Oatland Island's Storied Past is a Story Worth Telling...

Image courtesy Oatland Island

 Who knew? 

Oatland Island, which can be viewed from Richardson Creek on an Island Shuttle Boat Tour, has a long and fascinating history. In the 1700s and 1800s, it was a plantation, undoubtedly worked by slaves. In 1927, it was the location of a home for retired Railroad Conductors. (In "Once Upon an Island" by Elizabeth Carpenter Piechocinski,  Walter "Cork" Shaaf recounts those old conductors fixing nets and fishing rigs for him and the other children living on the island.) In 1941, it became a home and research facility for women and children with syphilis and other STDs. In 1945, penicillin eliminated the need for that function, and the old building became a component of what we now call the CDC. 

And it was there that the No Pest Strip (marketed by Shell if memory serves) and the flea collar for pets was invented! After the CDC consolidated facilities in Atlanta, the property was deemed excess and was given to the local school system. School children have enjoyed learning about the natural world there since the early 1970s, and I have picked up groups at their dock on Richardson Creek with Michael Neal and Bull River Cruises in conjunction with Kelly Tours. 

As I wind through these backwater creeks, I learn more and more that every place you see has a story. Chasing those stories down, and sharing them, is great fun!

Click here to learn more...

Shrimping Life...

Continuing a proud tradition! (image by the author)

During the middle decades of the 1900s, an entire fishing industry grew up in our region. Hundreds of shrimping trawlers were built and put into service--many of them from the DESCO boat company in St. Augustine Florida--and thousands of men were provided employment as they brought food to the nation's table. Our favorite Captain, Clyde Carrell "Buddy" Lee spent about twenty years of his working life aboard these vessels and tells of legendary characters who plied the waters and lived the life. Here's another account of that life, from another "Buddy,"

"In summers, I had the opportunity to accompany Hugh Burrows out on the Pinta for all-day shrimping in the offshore Atlantic waters. These excursions were always memorable, but we worked hard. Bobo was not into providing pleasure cruises, if you went fishing with him, you earned it.

We helped with the nets, headed shrimp, hosed down the deck between catches, and cleaned the galley. During the drags, we took cat naps on the bow in the warm sunshine. The long extended double outriggers towed the nets, and the vessel's powerful Caterpillar Diesel engine towed the accumulating bags and catch along the seafloor.

Image courtesy U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries
The "Try Net" in the middle is pulled in mid-drag to see if there are shrimp present.

These trips were always made enjoyable by the food. The local shrimpers definitely knew how to eat. Usually, the striker prepared breakfast just as dawn broke and the sun rose over the horizon. With the first drag of the morning begun and a two-hour lull before hauling in the nets, there would be strong steaming coffee served up in thick crockery mugs with sugar and canned milk, hot grits with butter, and scrambled eggs with ham or bacon.

Lunch came in the early afternoon. It was often shrimp creole, prepared with shrimp that had been in the ocean an hour earlier, simmered in a thick-and-spicy, made-from-scratch, perfectly-seasoned tomato sauce, with onion, bell pepper, and a dash or two of oregano. This blend was served over real white rice, with sweet iced tea to wash it down. It was a grand, almost romantic life..."(from "A Georgia Tidewater Companion" by Buddy Sullivan)

Today; over-fishing, high fuel-prices, and pond-scum-shrimp imported from China have pretty much ruined this once proud and prolific industry. I could gross you out telling you what those pond-owners feed those shrimp they are raising, but let's just say that you can't make chicken salad out of what they eat.

Image courtesy Josephine Johnson: music and photography!

Video courtesy of The Shrimp Alliance. Click here to visit their site

The boat-haul rails and winching-machinery at the old Sasser docks on Wilmington Island are now rusty relics. There are no boats to haul out. The shrimp-boats are going away. Many of them are abandoned, burnt, or sunk.

Image courtesy Diesel Engine Sales Company (DESCO)

You can still see a few shrimpers at work, and Nelson's Shrimp Company in Thunderbolt still sells Wild Georgia Shrimp caught right here (and the best shrimp to have for a Low Country Boil). For an easy and fun way to enjoy the taste of our place, go sit at the Flying Fish Bar and Grill. Tell Heather we sent you!

