After a short break in Southport, we decided to do a longer hop at sea to Charleston, SC. The weather had gotten colder again, so it was back in long johns and wooly hats.  We had brisk winds but made it in quite a bit earlier than predicted. After about 20 hours of sailing we arrived in Charleston at the town dock.

Charleston is a lovely city with quiet tree-lined streets filled with historic homes, a vibrant arts scene, friendly people, excellent but very upscale shopping, and to our delight an easy and walkable town!  We took advantage of it.  

Charleston, originally Charles Town, is one of the oldest English settlements in the US, founded in 1670. The architecture is very beautiful, with many historic and attractive houses, a lot of them with plaques explaining their history. Charleston has a distinct type of house architecture know as the Single House. Luckily, much of the city avoided being burnt down by General Sherman in the civil war, so is still intact now. The homes all have the long axis facing sideways to the street, with the long porches and balconies, locally called piazzas, facing sideways to give privacy and catch the breeze in the pre air-conditioning days. They also still use a lot of gas lamps, both on the houses and the streetlights. Of course in order to keep the city’s charm there are a lot of building restrictions, and one of them is the building height limit which is 8 floors to preserve the historic nature of the city.  This architecture definitely defines the city. Here the shutters are not fake, and neither are the gas lamps.   There is barely any street light in Charleston. This creates a very cozy and dimly lit atmosphere and with a bit of imagination you could think you were in an other era. However I was surprised to find these very upper class neighborhoods so dark at night. We were told that the streets are kept dark that way to keep people and tourists away!  Well, it didn’t work for us, as we wandered endlessly at night. Anson Street was our favorite.

What is known as a “Privacy Door”, opening onto the piazza from the street. The main entrance to the house is along the long side

Nice wrought-iron work

Even older houses, from the 17th century

Gaslight. Seems like a fire hazard to me, but they’ve been in use for over 100 years, so I guess not

Unfortunately there is another dark side of Charleston, which is some its past. Charleston was one of the main ports where kidnapped and enslaved African people were brought to the US to be sold. 40 % of all enslaved Africans in the entire US arrived here, exactly at the location of our marina. It turns out that the city docks are on the site of Gadsden’s Wharf. This was the place where the slave ships unloaded and many people either died or were sold. The recently opened International African American museum, located at our pier, did wonderful work re-creating the atmosphere of those days.  We never went inside, but even the grounds were very powerful.

Sculpture at the site of Gadsden’s Wharf. If people died on the ships, they were just thrown overboard.

There are plenty of tours of preserved plantations in South Carolina and the South in general, and we went on a tour of one in Charleston, the Governor William Aiken House.  It wasn’t actually a plantation, but a grand city mansion owned by the governor of SC at the time of the civil war.  It is unique in that instead of just focusing on the grand and opulent lifestyles of the owners, this tour started in the slave quarters, kitchens, laundry, and stable so you got a feel of all the work that went in to supporting the owners and for the people that made it happen.  Only after did we go through the lovely and glorious main house.  Again, quite interesting and powerful. Charleston seems to be doing a good job of accepting and including all of their past with their present.

Even as we first arrived into the entrance of Charleston Harbor, we were reminded of its darker history as we passed Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the civil war were fired.

Fort Sumter. The flag was different for a few years.

One morning around 4AM we were woken from sleep on the boat by a lot of shouting and thumping across the marina. It didn’t seem to be close so we rolled over and went back to sleep. When we went out the next morning, we discovered that we had new neighbors on the next dock over, the Nao Trinidad!  It’s a replica of one of Ferdinand Magellan’s ships that were part of the expedition that completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519-1522.  This replica came over from Spain and has been cruising the US for a few months as a floating museum,  The crew was very friendly and helped out the local boaters when there was a problem at the marina as well.

Nao Trinidad

The boater community at the city docks was very friendly and we had fun hanging out with them.  We really enjoyed our stay there, but it was finally time to head out, and we left with another boat for the crossing to Jacksonville FL.