Sapelo, Blackbeard and Fort McAllister

Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum! Yes, I have a pirate story! Well, actually I don’t have a pirate story as much as I do a story about a particular pirate … actually, it is less of a “story” than it is a rumor … actually it is less of a rumor than an unsubstantiated hope. But for that, you will have to wait until I discuss some serious history – that of Sapelo Island.

We stayed at the anchorage near Sapelo Island for two nights. We had stayed in the same place last autumn but when the wind turned and came from the north, it produced 2-foot waves in the anchorage, which made the evening very bumpy. This year we had much better weather.

 We also took a tour of the Island! We mentioned in our blog last year that we were thinking about it, but since we were only there for one night it was not going to happen. The island is primarily owned by the state with a few individual landowners – descendants of slaves who received their land in 1865. To go ashore on the island (above the high water mark) you have to have sponsorship from someone. This can be either a local landowner (some of whom rent cottages and some of whom offer their own tours) or a state-sponsored tour. Well, after blogging about our desire to visit the island, our friends Joy and Steve aboard their boat Meandering Joy,wrote us an e-mail telling us that it was much easier than it seemed. Actually, it was even easier for them as one of Steve’s former employees lived on the island and gave them a personal tour. But once we understood that it was possible, we called the office listed on the web site and made arrangements to join the state-sponsored tour. All we had to do was meet the guide at the ferry dock at the appointed time – and, oh by the way pay $15 each. We have paid much more for much less and decided it was a good deal.

A picture of Mike and Ann near the beach at Sapelo.

With help from Wikipedia, I have tried to reduce the four hundred years of Sapelo’s history into three paragraphs.

Although historians are not sure, many believe that Sapelo Island is the site of San Miguel de Gualdape, the short-lived (1526–27) Spanish settlement, which was the first European settlement in the present day United States. If true, it would also be the first place in the present-day U.S. that a Catholic mass was celebrated. For a variety of reasons (my way of saying that I really don’t know why) Sapelo was then abandoned by Europeans until the 17^th Century when it became part of the Guale missionary province of Spanish Florida.

In the early 19th century Thomas Spalding, a future Georgia Senator and U.S. Representative, bought the island and developed it into a plantation. He sold live oak for shipbuilding, introduced irrigation ditches, and cultivated Sea Island Cotton, corn, and sugar cane. Spalding brought between 350 and 400 slaves to the island from West Africa and the West Indies to work the plantation and build what would become the Spalding Mansion.

The plantation and mansion were pretty much destroyed during the Civil War, but in 1912, Sapelo was purchased by Howard E. Coffin, founder of the Hudson Motor Company. Coffin purchased the entire island, save for the land owned by the former slaves, for $150,000 in 1912. Like Spalding, the Coffins embarked on numerous projects. Miles of shell-covered roads were laid, creeks were bridged, old fields were cultivated and large tracts were set aside for cattle grazing. Former presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover as well as aviator Charles Lindbergh were guests in the home.

Coffin sold the island to RJ Reynolds of Reynolds tobacco fame. He and his family used Sapelo as a part-time residence for three decades, consolidating the island's African-American residents (and former slaves) into Hog Hammock by giving them land in the town. When he died, he willed the island, with the exception of the land he had given the residents of hog Hammock, to the citizens of Georgia.

On our tour, we visited Hog Hammock, whose residents are almost all descendants of Spalding’s slaves. We saw, but could not visit, Spalding’s mansion (apparently visiting the mansion is a special deal on Tuesday’s – we visited on Friday). We also saw the wide open empty beaches and the reconstructed Sapelo lighthouse (originally built in 1820 and most recently reconstructed in 1998). We also visited part of the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve. All in all, it was a fun and interesting day and tour.

After leaving Sapelo, we headed a little to the north to … are you ready for it? … Blackbeard Island!! I am not kidding. Blackbeard, of course, was the infamous pirate Edward Teach, famous for exploits as far south as raiding Spanish galleons in the Caribbean and as far north as successfully blockading the port of Charleston. He is known to have sailed the coastal waters of Georgia and South Carolina, which with their labyrinthine rivers, creeks, inlets and marshlands certainly offered Blackbeard and his ilk opportunities to ply their trade in secrecy. Blackbeard was killed in 1718. Blackbeard’s Island was identified as such on maps as early as 1760. Why? Some romanticists believe it was because back in the day, people knew that Blackbeard hid some of his treasure on the Island. Since then, there have been a number of searches for the treasure and so far nothing has been found (or at least nothing has been reported to have been found). Hmmm – maybe next time we need to spend more time on the island.