Situated on Highway 80 just east of the Bull River Bridge, The Flying Fish has great seafood and a great atmosphere to match. The newly covered deck and big outdoor bar, complete with 85 inches of big-screen sports action, make for a memorable visit.
Please tell them you were sent by SavannahBoater.com!

Georgia's shrimping industry is not what it used to be, but don't despair. Life has taught me that the tides of fortune go out, and then they come in again. Sooner or later our shrimping industry will recover fully as people learn the truth about imported shrimp.

Image via My Georgia Coast

The sun will rise again for Georgia shrimping. You can do your part by refusing to purchase imported shrimp. When you go to a restaurant, ask your server if the shrimp has been harvested locally. Every dollar we put into our community passes through the hands of several of our friends and neighbors. Let's support them, and ourselves!

Avoiding Things That Go Bump In The Night...

The Fovea centralis is responsible for your night blind spot.
This can be somewhat compensated for by scanning.
The optic nerve entering the back of the eyeballs is responsible for your
day blind spot, which is overcome by using both eyes to view an
object in your field of view. 

 Within the last week or so, a 28-foot twin-engined boat ran into an unlit aid-to-navigation in the Intracoastal Waterway near Causton's Bluff. Both the ATON and the boat were significantly damaged. And it's just plain dumb-luck that the operator wasn't killed or injured. If you are going to operate a boat at night, you need to learn about the hazards involved, and your own capabilities and limitations...

When I was 13, I lived in Marathon and ran a small skiff at night. While speeding along in the darkness toward the opening in the breakwater that protected our dock, I learned to roll off the throttle as soon as I had the first hint of seeing rocks in front of me. You are much closer to an object at night than you think you are, and you might not see it at all until you are on top of it. That's what happened to PT-109 and a young John F. Kennedy.

While beginning the "Nighthawk" phase of the Army's helicopter flight-training, (without night vision goggles) I was making an approach to land at a stage-field and I was startled when the landing skids touched down on the runway well before I thought they would. I knew I was near the ground because of the dim glow from our position lights, but my distance estimation and depth perception were off. 

Way off. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was conducting training on a boat for a married couple and their son, and the time change and shortened period of daylight had us still on the water as it got dark. Now, if you had asked me, "are all aids to navigation lit?" I would of course have told you "No." 

But learning occurs on 4 levels, (rote, understanding, application, and correlation) and it's one thing to know something and something else entirely to apply what you know to your behavior. As we got ready to accelerate to planing speed, the youngest person on the boat, who, thankfully, had listened to my pre-departure safety briefing asking everyone to keep an eye out for hazards, asked if we saw the unlit daymark on its pole in front of the boat. 

He was the only one aboard who saw it, and we could have been startled or worse, but for him. Lesson learned? At night, everyone is a lookout, and you shouldn't overdrive your ability to see objects in front of you.

During the day, we use binocular vision for distance estimation and depth perception, and to help us see things in our path.  At night we are using monocular vision, and we need other skills to help with distance estimation and depth perception. With practice, we can use monocular visual cues to greatly increase our ability to "see" at night. 

Our eyeballs have limitations that we need to understand, or we can tear up our boat or hurt someone. In the collision mentioned above, a local boater collided with a "daymark," a lateral aid to navigation with no light; the crash damaged the mark and pretty much destroyed the boat. Those daymarks, the ones with the green rectangles and red triangles on top,  are essentially signs on telephone poles, and what you don't see CAN hurt you.

About your eyeballs: You have an area on the inside of your eyeballs--your retinas-- with a large concentration of cone cells. This is the fovea centralis and this area is why you can see colors during the day. It takes a relatively large amount of light to stimulate these cells. 

As it grows dark at night, you lose the ability to see colors, and your "night blind spot" becomes a factor in you seeing an obstacle in your path. Luckily for you, there is an area around the fovea centralis called the parafovea that is populated with rod cells. Rod cells do not see color, and provide less precise vision than cone cells, BUT they are about 1000 times more light sensitive. Night vision is monochromatic, or grayscale and this is why there are shapes on those lateral aids--the triangles and rectangles.

