Spent the afternoon over at Fort Pulaski just east of Savannah, near to where the river hits the Atlantic Ocean. I spent several hours wandering around out there looking at all the old fortifications, cannons and what-not. I even spent an hour or so listening to one of the ranger/docents explaining the history of the fort.


   Robert E. Lee was instrumental in laying out and starting the construction of the fort way back in 1830, right after he got out of West Point. It took 18 years to complete and was constructed with mostly slave labor from nearby rice plantations. Built in the shape of an elongated pentagon, it has a water filled moat all the way around it, complete with two draw bridges. The walls and foundation were constructed using about 25 million individual bricks, with walls that are between 4 and 13 feet thick depending on where the walls were located.


    The Forts main claim to fame is that it sits on an island in the Savannah River and was meant to protect the shipping moving in and out of Savannah during the Civil War. As such it had a large garrison of confederate troops, more than 300 men, with lots and lots of cannons and 40,000 lbs of black powder. Thought to be impregnable, Commander Oglethorpe, the Commanding Officer in charge, declined the invitation, by the Union forces that showed up, to surrender before hostilities commenced.


    So the Union forces, who had showed up a couple weeks before hand, and who had built gun emplacements of their own on nearby Tybee Island, went back and launched their attack using their new rifled cannons. These guns could accurately shoot a 70 lb projectile more than 3 miles compared to the less than 1 mile range of the guns in the fort. After 30 hours of near constant bombardment and over 5,000 shots, the Union guns had blown large holes into two sides of the fort including one hole that exposed the doorway to the powder magazine. At that point the Confederate Commander gave up rather than having his whole command blown to smithereens. It should be noted that Commander Oglethorpe was only 25 years old at that time. He later went on to become a General. Photo's will be posted at some point.


   Once done there I went ahead and walked the trail out to the Cockspur Lighthouse to take a few pictures of it. Built at the bottom of the island, it was needed at one time to show where the river divided and went around the two sides of Cockspur Island. These days though only the north channel of the Savannah River is used, so the lighthouse is no longer used as a lighthouse, although it still works as a good day use aid to navigation. I got some good photo's I think, even though I couldn't get right up to it as the tide was coming in and the wind was blowing up some pretty hefty waves. I'll post some of those photos at some point also.


    Right now though I'm done for the day so I'm going to go read a couple of chapters and then hit the sack. Hope the weather stays nice for the next couple of days so I can do a few more fun things while I'm here.