We arrived here late in the afternoon of Wednesday, May 16,
and left at 6:30 am the following Wednesday. Our first two days here were
enjoyed in getting to know our new friends, the ones of “Autumn Borne” who had
helped us here on our way from Beaufort, Dean and Susan. See
autumnborne.blogspot.com.
They have lived aboard for about five years on their CSY 44.
They keep her in the Hudson, near Albany, to be close to family, during the
summers. Dean is a Vietnam Vet who did heavy combat duty there, and thus hates
war, a musician and a mechanical engineer with a lot of experience in
engineering big projects. Susan did IT for a College up in Buffalo. They have
been bikers and done a lot of things in their 42 year marriage, so far.They are fun people to be with.
They anchored in the Ashley River near the big marina there
and we docked at the Charleston Maritime Center in the Cooper River. ILENE is almost hidden behind the big schooner next to it but recognizable only by her double head stay. The marina office is on second floor of white building background right. Aquarium, Ft. Sumter ferry and Patriot Point ferry are all off to the right.
A manatee swam under our dock:
The city is the peninsula of land at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers,
bearing the first and last names of an early local hero. Its tip,
called The Battery, is like the Battery in Manhattan, except this battery
has cannons.
The city has since expanded north and onto the opposite shores of the
rivers. The street connecting our two
locations is, what else, Calhoon St. Dean and Susan walked its length over to us
for mango pancakes our first day here and stayed through lunch, meanwhile
helping me fix the fuel problem we had had during the trip. We agreed to go to
the movies the next day and walked to their marina and cabbed to the movies to see
“Salmon Fishing in The Yemen” which was charming, and “The Dictator” which was
coarse, crude and puerile, except for a great speech at the end.
We did a day of cleaning and blogging and then on to
sightseeing. There is an expensive ferry to take folks to Fort Sumter.
The fort is run by the National Park Service and
admission is free, with an excellent NPS docent.
It has a museum
relating to the causes of the Civil War at the City end of the ferry landing,
and another in the fort dealing with military aspects. The fort was built
on an underwater shoal, by dumping lots of stone on that shoal.
It was built, one of
42 such forts, erected in the aftermath of the War of 1812, when our cities has
been bombarded by the British. It is a small portion of its former
self, that portion having been preserved by the debris falling onto it in the
process of the North’s seige and bombarding it when retaking it late in the war. The
first shots were fired after the northern commander had refused a demand for
surrender. He surrendered only after the wooden structures were set
afire, threatening the magazine and his reinforcement ship had turned back when
fired upon while approaching. He and his men were permitted to lower and take their
flag with them and were sent back to New York rather than taken as prisoners of
war. When the North retook the fort, there was no surrender, just a withdrawal by the south.
The bridge across the Cooper River is quite beautiful, don’t
you think?
The aircraft carrier Yorktown CV-10 and the destroyer
Laffey DD-724
both served in WWII and are now at Patriots Point, across
the river.
Lene in the destroyer's Captain's chair and by the catapult on the carrier's flight deck; Roger in a sort of Dukakis moment.
They have a Congressional Medal of Honor hall of
fame on part of the carrier’s hanger deck, where I looked up Owen Hammerberg,
who, having saved one shipmate, died while trying to save another. The destroyer escort on which I served, was named after him.
We visited the Old Exchange Building
Used as a dungeon for pirates by the colonials and for
supporters of our Revolution by the British, our Docent was obviously enjoying
his explanation of it.
The ballroom upstairs is where President Washington was
feted, the secession was signed, and public functions and weddings are held
these days. The first crop that made South Carolina rich, with nine of the ten richest people in the colonies living in this state, was not cotton but "Carolina Gold" namely rice, traded here. Facade of a rice warehouse, by the docks; the rest blown away by a hurricane.
St. Michael’s steeple was painted black in war time. It
towers over this essentially low rise city and many famous residents of this
state are buried here.
The Gibbes Museum of Art
has a mediocre permanent collection trying to show the history
of the City through art, heavy in portraits. It also had a beautiful temporary
show of large watercolors of southern working people doing jobs that are going
away: shrimper, mill worker, tobacco farmer, drive in movie operator, elevator
operator, shoe shiner, etc.
I visited the historic Edmondston-Alston House, right next to the seawall that protects the city from the sea, with steps down to the street and an artist seated on the wall painting the house:
It is one of many old luxury homes lining the Battery.
Magnolias in bloom
from the Edmonston-Alston house's porch:
I walked around the oldest part of town, near the battery,
where very old homes, registered as historic, are being lived in and sold at very
expensive prices, with plaques showing their history.
The battery’s promenade is not a boardwalk, to let waves
pass under, but a seawall, to keep the sea out of the city.
From the Battery: views of the Cooper,
and the Ashley, with Battery Park at right,
and the park's monument to confederate soldiers.
