with a local storm surge of nearly 16-foot (5 m)[5] and higher waves that engulfed Bayou La Batre and pushed over 23 shrimp boats and the cargo ship M/V Caribbean Clipper onto shore.[6] The captain rode out Katrina on the 179-foot (55 m) cargo ship, owned by Caribbean Shipping Inc., and the ship was returned to sea six months later, using a large crane.[6]

On September 7, the Hurricane Katrina Update for libraries affected by the storm indicated that the Bayou La Batre Public Library (then known as Mose Hudson Tapia Public Library) had been destroyed.[7]

Students from the Alba Middle School documented the destruction through a series of photos that were exhibited at various venues in Alabama and the Chicago, Illinois region. Some of these were published in a book titled Eyes of the Storm: A Community Survives after Katrina (ISBN 978-0-9789362-0-4).

Immediately following the hurricane a group of high school students from Sierra High School in Truckee, California adopted the city of Bayou La Batre. They sent roughly $15,000, supplies, and 15 students to help rebuild homes. Students gathered donations, sold raffle tickets, and filled their school's gym with supplies from bedding and clothes to basic household items. The school also set up a pen pal program with the students of the nearby school in Bayou La Batre.

In October 2005, seven weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Bayou La Batre was adopted by the city of Santa Monica, California (see: "Santa Monica Pier") to assist in clean-up activities.[8] The Santa Monica City Council approved loaning Bayou La Batre 18 vehicles, including six pickups, two trucks with large cranes, utility vehicles with smaller cranes, a dump truck, street sweepers, a riding lawnmower, and six chainsaws.[8] The equipment was used to help remove debris and fishing boats from downtown; however, the larger shrimp boats that were washed into the surrounding woods by the flood waters remain there today.

Bayou La Batre is a center for shipbuilding. The shipyards are owned and operated mainly by local families such as Gazzier Marine Services, Metal Shark (formerly Horizon Shipbuilding), Steiner Ship Yard, Rodriguez Boat Builders, Master Boat Builders, Williams Fabrication, and Landry Boat Works.

People from all over the world including the United States, South America, and Africa have boats built in Bayou La Batre frequently. In 2005, Steiner Ship Yard was asked by Walt Disney Studios to build a pirate ship, the Black Pearl; the pitch-black ship was actually a huge wooden prop built on top of a modern 96-foot-long steel utility boat. Crews sailed the ship out of the bayou to the Caribbean for the filming of sequels to Disney's 2003 film "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl".

Another ship, the FV Cornelia Marie from the Deadliest Catch series, was built in Bayou La Batre in 1989.[9]

Bayou La Batre is located in southern Mobile County at 30°24′12″N 88°14′53″W (30.403253, -88.248117).[10] The waterway Bayou La Batre passes through the center of the city and leads southwest 2 miles (3 km) to Portersville Bay, an arm of Mississippi Sound in the Gulf of Mexico.

The city is 27 miles (43 km) by road south-southwest of Mobile and 12 miles (19 km) east of the Mississippi border. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 7.6 square miles (19.7 km²),of which 7.5 square miles (19.4 km²) are land and 0.1 square miles (0.3 km²), or 1.87%, are water.[1]

Bayou La Batre is served by the Mobile County Public School System.[18] The city includes Booth (formerly Alba) Elementary School,[19] Alba Middle School,[20] and Alma Bryant High School, where all the high school students attend.[21] Additionally, a small number of city residents' children attend Dixon Elementary in Irvington.[22]

Both Alma Bryant and Booth Elementary are located on the northernmost edge of the city. Bryant, built in 1998, slightly delayed by Hurricane Georges, and Booth, built in 2006, delayed by Hurricane Katrina, are located on Hurricane Boulevard. Both schools' students were (in part) located in what is now Alba Middle School further south in Bayou La Batre. Alba High School first combined with Grand Bay High School in 1998 in the newly built, centrally located Alma Bryant High School, located on 16th Section land (land dedicated for school purposes). Alba Middle (which was in great part located in portable classrooms and was a part of the high School campus, as was Grand Bay Middle) took over the high school building, greatly relieving overcrowding. Similarly, the Alba Elementary Campus which shared land with the middle school, while being mostly autonomous, also became part of Alba Middle School. Alba and Grand Bay Middle are the focal point of bus routes for all school buses for Bryant High, those buses shared in grades 6-12 as a cost-saving effort to avoid overlapping routes for the separate schools.

In December 2007, a new library was opened to serve the area's Asian-American community. The library is located on Wintzell Avenue in the Bayou La Batre office of Boat People SOS, a national group that assists Vietnamese-Americans. The Mobile County Commission gave $2,500. The library will be used as a place where elderly immigrants can master computer skills, children can practice their Vietnamese after school, and day laborers can surf the Web after work.

Bayou La Batre is mentioned in the 1994 film Forrest Gump and in Winston Groom's book of the same name on which the movie is based as the home of Forrest's army buddy Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue, and later as the home of Forrest Gump himself during his time as a shrimp boat captain.[23] Shrimping scenes in the film were filmed in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina, primarily in the communities of Beaufort and Port Royal.

In April 2005, Disney Studios launched a secretly built pirate ship, the Black Pearl, out of Bayou La Batre for filming sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.[24] Bayou La Batre's seafood industry also serves as a centerpiece for the History channel's reality documentary series Big Shrimpin'.[25]

• Regina Benjamin, former United States Surgeon General[26]
• Antwan Odom, American football player, NFL, Cincinnati Bengals

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

• Official website
• Tropical Cyclone Report Hurricane Katrina 23-30 August 2005

30.403253°N 88.248117°W / 30.403253; -88.248117