Finsatsea: October 30

First here’s the trivia answer from yesterday’s question. The shortest commercial airline flight is between two of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, Westray and Papa Westray. It travels a distance of 1.7 miles and the record speed was 53 seconds. It’s flown by Loganair, a regional Scottish carrier. Not many frequent flyer miles for that one!

After a day and a half at sea we’ve arrived on a beautiful sunny day in Charleston, SC. I’ve been to Charleston before so I decided to take a tour to a plantation on the other side of the Cooper River in Mt. Pleasant. The plantation is called Boone Hall and it’s one of the oldest working plantations in the US since it has been producing agricultural crops for more than 320 years. The site was a wedding gift of 470 acres from a large landowner to his daughter and her new husband, Major John Boone. It’s not known when the first house was built on the land because the current plantation house was built after the property had gone through a succession of owners. A Canadian bought the plantation in 1935 and he and his wife decided that the existing house didn’t comport with what they thought a southern plantation should look like, so they razed it and replaced it with a modern (1936) house which fit their image of an antebellum mansion.

Boone Hall

One very striking and original feature is the entrance driveway, known as the Grand Avenue of Oaks. It’s three quarters of a mile long and consists of 88 live oak trees and one magnolia. The trees are draped with Spanish moss and the lane is very beautiful. It’s said that the Grand Avenue was the inspiration for Twelve Oaks, Ashley Wilkes home in Gone with the Wind. Among the original plantation buildings still standing are several brick slave quarters on the left of the driveway as one approaches the main house. The plantation grew in size from 470 acres originally to nearly 740 and pre-Civil War there were as many as 320 slaves on the property. Not all the housing for those people were brick but the ones that exist are quite substantial 12 x 30 foot brick buildings with raised plank floors and a fireplace. They were actually occupied until the 1940’s because after the Civil War many of the former slaves remained on the property and worked, most as sharecroppers.

Grand Avenue of Oaks

One of the brick slave quarters

Another view

A little of the history of the original owner, John Boone, was kind of interesting. He was a little bit of a scoundrel. He trafficked in slaves, dealt with pirates and concealed stolen goods. He was kicked off the South Carolina Grand Council, the local colonial governing body, twice for his activities. Nevertheless, he and his wife were ancestors of Edward and John Rutledge, two of the fledgling country’s founding fathers in the 18th century.

In front of the main house are two formal gardens with brick walkways. Because it’s so late in the season most of the flowers were fading, but there were still lots of bright colors and plenty of butterflies around. We had an opportunity to walk through the ground floor of the main house, but I chose not to. It was such a nice day that I opted to walk through the gardens, look at the slave quarters and walk over to the stables. One of the owners in the 20th century wanted to create an important racehorse stable. That effort didn’t pan out, but one important horse did live and train there. His name was Princequillo, at one time considered to be the best long-distance horse in America. Of more interest to me is that one of his daughters was the mother of Secretariat, perhaps the greatest racehorse ever.

Not much color because it's late in the season

I was able to catch this butterfly as he landed for a moment

The stables

A few of the horses in one of the paddocks along the Grand Avenue

After we got back on the bus we had a riding tour of Charleston. Our driver Billy deserved a medal as far as I was concerned because maneuvering a big bus through Charleston’s narrow streets is no easy feat. Charleston is built on a peninsula bounded by the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. Near the tip of the peninsula is the area called the Battery overlooking the harbor and in sight of a couple of forts, one of which in particular we all have heard of, Fort Sumter. On April 12, 1861 South Carolina militia fired on the Union soldiers in what everyone agrees was the opening salvo of that war. South Carolina had officially seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. The Union soldiers surrendered a day after the bombardment began because they had no hope of reinforcement. The fort was not retaken until February 22, 1865.

Fort Sumter

Our guide Keith was a native Charlestonian and very knowledgeable. The city has a long history, not quite as old as my part of Virginia, and played a significant role in the American Revolution too. I didn’t know this, but during the Revolution Charleston was the object of a long siege before being captured by the British. I did take exception to a few things Keith said because he made it sound like South Carolina was the most significant player in the Revolution, and of course as a Virginian I know that we had a little battle at a place called Yorktown where “the world turned upside down” on October 19, 1781. But I’ll concede that Charleston was important too.

I wrote earlier about John Boone being a little bit of a scoundrel and I heard during the ride about another such man we've all heard of, Rhett Butler. If you remember Gone with the Wind, Rhett was from Charleston. There was an actual blockade runner here in Charleston during the Civil War and many people think he was the basis of Margaret Mitchell's character. His name was George Trenholm and a lot of his history is similar to that of Rhett Butler's blockade-running career. We passed his old home which is now a private girls' school. A couple of the alumni from the school are pretty famous - Madeline L'Engle and Barbara Bush.

Our driving tour lasted a little too long actually, but we did get to pass through most of the neighborhoods. Unfortunately, when you’re in a bus you can’t get photos. I thought one of the nicest places we drove through was the campus of The Citadel, one of only two state-run military academies, the other being the Virginia Military Institute. Eventually we made it back to the dock and reboarded the ship. It was a very pleasant day.

The parade ground at The Citadel

In the evening we had a Halloween dance party. We had it a day before the actual day because October 31st will be the last night of the cruise for most of my fellow passengers and they will be packing. I was amazed at the number of people who had costumes of some sort. There were lots of witches, spiders, devils and werewolves. I mainly watched the dancing tonight because we were doing a lot of rocking and rolling and being on a crowded dance floor can be a recipe for disaster. I have a good time just watching sometimes.