Drove over a bridge to the fort and Liz decided to sit this one out at the park by the museum while I put $5 in the donations box and took a full walk around the fort. This was my first-ever visit to the fort and one I was looking forward to seeing, especially in relation to all that traffic outside it on US-80.
It is a big fort, much bigger than Old Fort Jackson in Savannah and partially engineered by U.S. Army Officer Robert E. Lee before the war. It was Savannah's main guardian and with its thick brick walls, believe to be impregnable. However, Union forces landed across a short body of water and erected batteries on nearby Tybee Island and commenced a two-day bombardment which breached Pulaski's walls and caused its surrender.
Union guns featured the new rifled cannons which hurled shells much more accurately and with much more accuracy than previous ones. This proved beyond a doubt that the age of masonry forts was over. New fortifications were made of earth such as Fort Fisher.
I walked both the ground level and then the upper ramparts, using some really frightening stairs to go up and down. If the cannon shells didn't get you, those stairs sure would.
From the ramparts, I could see not bombs bursting in air, but the beginning of movement on US-80.
Waited it Out? --Old B-Runner
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