This is how I knew it was
Blackbeard's hiding place.
We found his water bottle!!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the night we spent at Blackbeard was also the night of a significant band of thunderstorms in the area. Although it was dark, rainy and stormy, from our satellite weather reports we knew that we were on the edge the band of storms and not in the center. The only time we were concerned was when we looked out the back and saw the shore five feet or so from our swim platform. The creek was relatively narrow and, although we had anchored in the center of the creek, the wind and currents had combined to push us athwart the creek so our stern was near the shore. Luckily, it was still fairly deep.

After we had discovered all of Blackbeard’s treasure roamed around the creek and the beach we headed off to Fort McAllister. There are two aspects of our visit to Fort McAllister that were noteworthy. The first has to do with the marina, the second with the Fort itself.

As always, we had made reservations at the local marina and told them we would arrive early afternoon. The marina was about five miles off the ICW up the Ogeechee River, which, to use a technical term was a real twisty-turney stream. After we had made the trip and had the marina in sight, we called them on the radio – and received no answer. We waited a little and called again. Again, no answer. We then called them on the telephone – and the radio – and the telephone. Well, I think you get the picture. This is the first time EVER that we have been unable to raise a marina by both radio and telephone. By this time we were close enough to the marina to see several open slips on the linear outer dock. We slowly cruised past the marina and picked our spot. We looped back around, hoping someone would see us or answer our continuing radio calls.

We have only docked our boat a few times without help from someone ashore; it is very difficult. Remember, this is a 52’ boat with about 6 feet of freeboard (distance from the deck to the water). To cap everything off, McAllister has a floating dock (which means the dock was only a foot or so off the water), so our deck was about five feet from the dock. Also, the difference between high tide and low tide was about seven feet, so the pilings themselves were very tall. Anyhow, we pulled up to one of the pilings and Ann managed to get a spring line around it. She then fastened both of the ends of the line to the cleat on the boat. I then back down; that drew us closer to the dock. Ann then tightened the spring line and pretty soon we were close enough to the deck so she could step off the swim platform, whereupon she tied off the stern. NOTE: It only took a few seconds to write this, but it took several nerve-wracking minutes to execute.  Ann, of course, was running back and forth between the bow, midship and the stern cleats tying and tightening. However … YEAH for us: We did it!!!! (Actually, Ann did most of it, but I did manage to keep the boat close to the dock.)

Some of the earthworks at
Fort McAllister

Ann then disembarked to check in at the office. Well, it turns out there was a young man who had been blowing leaves and had not heard the radio or the telephone. Now I am still not clear why he did not see a big 52’ boat 100 yards from where he was standing … but apparently he didn’t. When Ann approached him he acted as if nothing was wrong and proceeded to tell Ann that we were going to have to move the boat. Ann wasn’t particularly happy with him, but she generally controls her expressions of dissatisfaction, so she just explained that he would have to tell me where he wanted us to move. I was very proud that I controlled myself too, because I wanted  to tell him how sorry I was for his mother – to have borne a blind, deaf and dumb kid who wasn’t particularly bright. Instead I explained that I was really upset and I asked why he didn’t offer us any help. He took one look at the expression on my face and decided that – you know what? – maybe we could stay in the slip where we were. (That was probably the smartest thing he did all day.) I should note that the dockhand and later the owner apologized and offered their version of an excuse as to what happened. Neither, however, offered recompense of any kind.

Because of our marina experience I should tell you not to go to Fort McAllister. I would, but the visit to the fort itself was very interesting. Fort McAllister was a Civil war Confederate fort. McAllister was a confederate fort designed to prevent Union incursions up the Ogeechee River. As I said earlier, the Ogeechee twists and turns. There was no way a Union ship was going to pass by McAllister without being seen and running the substantial firepower available to the fort. This sets the stage for the TWO battles of Fort McAllister.

The first took place in early January of 1863. The Confederate blockade runner Nashville had escaped up the Ogeechee River the previous year and was thought to be just beyond the fort. Needless to say, the Union wanted to sink it. Moreover, the Commander of the Union’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron wanted to test the usefulness of the new ironclads with their innovative 15” Dahlgren cannons before he dispatched them against Charleston. On January 7, 1863, the monitor USS Montauk closed with and engaged the fort. From the fort, we could see the location where the Montauk most likely positioned herself, by having cruised up the river ourselves, we had a good feel for what the monitor saw.

