TRAVEL: A Southern Cruise

TRAVELOGUE

Thursday, November 3, 2011

After traveling by air to Charleston, we checked into the Vendue Inn, on a street called Vendue Range, about half a block from the waterfront park. We took a walk and headed for a lunchroom a friend had told us about, called Jestine’s Kitchen. It features Southern home cooking and is very popular. The lunchroom is small, and during the lunch hour there is always a waiting line outside on the sidewalk. We were lucky enough to arrive when the line was short. Dolores loves meatloaf, so she had a meatloaf sandwich. I had a BLT, but it was on the menu as BLFGT because the tomatoes were fried green tomatoes.

Back at the inn, the room was small by luxury hotel standards, just about big enough for a queen size bed. What the hotel lacks in size it make up for in amenities. We are offered an included full breakfast, wine and cheese in the afternoon and even milk and cookies just before bedtime. It is also located in the historic district, just a short walk from most of the sights. We had a fine dinner at the hotel's restaurant, “The Library.” Dolores even violated one of our rules and ordered crab cakes far from the Chesapeake. She was delighted that they were as good as at home.

Friday, November 4, 2011

We took a city tour by coach, with a very knowledgeable but fast-talking driver/guide. He knew his city and told us all about it. Charleston is on a peninsula with a river on each side and the harbor at the confluence. The lower part of the peninsula is the historic district, with hundreds of antebellum houses on every street. They are mostly lived-in and well maintained in accordance with the decrees of the historical architectural authorities. Most are million-dollar-plus properties.The lower part of the peninsula is dissected by Broad Street. The real high-rent district is south of Broad. Our guide told us, with tongue in cheek, that the residents there are known as SOB’s. Of course, those who live slightly north of Broad Street are called SNOB’s.

We spent the afternoon taking a cruise across Charleston harbor to Fort Sumter. One hundred fifty years ago last April, Confederate soldiers fired on the Federal troops in this fort at the head of Charleston harbor. These were the first shots of the American Civil War that resulted in the deaths of more than 600,000 Americans.

A curious anecdote about the fort: It is five-sided, but not a pentagon. One end is rectangular, the other pointed -- the shape of home plate on a baseball diamond. The coincidence that was pointed out by one guide is that the second-in-command during the bombardment was a Union officer named Capt. Abner Doubleday.

For dinner we tried a seafood bar/restaurant called Amen Street. We enjoyed raw oysters and peel-and-eat shrimp washed down with appropriate beer and wine.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Before boarding the Independence for our cruise, we took a walk through the waterfront park. Dolores sketched and photographed a Charleston land mark called “Rainbow Row.” This is a group

Vendue Range, the street in Charleston where the Vendue Inn is located.

Dolores at Fort Sumter

Hugh at Fort Sumter

of nine connected townhouses that date to Colonial times. Each is painted a different color. The row is probably the most photographed and painted scene in the city, with pictures for sale in all the shops. (The photo at left is from the Charleston Chamber of Commerce web site.) These houses are still lived-in, although everything about them is controlled by the architectural commission, which does not allow any changes.

The ship had some mechanical problem and could not depart at 3 p.m. as scheduled, and the captain explained it would have to wait for the following high tide about 3 a.m.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

The delay in departing Charleston just meant we arrived in Beaufort, S.C., about 9 in the morning instead of 3 in the morning, in time for our on-shore tour. We bused over the sound to the barrier islands, Lady’s Island and St. Helena. There was a lecture about the Gullah heritage. (See HISTORY in column at right.)

We also visited the remains of a chapel of ease built in antebellum times. The roof had been blown off by a hurricane, but the walls were still standing. The walls were built of a material that the people here call "tabby." They mixed oyster shells with shells that had been ground to a powder and burned, effectively creating cement. When water was added, the materials were cast into 1-foot cubes. These were then laid up to create a masonry wall. I was surprised that these old walls have held up and weathered very little over the years. We saw this type of construction in several other places.

Our guide on this tour was a woman named Evelene. She did it in period costume and knew her subject very well. In the evening she came back to the ship and did a program on the songs and dances of the times. On the morning tour she took us to the Coffin Point plantation's Praise House -- a reconstruction of a very small meeting room where the Gullah slaves were allowed to meet on Saturday night and Sunday to worship and hold meetings. Evelene recreated some of the spirituals that they would have sung and even had us join in.

Monday, November 7, 2011

A travel day. We sailed to Hilton Head and anchored outside Harbor Town, basically a shopping area. Dolores took an excursion to shore by launch. Next the ship made the short passage to Savannah, Ga., arriving in the evening.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

We spent the morning on a sightseeing trolley ride through Savannah. A highlight was a stop to visit the house where Juliette Gordon Low lived and founded the Girl Scouts. I took a picture, but a large live oak in front hides most of the house.

American Cruise Lines' Independence

HISTORY: The Gullah, Beaufort and The War

The Gullah were the West African slaves brought here to work the rice plantations in the antebellum era. The name may have been a corruption of Angola, the part of Africa they were from. The Southern plantation owners became rich from the crops of rice and indigo.Their plantation houses on the islands were relatively modest, because they lived in them only between Christmas and March, then retreated to their town houses in Beaufort during the warm summer months to get a little more breeze and avoid diseases that the summer brought (later known to be mosquito-borne). The Beaufort homes were more elaborate, because that is where these people visited and partied.

