One of the major local tourist sites in Savannah is our very own Fort Pulaski, roughly halfway between Savannah and Tybee Island. It is a huge brickwork fort, built on a small island on the Savannah River. It was designed to protect the City of Savannah from enemy warships traveling up the Savannah River, whether British, Spanish, or any others.

This was a massive work project, built with manual labor, without any of the “modern mechanical contraptions” that make building large structures today so much easier. No power tools, hydraulic cranes, earth-moving machines, etc. What’s more, it was built on a relatively small piece of land, surrounded by swampy land and waters. Having said that, it was still considered an engineering marvel at the time it was built. The thick walls were thought to be impregnable to the smooth-bore cannons then in use. The invention of “rifled cannon”, however, which caused the cannonballs to spin at a higher velocity when fired, proved to be the downfall of thick-walled forts like this one. The Yankees proved that in their 1862 assault during our Civil War.

Construction of the fort began in 1829, under the direction of Major General Babcock, and later, a recent graduate of West Point Military Academy, Second Lieutenant Robert E. Lee -- who went on, 30 years later. to accept command of the Confederate forces during the Civil War. It was finally completed in 1847, after 18 years of construction.

It took some 25 million bricks to build the fort, with walls up to eleven feet thick, and wooden pilings driven 70 feet into the mud to support the structure. A mammoth structure for its time!

It was named “Fort Pulaski” in 1833, in honor of Polish military commander Casimir Pulaski, who aided the Americans during their drive for independence from England in the late 1700’s.

The interior of the fort seemed enormous to me as a child. Soldiers used to drill on that open space, and take recreation during good weather. There was also a huge fig bush taking up a large area in the eastern section, and I love figs! So I was always looking for ripe ones when we visited in the summers, growing up.

It was also a thrill to stand on the upper parapet and watch the huge ocean-going ships go up and down the river. The old wooden sailing vessels of the 1800’s would have seemed quite puny, compared to these massive modern ships. (I am always amazed that these huge modern tankers, as heavy as they are, FLOAT.)

The interior of the fort also afforded many opportunities for childish imaginations. The arched doorways were quite different from any buildings we knew; and the fort interpreters always made a point to tell visitors that the wooden interior flooring had to be put together with wooden pegs, instead of nails.

Soldiers’ boots, back then, had hobnails in the soles to hold them together, and if those hobnails struck a flooring nail, the resulting spark could have ignited gunpowder, and caused an explosion. So they had to use wooden pegs instead of nails in the floors. I had never heard that before.

Sometimes we would be leaving in the late afternoon, and get to hear the fort’s bugler play “Taps” as the sun went down and the flag was lowered for the day. That was always a very moving event. But we never got there early enough to hear the bugler play “Reveille” in the morning, when the sun came up, and soldiers would have begun their day!

All in all, a visit to Fort Pulaski was always an inspiring event. And we always seemed to learn something new every time, so we never got tired of going.

I later had the opportunity to visit Fort Clinch, in Ferassault on Fort Pulaski, made brick forts like that basically obsolete before it was completed.

Fort Jackson, upriver from Fort Pulaski, was much smaller, and not open to the public when I was growing up. It too was built to protect the Savannah Harbor from various enemies, but fell into disuse and was almost lost, before being brought back to life as an important facet of Savannah’s military history.

Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia. He and his wife are both long-time Rotarians, and live in eastern Liberty County with their passel of orphaned rescue cats. He writes on a variety of topics, and may be reached at rafe_semmes@yahoo.com.nandina Beach, just across the Georgia-Florida line, which was similar in size and construction to Fort Pulaski. I believe it may have been the last such thick-walled fort built. “Rifled cannon,” like those used in the