If you look directly at a dimly lit object in the dark (like an unlit daymark on a pole) it will disappear, because your lenses are then focusing the image on your cone cells. The ones that don't work at night.

The answer? Scanning and off-center viewing. When you are running on the water at night, you need to divide your "field of view" into 10 degree slices, or zones of the horizon,  and move your eyes progressively across those zones. Only look at each area for a few seconds before moving your scan. You should also move your scan up and down the vertical field, scanning both near and far sections of the water to your front. You may find yourself acquiring an object in the distance, off to one side or the other of where you are looking. And when you look at it, it disappears. That's normal, there's something there. Don't hit it. 

Night visual scanning takes discipline and is hard work. Don't be flirting or fooling around while running a boat at night. Post every available lookout. Slowing down helps too. 

Remember the Titanic.

Brian McCarthy told me this story when we talked about running at night. "I was returning to Savannah after having dinner and enjoying the sunset with my wife and friends at Cafe Loco on Tybee. We had to run out to the ship channel and come back up the river due to the tides. As we cruised up the river under the stars, in dark night conditions, I noticed an area in front of us with no stars at all. The area above the horizon was pitch black in front of us. Nothing but a shadow."

As Brian was telling me this, I was reminded of a lesson from my night helicopter flight training at Fort Rucker. "Treat all shadows as solid obstacles" Brian's six-sense, the nagging feeling that something wasn't right, saved his life and the lives of his passengers.

"I turned the helm as hard and fast as I could, and we missed getting run over by a huge cargo ship with only a few feet to spare. I learned something that night!"

I was explaining all this night-vision stuff to a student-captain yesterday and he exclaimed to his wife, "that's why the comet we were looking at the other night kept disappearing! We'd see it while scanning and lose it when we looked at it!" He then added that during his service aboard a Nuclear Attack Submarine, he was assigned watch duty while on the surface at night, and the Navy never taught him about the features of the human eye. Score one for Army Aviation.

If you would like to experience this phenomenon for yourself some night, step outside in the dark and observe a jetliner crossing the sky at high altitude. When you look right at it, you will probably see the colored nav lights and a white strobe or two. As you slide your eyes off of the aircraft to one side or the other, the colors will disappear and the strobes will flash noticeably brighter. That's your rod cells on the job.

You can enhance your night vision by eating well (vitamin A), and protecting your levels of visual purple or rhodopsin with good sunglasses. When running at night dim your GPS and instrument lights to the lowest level at which you can still read them. And speaking of your GPS, those unlit daymarks are on that display. Take note of where they are as you cruise along. As you pass by each one, note where the next one ahead is plotted, and choose a heading to avoid it. 

Don't get bumped in the night.

Going Offshore, and Making it Back

 Note: use web version view to see videos...

Freedom Boat Club requires additional training for members who want to go offshore, with emphasis on how to navigate heavy seas. The FBC training-checklist also requires instruction on how to run an "inlet."

In our area, we have rivers and sounds opening to the ocean, but we don't have any man-made inlets as Florida does. An inlet is a narrow opening in the coast in which you might find an outrushing tide encountering an incoming swell lifted by an onshore breeze and shoaling. When this happens, the waves pile up closer together; the peaks get higher and the troughs get deeper. Our river and sound entrances DO experience this phenomenon, but the effects are spread out across a longer and wider area than a Florida inlet.

Videos produced by YouTubers at Florida's Haulover Inlet show the hazards of running an inlet and point out that speed and boat loading are critical to avoid "stuffing" the bow. (Burying the front of the boat under a wave and taking on massive amounts of water in an instant).  

This video is the perfect visual training aid, as the captain of this vessel stuffs her hard at about 1:43.

Taking heavy seas over the bow instantly reduces a boat's stability, and makes it prone to capsizing right. now. Before you can get your vest on. Unless your boat is self-bailing, that blue water coming over the bow has nowhere to go but into the bilge, so the size and condition of your bilge pumps might be important. 