During the warm months, the slaves worked the plantation supervised by an overseer and lead slave taskmasters. The slaves worked from sunup to sundown, but each was responsible for working a specific plot sized from ¼ acre to one acre depending on their ability. If they finished before sundown they could work on their own plot raising food for themselves.

This all ended abruptly when shortly after the start of the Civil War. (Down here it is just “The War” with war pronounced as a two-syllable word: Wa’-raa.) The Union Army occupied Hilton Head and the barrier Islands and the Southern plantation owners left Beaufort in a hurry. In the local dialect, “They skedaddled.” They expected to be back in a week or two, but the Union troops occupied the town. That proved lucky for the town: Because the Union troops had moved in, Beaufort was not destroyed by Sherman and other Union forces marching through the South later in the war, and its lovely antebellum mansions remain intact today.

Before the Emancipation Proclamation, the Federal government considered the slaves to be contraband. They kept them working the plantations but promised to pay them. After the war, they received their pay in the form of land, but were never able to produce the crops that the plantation had. During the federal occupation, a Quaker woman came from Pennsylvania and established the Penn School to teach the former slaves to read and write. This school existed until the middle of the 20^th century, when the State of South Carolina took over education. The former campus is a historic site.

TRAVELOGUE, continued

Thursday, November 10, 2011

We are moored in Brunswick, Ga., and took a morning stroll. On a Thursday morning it was quiet in town, but there were a number of upscale shops indicating that someone with money must come this way sometimes. Given the current economy, there was also a number of empty stores.

Thursday afternoon proved to be a highlight of the trip. We went shrimpin’ aboard the shrimp boat Lady Jane. The shrimp industry is pretty much extinct here, replaced by Asian farm-raised shrimp.This one boat captain has figured a way to catch tourists by showing them how it was done. They drag a net off the stern that is lowered and raised by a winch amidships and a cable system. When they raised the net and dumped its contents into a stainless steel trough, we saw a few horseshoe crabs, a dozen or so blue crabs of various size, a couple of stone crabs, a small calamari, and various small fish. But mostly there were shrimp. The two crew members sorted everything, identifying the various kinds of marine life. The largest thing that came up was a Gar, a fish with a long snout with a mouth full of small teeth.

As for the shrimp, the workers picked them up, very quickly popped off their heads and threw them in a bucket to be steamed. Meanwhile we were served shrimp that were caught the day before.

In the evening, we had an opportunity to join the Captain of the Independence for a tour of the pilot house. The ship is only a year old, build in Salisbury in 2010, and has the latest operational and navigational equipment. The captain explained that American Cruise Lines owns the ship yard, so everything was built to their specification.

Friday, November 11, 2011

We spent the morning sailing from Brunswick, Ga., to Fernandina Beach, Fla. After all these years we finally visited Florida — just barely. We took a guided river cruise exploring the backwaters of Amelia Island, including a look at Amelia Island lighthouse. (It is hard to get close to and you can just get a glimpse of the top through the trees.) We learned some history of Fernandina and Amelia Island. For a long time, until the 1820s, this town was in Spanish Florida, but right across the water from U.S. Georgia. It was the home of several pirates and many smugglers, particularly when President Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on goods coming from England, France or Spain. Ships would bring cargo to Fernandina to be smuggled across the narrow inlet into Georgia. Today the harbor is full of high-end boats showing registrations from Canada down the coast of the U.S. This is the season when the “Snow Birds” sail south for the winter. For most of them this is probably just a stop-off on the way to south Florida.

As for us, it was time to head north. The next day, breakfast was earlier than usual, since everyone had to catch some sort of shore transportation. We had an 8:30 am shuttle to the airport and our flight home.

The Juliette Gordon Low House

Juliette and her husband lived in England for a number of years. There she met Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, and his wife, who had started the Girl Guides in England.When Juliette’s husband died, she returned to Savannah and started Girl Scouts there, based on what she had learned from Lady Baden-Powell. The house is furnished in the Victorian style, as it would have been in the years she and her siblings grew up there. Much of the furniture are pieces from the family.

The historic district of Savannah has been fairly well preserved, despite its capture by General Sherman. Apparently, the mayor surrendered the city, and Sherman was persuaded not to burn it, so many antebellum homes remain, as in Charleston. Mostly, Charleston seems more real, because the old houses are still private residences. Many of the ones in Savannah are now used for offices or other commercial purposes. The trolley tour gave us an overview, and after lunch we took a stroll on our own.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

We took a bus tour of Sapelo Island, Ga., narrated by a native of the island. He is Gullah/Geechie, but told us that his people call themselves “Salt water Geechie,” he said that the Gullah are mostly in the Carolinas and the Geechie in Georgia. There are only about 30 of these natives left on the island.

Sapelo is an island that can be reached only by boat. In fact, the eight children that live on the island have to take a 45-minute boat ride to get to school. In the 1920’s the entire island was purchased by R. J. Reynolds of tobacco fame. He built a “Cottage” that was really a mansion and lived there seasonally. When he died, his widow sold the island to the State of Georgia. There is now a branch of the University of Georgia there, dedicated to the study of marine things, especially the salt marshes and their ecosystem. We toured the Reynolds house, now used by the university for conferences and visiting professors, but still containing some of the original furniture. Another feature of the island is a red and white striped lighthouse that has been restored.

(Continued at right)