The two sides engaged, the Union relying principally on the monitor’s 11 and 15 inch cannons; the fort firing back with its five thirty-two pounders, one eight-incher and one forty pounder. Although the monitor hit the fort a number of times, the earthworks absorbed most of the shells that were fired and were quickly repaired. Similarly, the defenders scored a number of hits on the monitor, but it would not go down. The battle ended as a draw. The commander determined that a single monitor could not maintain a sufficient rate of fire, so he later sent three ironclads to reduce the fort. Again, the earthworks absorbed the punishment and again the fort fought the ironclads to a standstill. The Union eventually gave up trying to defeat the fort and decided to fight elsewhere. Thus endeth the first Battle of Fort McAllister. (Actually, it doesn’t end as there were other weapons and operational concepts employed: the confederates used sharpshooters on the bank to engage the Union’s sailors, they also used mines, mortars and new and different kinds of cannons. Moreover, the Union sank the Nashville which had been refitted as a raider and drafted into the confederate navy. But for the purposes of this blog, I am endething the story.)

The second battle of Fort McAllister is even more interesting. By December 1864, Sherman was on the final leg of his March to the Sea. The problem was the general was not sure he had enough supplies to take Savannah before being resupplied. If, however, he could link up with Admiral Dahlgren’s fleet waiting with supplies just offshore then the supply problem would be solved. The difficulty was the Fort McAllister was between Sherman and the Sea. Unfortunately for the Confederates, McAllister had only 200 defenders and was made to defeat an attack from the sea – not the land. Moreover, by this point in the war, nothing was going to keep Sherman from the sea. He ordered the Army of Tennessee to take McAllister; General William Hazens’ division was given the mission. Hazen had 4000 men; the fort had 200. Guess who won. Because of his victory at McAllister and his subsequent link-up with the navy, General Sherman was able to take Savannah on December 25 and give it to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift.

We walked around the fort and could almost see where Hanzen’s men lined up and where the fort’s defenses were breached. It was an interesting afternoon.

Well, I am going to end things here and let Ann have her turn. In the next entry we’ll write about the Bull Island anchorage, Lady’s Island Marina in beautiful Beaufort, SC; the Church and Whiteside River anchorages and Georgetown, SC.

Ann’s Notes: Michael pretty much wrapped up our adventure at Fort McAllister, I will fill in a few details that I remember.

Sapelo Island was interesting, our tour guide did a good job, we saw everything that is to be seen and he shared the knowledge he knew. I would have liked a tour given by a local Gallah and learned more about their culture and history. It is hard to imagine the island producing a product and making a living doing so. I guess if you have enough slaves anything is possible. The former owners of the island had a lot of money and could experiment with different cash crops and not really take a hit in their personal pocket books. One of the stipulations that Mrs. Reynolds made before turning over the island to the state of Georgia, was that a ferry service always be available to the people living on the island. The ferry is docked at night on the island in case of an emergency and makes several crossings a day on a very strict schedule.

 There was some docking excitement at the Fort McAllister marina. They could write a book on what not to do when you work at a marina. At the top of the list would be not to ignore your customers when they come to dock!! I was very grateful that we have headsets and we use them all the time when we are docking or anchoring. That way we know what each of us is doing at any given time and it saves us from having any accidents. In this instance, we could keep in touch as we approached the dock. Since moving on the boat our communications have greatly improved.

Yes ... yes I am the cutest thing on the boat.
All my staff says so!

The day spent at the fort was very interesting, the fort was rebuilt with the funding from Henry Ford when he owned in the late 1930s. They have a nice museum with items going back to the Indian settlement that was on the land. If you are every in this part of Georgia it is a must. The earthworks are really something to see.

I am going to update you on the latest ‘doings’ of Spot. She is now five months old and still very much a kitten. She is turning into a wonderful boat cat. Spot is no longer fights to get out of her harness when I take her outside or off the boat. She has learned to like her cat treats and she gets one whenever we put her in her carrier or put her harness on. She will come when she is called. I have taught her how to fetch. We use a small paper bag rolled in a ball and when thrown, she will run down the steps to the galley, retrieve it and bring it back. She likes the paper because it is light and easy to carry in her mouth and also easy to bat around. It took a while for her to get the hang of it but now she will play for a long time. She also loves ping pong balls…again light and they move fast with just a quick swipe of her paw. So far, we have had no trouble with her claws and the furniture. Spot is a smart little girl and she has added so much fun to our cruising. I just love every beautiful inch of her.

Thanks for reading…

Traveling Soul…OUT