While the danger-area of this inlet is a short stretch, imagine being out in the open ocean with heavy seas, and miles to go before you sleep. Taking one wave over the bow makes your boat much more susceptible to another, and things can go south very quickly. In any situation involving rough seas, putting on life preservers might preserve your life. 

Here's another great resource-video for those headed out into the deep blue sea. This video is an excellent point of departure for offshore training, with perhaps the most salient point being that the number one piece of safety equipment on your boat is that brain between your ears...

Full Sail! Spending A Day With The Other Crowd

Savannah boating-legend Jack Fitzgerald holds court while at the helm of "Honey."
L-R, Kai, Etienne, Jack, Herb, and Dennis. Lawrence Bennett not pictured (yet).

This area's association with sailboats goes back at least to the 1500s, if not earlier. With the invention of what were at first external then eventually internal-combustion engines, maritime commerce was no longer left to the whim of the wind and the clutch of a current. 

While the first machine-powered boats were roundly derided as "stinkpots," and used mostly to tow real vessels to and from their berths, over time a boat powered solely by sail became the domain of the very rich or the very poor. 

For the rich, sailing is a sport. A way to exude coolness and sophistication and to generally be a wind-powered badass. Think Ted Turner, who learned to sail here and won the America's Cup trophy. 

If Ted predates you, consider Larry Ellison's Oracle-sponsored freakship. It's a sailboat, I guess. Or maybe it should be called flying boat. 

It's a marriage of airfoils and hydrofoils and it has an AIRBUS logo on it. They make flying machines. It's definitely flying. Suffice it to say, it has created a new class of sailors.

The poor sail because they can't afford to put the power in powerboat. One of my friends loves to say, "sailors get the wind for free and they want everything else for free as well." There does seem to be a cultural divide between powerboaters and sailors. 

Thousands have been introduced to sailing 
on these little Sunfish

This weekend I had the chance to see and do 

something different. I was invited to join a group of old sailors for a race in the Wilmington River. We departed the Yacht Club as a cloudy sky was clearing and the steady stream of stories got underway.

I quickly cottoned to the fact that competition sailing requires skill, cunning, and patience. A sense of humor helps too. I tried to stay out of the way and not get knocked on the head. 

When the wind freshened and the old girl got her legs under her, we cut right along.  A sailboat moving through the water hums or vibrates slightly. It makes her feel alive. Like any machine; she talks to you through the tips of your fingers, the seat of your pants, and the soles of your feet. 

There is work involved in sailing, and you can't proceed directly into the wind or to any destination laying in its eye. You must lay your heading sufficiently off the wind for it to flow properly across the sail and pull the boat forward. This involves zig-zagging or "tacking." 

When you say something inappropriate to a woman and she slaps you, your mouth changes course and speed. That is one example of taking a different tack. "Coming about" in a sailboat (changing the heading to put the wind on the other side of the boat) is where that idea came from. 

And there is Lawrence Bennett, my brother from another mother.
He is serving as the mainsail trimmer. That fancy-looking block and tackle assembly is
custom to this one-off boat that was built to win a race.

We have the mainsail and a "155 percent" jib up. I ask "what's it a hundred and fifty-five percent of?"

LB answers, "the J." 

"Okay, what's the J?" 

He says, "the J is the distance from the bow to the mainmast." All I know is, the jib is much bigger than the mainsail.

In practice, when we tack, the mainsail movement isn't that dramatic. But that big jib has to shift from one side of the boat to the other, and it gets pulled across the front of the mast by lines running from its bottom rear corner to winches on either side of the cockpit.  This is accompanied by quite a bit of snap, crackle, and pop! 

Our race involved boats of different size, speed, and sail inventory, and we had to size them all up. Another local favorite, "High Visibility" joined the fray with Etienne's wife aboard. It's a beautiful and fast boat with a capable crew.

Waiting on a wind while using
the cast iron spinnaker for
propulsion.

We did spend some time waiting for an onshore breeze to spring up. That allowed us to enjoy a cold drink or two. 

The starting line of the race lies between an official's boat and a floating marker. Sound signals provide warnings of the impending start. The trick is to cross the line immediately after the starting signal sounds but not before it. And you shouldn't crash. 

