Island Hopping

Thursday, October 11, 2012


Today the weatherman delivered a delightful day and we intended to take full advantage by heading to Tybee Island, seeing a lighthouse and a fort.  Kitty packed our lunch and we jumped in the car and headed a few miles North of Skidaway Island, then east on Highway 80 crossing the Intercoastal Waterway and followed the signs to Fort Pulaski.

Fort Pulaski is named after Count Casimir Pulaski, the polish hero of the American Revolution war who lost his life in the siege of Savannah in 1779.  You know this guy, the kids get a day off from school each year in his honor.  Anyway, construction on the fort began in 1829 at a cost of $1 million.  They used 25 million bricks building the fort and it took 18 years to finish it.  Much of the labor was supplied by the slaves.  It's walls are 7 1/2 feet thick and the fort was considered unbreachable.

On November 10, 1861, the Confederated abandoned their positions outside of the fort on Tybee Island and the Union quickly set up 11 artillery batteries and 36 guns on Tybee Island.  These were aimed at Fort Pulaski nearly a mile away.  The Confederates felt their position was safe at the fort because this fort was  believed to be unbreachable.  But, they had no idea the Union had experimental rifle cannons that could bore through the fortified walls of the fort.  After 30 hours of shelling the fort, the Confederates surrendered the heavily damaged fort, and 384 Confederate officers and soldiers were taken prisoners.  From this point on, the military would no longer make forts out of brick and mortar.

Here's the entrance to the fort.

 

 

There is a draw bridge entrance.

 

 

These are shots of the moat that surrounds the fort.  It is 7 feet deep and 32 to 48 feet wide.  Water is supplied to the moat from a canal that was dug from the Savannah River.

 

 

The next three shots were taken inside the fort from the upper level.

 

More of the outside of the fort. I enlarged the first picture so you can see some of the damage to the fort from the Union shells.  In fact, much of this wall had to be rebuilt when the fort was restored due to a gaping hole in the wall from the shells fired a mile away.

 

 

From the fort, we took a walking path to see the light house on Cockspur Island.  The path is 1.7 miles through cabbage palms, red cedar, spiders, snakes, and a hungry alligator.  Lucky for them, we didn't see any of the last three varmints mentioned! 

 

The Cockspur Island light house was built in 1856 and marked the entrance of the south channel of the Savannah River.  It was a silent witness of the shelling of Fort Pulaski in 1861.

 

We've seen dozens of lighthouses and this has to be the smallest.

 

 

 

Now it's time to hit the beach at Tybee Island.  It was very windy when we were there, but this is a very nice beach.  Check it out.

 





 

 

We ate our lunch on the beach and then took our beach chairs to the edge of the waves and enjoyed the surf pounding in and the birds pooping on our heads! Ha!  As I have said many times, you can not starve on the beach because of all of the sand-which is there.  I heard that groan!

 

This was a great way to end our day.  We went back home and fixed supper and went to bed with smiles on our faces.