Charleston - Fort Sumter

After visiting the Charleston Museum, we moved on to our pre-arranged tour of Fort Sumter.  While we've been to South Carolina before, we've never been to Fort Sumter and it was on Ron's bucket list.

The tour leaves from the same dock where the USS Yorktown is anchored.  There was a graduation ceremony just finishing up and there were LOTS of graduating navy men/women there celebrating with their families.  I wish I'd taken a picture because it seemed very exciting and patriotic.  

This air craft carrier is not the original USS Yorktown CV5 which was sunk at the battle of Midway in 1942. Rather, this was the USS Yorktown CV10 which was the 10th air craft carrier to serve in the US Navy.  Under construction as Bon Homme Richard, this new Essex Class Carrier was renamed in honor of Yorktown CV5.  This air craft carrier saw action during the Viet Nam war and also recovered the vessel for the historic Apollo 8 mission to the moon.

We waited in line and finally boarded our boat.

It was about a 30 minute ride to the fort.  On the way, we ran across this ship exiting the harbor.  The ship is called a RoRo, which stands for Roll On, Roll Off.  The ship had just rolled on 4,000 BMWs that had been manufactured in Spartanburg, about 200 miles from Charleston Harbor, and were headed across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, and then from there on to the Middle East.

And then the fort came into view.

We were met by some park rangers and after we gathered around, one of them told us some of the history of the fort.

Under the overhang we were sitting at, there were some cannons that exhibited how the fort was defended.  They still have two cannons in their battery placements that are in the same position as they were when attacked by the Confederates. 

Notice the track at the bottom of the screen which enabled the cannon to be moved from side to side

This was the opening where the front of the cannon was exposed to the exterior of the building until it was discharged.  After the discharge, the cannon then kicked back into the fort where it could be reloaded.  There were 1" radius holes in the wheels of the cannon in which, after it was loaded, they inserted rods into the holes of the wheels and used those to move the cannon forward towards the opening so they could repeat the process. 

The track in front of the people's feet

And then we were "set loose" to explore the fort.

The black building in the background of the picture below is Battery Huger, an endicott period battery that was constructed from 1898-1899 and named for the Revolutionary War general Isaac Huger.  Battery Huger protected Charleston Harbor from naval surface attack.  It also included four 9 mm air craft guns which were removed in 1947 upon deactivation of the battery.

 

Officer's quarters and munition storage

This flag now flies above the fort with 33 stars that designate the 33 states that were in the union at that time.

This was the actual flag that flew over the fort at that time.

A great model showing the entire fort as it looked in 1861.

When standing in this spot you can see Fort Johnson, the fort directly south of Fort Sumter, which fired on the fort.

And Fort Johnson from high in the fort.

A good spot to take a photo.

This is part of history.

And just like that, it was time to return to the boat to take us back.

We could see the Yorktown in the distance, as well as the bridge we drove in on to start the tour.

The boat gave us a nice view of the Yorktown as we came back.

What a great day and glad to be able to check something off Ron's bucket list.