After crossing the line we must work our way to windward, tacking up to a turn-marker. We pass as close to the floating mark as possible without touching it, then it's a downwind slide with jib on one side and the main on the other. 

The apparent speed is reduced because we are going with the wind rather than across it, but an incoming tide gives us a good speed-over-ground. We must continue downwind past the starting line to a downwind marker, turn around that, and tack back to the start/finish line. 

Now it's time for skill and experience and mental calculation, as we want to perform the least amount of maneuvering as possible and get across that line between the official's boat and the start (finish)marker. 

As we approach there is some discussion of whether or not the incoming tide will set us on the wrong side of this marker, but we clear it in good time. 

We won't know how well we have done until all boats have finished because different boats are handicapped according to the hull design and sail layout. In any case, it's a fun and exciting way to spend a day on the river.

"Now what is that all about?"

I spent a lot of time crouching, or should I say cowering, on that hatch cover in front of LB. And while I was trying to stay out of the way, I wasn't. At least no one yelled at me.

When Jack's partner-owner was on the boat, he would yell at his crew, who would abandon ship upon returning to the dock. Jack got tired of this and had a placard made for his partner.

About the Sailing Vessel "Honey"

A well-to-do Chicago businessman wanted to win a prestigious sailing race between Chicago and Mackinaw in the early 1970s. He arranged for C & C Sailing Yachts to build a racing boat for that purpose, with as little extra weight and as much speed as possible. She was built in 1974 and won the race in her first attempt. The proud owner was celebrating aboard his winner after the race. He announced that he wasn't feeling well and died right there on the spot. At least he died a winner. 

While some might take this as an omen, Savannah resident and former Vietnam Huey-pilot Jack Fitzgerald and a partner did not. They bought her in 1976. As his partner could never remember any of the female passenger's names, and called them all "Honey," and they gave her that name. 

Honey is still a fast boat, and has won many races up and down the coast. She is known and admired, and her crew is respected in sailing circles. LB says she "gets really fast" when the wind exceeds 25 knots (when most of the boaters I know are looking for safe harbor and a cold beer). 

 

Jack has owned Honey, either alone or in partnership, for 44 years! How many relationships do you know of that last that long? She has been overhauled, re-rigged, re-bottomed, and made more civilized with fine cabinetry and furnishings below. She is on her third diesel engine, a quiet 35 horsepower auxiliary with a prop that feathers when not in use. Perhaps the only thing original is her outline. 

Jack has been sailing with mostly the same men since 1982, and while they don't sail together as often as they once did, they still exhibit quiet confidence, skill, and flawless crew coordination. Now that I think of it, aircrew coordination probably could trace its roots back to the coordination that was required to operate a ship in the age of sail. 

When we prepared to depart the dock and again when we returned, everyone moved purposefully to uncover, and later re-cover her. What would have taken one boater an hour was accomplished in a few minutes. How often do your passengers stay and help you put up your boat?

If you are interested in getting involved with sailing in our area check out 

https://www.chathamsailing.org

The History of The Army Corps of Engineers in the Savannah District 1829 - 1989

The first vessels to be powered by something more than wind or muscle
used steam. Our rivers and creeks were the highways of commerce, and as soon
as commerce got underway, Army engineers were involved in making it better.

If you spend time on the waters in our area, you should know that the works of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are quite literally all around you. They are as active today in protecting the environment, and helping mankind work with nature and benefit from her, as ever.

Sidebar: When you pass by the oxygenation stations on the Savannah River - know that the Corps was involved in that...

The Dissolved Oxygen Injection System used to mitigate the effects of deepening the river 
for Post Panamax ships on endangered species. Although it's easy to think of it as a gigantic and uber-expensive aquarium-pump or, "bubbler," it's a bit more involved than that.

To download a PDF fact sheet on this project, click here.


And when you pass by Fort Pulaski, know that the Corps was involved in that project as well.

I came across a publication dated the year I came to Savannah, 1989. Although it (and I) are old now, it's still a fascinating source document for how things got to be the way they are around here.

