Between Two Rivers · Episode 4
Palmetto Logs
June 28, 1776: an unfinished fort of palmetto logs on Sullivan's Island takes on nine British warships, and the soft logs swallow the cannonballs. Sergeant Jasper and the flag, the 1780 siege and surrender, the occupation, and how Charles Town became Charleston.
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Carol June 28th, 1776. Sullivan's Island, at the mouth of Charleston harbor. A fort that isn't even finished, built out of logs and sand. And coming at it, nine British warships.
Shannon And the logs are palmetto.
Carol Soft, spongy palmetto logs. Everybody thought that was a weakness.
Shannon It wasn't.
Carol Welcome back to Between Two Rivers. A history of Charleston, one era at a time.
Shannon Last time, Eliza Lucas made indigo pay, the town burned, and St. Michael's steeple went up. This time, the Revolution comes to Charleston. Twice. Once it goes very well, and once it goes very badly.
Carol Episode four. Palmetto Logs.
Shannon By the 1770s, Charles Town was one of the richest cities in British America. And a lot of its leading men had decided they were done with taxes passed in London.
Carol Like the other colonies.
Shannon Like the other colonies. Charles Town had its own tea protest. In 1773, tea that came in was seized and locked up in the Exchange building, the one we visited in episode two.
Carol The Old Exchange.
Shannon Only a couple of years old at the time. And by 1776, South Carolina had set up its own government, and four men from the colony would sign the Declaration of Independence that summer.
Carol So the British wanted Charleston back.
Shannon Badly. It was the biggest port in the South. Take Charleston, and you could hold the whole region. So in June of 1776, a British fleet showed up off the bar.
Carol And waiting for them was a colonel named William Moultrie.
Shannon Moultrie was put in charge of building a fort on Sullivan's Island, to guard the entrance to the harbor. And they built it with what they had. Palmetto logs, laid in two walls, with sand packed in between.
Carol Did everyone think that was a good idea?
Shannon No. The American general sent down to command in the South, Charles Lee, looked at it and called it a slaughter pen. He wanted to pull everyone out.
Carol And Moultrie stayed.
Shannon Moultrie stayed. The president of South Carolina, John Rutledge, backed him up. Rutledge sent him a note that said, more or less, you're not to leave that fort without an order from me, and I'd sooner cut off my hand than write one.
Carol (laughs) That's a vote of confidence.
Shannon So, the morning of June 28th. The British fleet sails in and anchors in front of the fort. And they open fire.
Carol How many guns?
Shannon Hundreds, across the fleet. Moultrie had about thirty cannon, and not nearly enough gunpowder.
Carol So what happened when the cannonballs hit the palmetto?
Shannon That's the whole story. Palmetto wood is soft and fibrous. Instead of splintering, the logs just swallowed the cannonballs. They sank in, and the walls held.
Carol The weakness was the strength.
Shannon Exactly. Meanwhile, the Americans fired slowly, to save powder, and they aimed carefully. They hit the British flagship, the Bristol, again and again. The British commander, Sir Peter Parker, was wounded.
Carol And there was supposed to be a land attack too.
Shannon There was. British troops had landed on the next island up, the one we now call the Isle of Palms. The plan was to wade across the inlet and hit the fort from behind. But the water at Breach Inlet turned out to be far too deep to wade.
Carol So they just stood there.
Shannon More or less. American riflemen on the other side made sure they stayed put.
Carol And three of the British ships tried to sail around to the far side of the fort.
Shannon And all three ran aground on a sandbar. Two got free. The third, the Actaeon, was stuck, and the next morning her own crew set her on fire.
Carol Now, there's one story everybody in Charleston knows from that day.
Shannon Sergeant Jasper.
Carol In the middle of the battle, a cannonball shot away the fort's flag. A blue flag with a white crescent moon. It fell outside the walls, onto the beach.
Shannon And with British guns still firing, a sergeant named William Jasper climbed out, grabbed the flag, tied it to a new pole, and put it back up.
Carol So the whole harbor could see the fort was still fighting.
Shannon The fight went on until after dark. By nightfall, the British fleet pulled back. The Americans had lost about a dozen men killed. The British had lost far more, and had nothing to show for it.
Carol And the fort got a new name.
Shannon Fort Moultrie.
Carol And that's why the palmetto is on the South Carolina flag.
Shannon The blue flag with the crescent came first. In 1861, South Carolina added a palmetto tree to it, in honor of the fort. That's the flag you'll see all over the state today, on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and front porches.
Carol And June 28th is still Carolina Day.
Shannon It is. It's the reason South Carolina is called the Palmetto State.
Carol So that's the good part. Now the bad part.
Shannon The British came back. In 1780.
Carol Four years later.
Shannon This time, they didn't try to sail past the fort. They landed an army south of the city and marched up, and the fleet ran right past Fort Moultrie's guns into the harbor. By spring, Charles Town was surrounded, by land and by water.
Carol Who was in charge in the city?
Shannon A Continental general named Benjamin Lincoln. And he made a hard choice. He kept his army inside the city to defend it, instead of getting out while he could.
Carol And the British dug in.
Shannon They dug trenches closer and closer, and shelled the town for weeks. On May 12th, 1780, Lincoln surrendered. More than five thousand men were taken prisoner.
Carol That's a lot.
Shannon It was the biggest American surrender of the whole war, and one of the worst defeats. Among the officers captured was Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Eliza Lucas Pinckney's son.
Carol And then the British held the city.
Shannon For two and a half years. Officers moved into the finest houses. And some of the town's patriot leaders were arrested and shipped off as prisoners to St. Augustine.
Carol And the Old Exchange?
Shannon The British used its cellar as a prison. Today it's called the Provost Dungeon.
Carol So when did it end?
Shannon December 14th, 1782. The British finally sailed out, and the American army marched back in.
Carol And the next year, the town got a new name.
Shannon In 1783, the city was incorporated. And Charles Town, two words, became Charleston. One word. The name we still use today.
Carol So, if you're in Charleston today, where do you go for this episode?
Shannon Out to Sullivan's Island, to Fort Moultrie. The fort you see now is a later one, built in brick, on the same stretch of beach where the palmetto fort stood, and it's part of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park.
Carol Then back downtown, to the Old Exchange at Broad and East Bay. Go down into the Provost Dungeon, where prisoners were held during the occupation.
Shannon And walk through White Point Garden, at the Battery. There's a statue there of Sergeant William Jasper, holding up his flag.
Carol That's Charleston in the Revolution. One great day on Sullivan's Island, one terrible spring, and a town with a new name.
Shannon And a tree on the state flag that still makes people smile.
Carol Next time, the new city of Charleston fills up with church steeples, and picks up a nickname. The Holy City.
Shannon The Holy City. That's next time, on Between Two Rivers.