hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4100.txt

Episode: 4100
Title: HPR4100: Charleston, South Carolina
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4100/hpr4100.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:36:44

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4100 for Friday the 19th of April 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Charleston, South Carolina.
It is part of the series travel.
It is about 11 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, we visit Charleston, South Carolina.
And meet up with some friends.
Hello, this is Huka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio in another exciting episode.
And this time I'm going to be taking a look at another part of our RV travel.
And this is our time in Charleston, South Carolina.
And that was on, we're going to start with February 9th.
That was our first full day, February 9th of 2023.
Now, it was, in fact, a full day.
I knew I wanted to see Fort Sumter.
And I had heard there was an aircraft carrier here as well.
And it turned out we could visit both on the same day.
It did make for a very full day, however.
Patriots Point is the site of the Naval and Maritime Museum.
And it is also one of the points from which the ferry to Fort Sumter leaves.
So that's how we combined it in the one day.
We purchased the ferry tickets on the website the day before to lock that in place.
Now, after breakfast, we headed to Patriots Point and bought tickets for the captain's tour
of the USS Yorktown, the World War II aircraft carrier they have on display.
And if you're thinking, wait a minute, wasn't the Yorktown sunk at Midway?
Well, yes, one of them was.
You see, the Navy will reuse names.
They just never use the same name twice for existing ships.
So when the Yorktown CV-5 was sunk, the next one off the construction line,
CV-10 was given the name Yorktown.
It is, in fact, the fourth Navy ship to bear that name.
And it had a long and distinguished career in the Pacific in World War II,
and was decommissioned shortly after the war.
Now, with the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, it was taken out of mothballs and modernized
in 1953, though by the time they were done, it was too late for it to see any action.
It was modernized again to receive what is called a candid deck.
And that's where the flight deck is at an angle to the main axis of the ship.
And with that, it did serve during the Vietnam War, and it was then the recovery vessel for
Apollo 8. It appeared in the film's Torah, Torah, and the Philadelphia experiment.
And finally, it was decommissioned in 1970 and brought to Charleston.
In 1975, designated as a national historical landmark.
When we bought our tickets for the captain's tour, we had about 40 minutes to spare and visited
the USS Lafay, a destroyer that participated in both Normandy landings in Europe and the
invasion of Okinawa in the Pacific. It was nicknamed the ship that would not die because it survived
a massive kamikaze attack at Okinawa. It was docked right next to the Yorktown, and we got to see
a couple of short films there and chat with a retired CPL, CPL stands for Chief Petty Officer
about its history. Then we went into the Yorktown for our tour, which is well worth the money.
The tour was led by a retired veteran of 30 years on carriers, so he knew his stuff.
They had an exhibit there for the do-little raid on Tokyo. Now, that was not from this carrier.
Actually, they took off from the USS Hornet, but they trained 16 crews on how to take off
in Mitchell B-25 bombers from a carrier deck. And that's not an easy thing to do.
And then they sent them on a mission to bomb Tokyo. Now, 16 B-25s did not do anything major to
Tokyo, but it did signal to the Japanese that the home islands were not safe from attack. It
improved American morale, and so it was all to the good. The way they did it, they took off from
the carrier, flew over Tokyo and Japan, and then went to China to land there in areas that were
controlled by the allies. Now, the rest of the tour took us through the crew quarters,
the ship services like medical and dental, the kitchen, the bakery, and so on.
We saw the captain's room and the admiral's room. Now, admirals were not always on board,
so often this area was unoccupied. And realistically, the captain's room was usually unoccupied,
since the captain had a smaller room by their bridge where he usually stayed.
The captain's room had a dining area where dignitaries would be entertained when that was called for,
and they did tell us of Anne Margaret staying here when she was entertaining the troops.
Apparently, she was extremely gracious about dining with the sailors, but she applied so much
perfume that took months for the smell to go away. At least that's the story we were told.
Now, at this point, our Fort Sumter tour was due, and our tour guide called for one of the golf
cards to come and get us and take us to the ferry. Now, Fort Sumter is an island in the middle of
the channel leading into Charleston, and it was built specifically to command the approaches.
