The Road Goes Ever On: Fort Pulaski

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Fort Pulaski

Savannah is up the river a bit, mostly marshland, with the entrance to the estuary guarded by a few barrier islands, Cockerel, Tybee, and some others. After nearly losing the war of 1812 (the Brits got distracted by Napoleon), the US government slowly resolved to build a series of forts at strategic points coast-to-coast. One of these was Fort Pulaski, guarding the entrance to strategic port of Savannah. (We have already acknowledged Count Casimir Pulaski, Polish counterpart to Lafayette, who died trying to liberate Savannah from the Redcoats). Fort Pulaski was begun during the Jackson presidency and completed in time to be seized by the Secessionists at the outset of the Civil War.

I visited Fort Pulaski as a child, with my parents, in the 50s, before sister Carole was born. The visit was nominally to see my mother's cousin, Maxine Allen, and family. On that visit, we also saw and perhaps stayed on Tybee Island, saw the fort, and ate seafood, most likely, crab. I have very faint memories of Victory Drive ("but I thought they surrendered!"), unkind things said about Sherman, Maxine herself, the fort, and a pier leading out to the river or one of its many tributaries. Very remote childhood stuff, not the "strong and vivid" impressions Hume theorized about; maybe even just a cluster of thoughts compiled on the basis of subsequent conversations, old fuzzy black and white snapshots, and the like. That I was there, then, is the best explanation of all this. FWIW. Or maybe just brain-in-a-vat stuff.

At the time of its building, Fort Pulaski was thought to be impregnable to the seaborne cannonade that was expected in time of war. Its brick walls were many feet thick and many feet high, and its many cannons would keep invaders off at a distance. Then, someone thought up rifled artillery, which could hurl a projectile 5 miles--as opposed to the 1 mile range of a conventional cannon and cannonball. By 1862, the Union had set about recapturing its various Rebel-held forts. Still holding nearby Tybee Island, they simply turned their rifled cannons to that side of Fort Pulaski that opened onto its magazine. After a 30 hour barrage, the Fort wisely surrendered and became a Union fort and garrison, and POW-camp, for the remainder of the war. Technology triumphs again. It wasn't until the end of 1864 that Sherman took Savannah, but its port was no longer of use to the Confederacy after 1862.