Forts and other things

We visited a lot of military forts on this trip.  The Atlantic shipping ports needed protection at various times and forts were built.  Ft Sumter is probably the most famous fort we toured.  

On the eve of the Civil War Federal troops were stationed at Ft. Moultrie, but Major Robert Anderson realized that the threat to his troops would not come from the sea, but from land and Ft. Moultrie was indefensible by land so in December 1860 he moved into Ft. Sumter.  His stay was brief.  He surrendered to Union troops April 14, 1861. At the time the 33 star flag was the official Federal flag.  Anderson was there at the end of the war when Union troops once again took over Ft. Sumter and the original 33 star flag flew once more.  This flag was one of the most interesting things we saw at the fort.

By the end of the war, the fort was reduced to rubble and it hasn't changed much since then.

Later in the day we visited Ft. Moultrie which was flying the same 33 star flag. This flag was only used from 1859 to 1861.

Ft. Moultrie was upgraded for defense in the Spanish American War.

And it had some really big cannons

That day we also toured the USS Yorktown which is now a museum and had some really cool things for Calvin to crawl around in.

We also toured USS Laffey, which was a WWII destroyer. Amazingly it survived a kamikaze attack of about 50 planes. Watching the History Channel video of the attack while sitting inside the ship was pretty interesting.