Today I drove from Savannah, Georgia to Conway, South Carolina and the only stop I made was to do the tour of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter is the place where the first shots in the American Civil War were aimed. It was a union fort that had been under construction for 30 years because its site is a shallow sand bank that needed an artificial island to be created before the actual fort could be built. At the time of the civil war it was probably a magnificent sight with walls that were 50 feet high and 5 feet thick built of solid brick. Unfortunately, for the Unionists, it had not been completed and many of the cannons were still unassembled when it was attacked. After a two-day bombardment with thousands of cannon rounds from three nearby Confederate forts the Unionists surrendered. The Unionists later besieged the fort and bombarded it for nearly two years before re-taking it so the fact that much of the original fort still stands is a testament to its strength.

I have previously visited the historic section of Charleston and choosing the tour made a pleasant contrast from yesterday. The tour involved two half-hour boat rides to get to and from the island with just over an hour to explore the fort and hear a ranger-presented history of the role of Fort Sumter in the civil war and beyond (it was an active US military installation through to the end of WW2).

Today’s map and video are here but one issue that I had not thought about for this part of the trip was the necessity of keeping near the coast but not having much personal interest in most of the attractions that small coastal towns offer. This means that I will be making the return journey in bigger hops than I had thought which entails more driving each day.  So, again, there is quite a lot of highway driving in the video.

Fort Sumter was built on a sand bank that barely rises three feet from the water.The main entrance still exists but the original walls were over twice as high as the remaining ruins. Behind the brick facadeThe four flags that were flown at Fort Sumter during the civil war with the current US flag in the background.An example of the size of cannon used to bombard the fort during the union siege.