Today we went to Fort Sumter. It is out in the middle of Charleston Harbor. It is probably best known as the place where the American Civil War started. We ate lunch in the RV and then the featherless left for the ferry. Their tour was half an hour out, half an hour back and about an hour on the island. It was quite cold and windy so they didn’t spend too much time outside. The perimeter walls were originally about fifty feet high and about five feet thick. All that’s left today is a little more than one story. The picture below is taken from the top of Battery Huger built during the Spanish-American War. The view is back toward the city of Charleston.
Before the Civil war started, there was a Federal garrison at another fort in Charleston. Things were getting tense, and the commander thought his fort was indefensible. So he sneaked his troops out to Fort Sumter in rowboats under cover of darkness. The next morning he raised a huge American flag and it was all downhill from there.
While the featherless were out on the island, Beaker and I took the opportunity to observe the aircraft carrier, USS Yorktown, now a museum, docked at the same pier as the Fort Sumter ferry. The Yorktown was built during World War II and was later in service in Vietnam. It was also used to recover the Apollo 8 command module.