It was flanked by two land-based forts, Fort Johnson and Fort Multree.
When South Carolina seceded from the Union in December of 1860, Fort Sumter was just nearing
completion, but still under construction. Now, major Robert Anderson had US troops at Fort
Multree, but Fort Multree was built to defend against the sea attack, not a land attack from behind,
which of course was surely coming now. So, under cover of darkness, he moved his troops to Fort
Sumter. But Fort Sumter was susceptible to bombardment from both Fort Johnson and Fort Multree.
And after 34 hours of cannon fire, Anderson surrendered and was allowed to take his men away to the
north. By then, most of the fort had been demolished anyway, and it was occupied by the Confederates.
Now, you only have one hour on the island, so make sure you visit the museum, if you go there,
so you can get more of the story. Now, the nearby island called Morris Island is the site of
the Battle of Fort Wagner, which involved the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, which was all Black
Soldiers, shown in the movie Glory. Then we returned to Patriots Point, went back on the
Yorktown to see a few of the things we had missed, including the bridge and the flight deck.
Finally, it was a full day. We had a great time. Okay, next day,
February 10th of 2023. We met up with Amy and Steve, which are friends we made last year.
Last year being 2022, when we took a Viking Danube cruise, they live in Charleston,
and when we knew we would stop here, we made arrangements to renew our friendship.
Amy is a now retired professor of history, and she taught South Carolina history for many years,
so it made for a good day. We started with lunch at Poe's Tavern on Sullivan's Island,
a barrier island on the coast of South Carolina. As is now known, Edgar Allen Poe enlisted
in the Army under a false name in 1827 and was sent to Sullivan's Island, and he set his story
to Goldbug on and around Sullivan's Island. Now, after lunch, we went to Fort Multree to
tour this installation. It was in use as an army fort from 1776 to World War II.
In the American Revolution, it was a simple structure of Palmetto logs and earthworks,
but Palmetto logs are very good at absorbing hits from cannonballs, instead of splintering as
other trees would be prone to do. So with its 30 smooth bore cannons, it successfully drove off
a British fleet with 200 guns. Then it was used successfully to bombard Fort Sumter to start
the Civil War. By World War II, it was used mostly to support anti-submarine warfare.
Our guide for the tour was our friend Amy, and she pointed out that it was named for Colonel
William Multree, Commander of the Fort in the Revolutionary War. When he drove away the British
fleet, it saved Charleston from occupation for the moment. A few years later, though, the British
landed further south and took Charleston by land. One of the points Amy made was that while firing
on Fort Sumter started the Civil War, South Carolina was actually not particularly involved in the
Civil War. It was very important, however, in the Revolution. Now, coming from Massachusetts where
you were raised on Lexington Concord, Bunker Hill and the Freedom Trail, this was an interesting
perspective. We had also heard some stories in Savannah about what they did in the Revolution
fighting the British. After finishing Fort Multree, we drove around for a while, Amy and Steve
showing us the sights. We got out of the car to walk across the bridge to the Isle of Palms,
but it was getting cold and wet, so we finally took our leave of them and drove back to the RV.
The next day, February 11th of 2023, pretty much rained all day, so we just decided to rest day.
Then on February 12th of 2023, we went back into Charleston and went into the Visitor Center,
and we discovered that they had RV parking on the ground floor, the parking garage.
That made parking our big truck easy. Then we booked a tour of Charleston with Grayline.
The driver was very engaging and gave us a little history as well as pointing out historical homes
and sights in the downtown area. After lunch, we decided the weather looked bad, so we opted for
the Charleston Museum, which was directly across the street from the Visitor Center. We got to look
at Charleston history, starting with the Native Americans through the colonial period, the
revolution, the antebellum south and slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. We learned a lot
about rice cultivation since that crop made Charleston wealthy. At the time of the revolution,
Charleston was the wealthiest city in the American colonies. This is where Francis Marion,
also known as the Swamp Fox, was active fighting the British. When we finished in the museum,
the weather had turned a bit uglier, so we headed for the RV.
So, this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio signing off, and is always encouraging you to support
free software. Bye-bye!
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