From the text, "Because the passage through Parson's Cut suffered excessive shoaling, Congress, in 1890, called on the Corps to do a preliminary examination and survey of an alternative route in the area of Wassau and Skidaway islands. This site, Skidaway Narrows, was "a narrow, tortuous waterway formed by two creeks which united at their heads at the meeting place of the tides connecting Burnside River with Skidaway River..."

click here to download a pdf of the entire book. in PDF format.

"Blood Is Thicker Than Water!"

 As you cruise the Wilmington River north from Thunderbolt, you shortly come to Bonaventure Cemetery on the west bank. Bonaventure is a beautiful place, with grand and ancient live oaks that have Spanish moss dripping from their branches as they provide shade for the graves of countless characters and heroes. It is said that these trees were planted to form the letters M and T. While the M was for the Mullryne family, the T was to honor the Tattnalls. 

Wikipedia Image

Colonel John Mullryne founded Bonaventure Plantation near Savannah in 1762 after moving here from Carolina.  Josiah Tattnall Sr. had married Colonel Mullryne's daughter Mary, and they moved to Bonaventure as well. By 1771 Mullryne and Tattnall together owned 7000 acres of Georgia land, "stretching from Ebeneezer to Sunbury." (from "Historic Bonaventure Cemetery," Wilson and Johnson, 1998) Mullryne also built the third Tybee Lighthouse in 1773!

From Wikipedia, "The first house on the plantation, made of English brick, was destroyed by a fire on 7 January 1771. John Berendt wrote in his 1994 book 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' that a formal dinner party, held by either Mullryne or Tattnall, was in progress when one of the servants informed the host that the roof was ablaze and that nothing could be done to stop it. The host 'rose calmly, clinked his glass, and invited guests to pick up their dinner plates and follow him into the garden,' where they ate the remainder of their meals in the glow of the flames." (story continues below)

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Tattnall Sr's second son, Josiah Jr, was born in 1764 at Bonaventure and went on to become Governor of Georgia in 1801, He is also remembered for introducing a new strain of  "Sea Island" cotton from the Bahamas to Bonaventure's fields. Tattnall Jr. also had a son named Josiah Tattnall (the 3rd). This man had an amazing life and went on to become a national, rather than local or state figure. Oh, and he also married his first cousin! (see New Georgia Encyclopedia)

He joined the United States Navy in 1812, when America was at war with Britain. Tattnall fought in that war but, apparently, didn't harbor a grudge about this later. Josiah Tattnall the 3rd served in several more wars including the Barbary Wars (under Stephen Decatur), and the Mexican War of 1846-1848. In 1858 he was commanding the East India Squadron near Hong Kong. Britain was then engaged in the Second Opium War with China and Tattnall observed British ships in a gun battle against forts on Chinese soil. 

In violation of the United States' neutral status in that war, Tattnall entered the fray and assisted the British with American guns. When taken to task for this breach of military discipline and national protocol, he defended his actions with the phrase:

"Blood is thicker than water!" 

He was probably referring to the shared heritage of the United States and Great Britain, and perhaps had considered that his grandfather had come from England and, remaining a loyalist, had fled Georgia during the revolution. The Tattnalls had British roots!

Tattnall served on and commanded many vessels while in U.S. Navy service, including the frigates (original) Constellation and Constitution. The original Constellation's replacement, built with parts of her original framing, is moored today in Baltimore Harbor and open for tours. Click for a virtual tour.). 

The USS Constitution is still on the active rolls of the United States Navy and is the only active US Navy ship that ever sank another ship. She is preserved today in Boston. 

Commodore Tattnall had a walking stick made from the live oak of the Constitution, whose timbers came from our barrier islands, most likely Saint Simons. That scrap of wood went full circle, because it came from a Georgia barrier island and is back in Georgia now in the collection of the Georgia Historical Society. 

During his service to the Confederacy, Tattnall felt compelled to order the destruction of his flagship, the CSS Virginia (Merrimack) due to advancing Union Forces. He was eventually captured near Savannah by Union forces under Sherman, and made a prisoner of war. After the civil war, he spent four years in Nova Scotia before returning to Savannah, and Bonaventure, where he died and is buried, next to his kin. 

Next to his blood, which is thicker than water.