The waters off the coastline of Beaufort, South Carolina were once navigated by pirates. Historian Lawrence Rowland noted that the islands were considered uninhabitable and were useful only for hunting, which was how Hunting Islands got its name. During the 19th Century, the Hunting Islands remained unpopulated. Merchant ships sailed past them carrying goods between the ports of Charleston and Savannah. Schooners, barges, scows. and other vessels carried rice, cotton, produce, and indigo.
In this beautifully researched and filmed ETV Classic, we follow along as a site was selected on Hunting Island for a lighthouse to mark St. Helena and Port Royal Sound. In 1859, construction of the new 95-foot brick and stone lighthouse was completed. The Civil War erupted two years after the Hunting Island lighthouse was built, and the region was occupied by the Union army. Sherman used the buildings on the island for hospitals and offices and didn’t harm them, however shortly after the war began, the lighthouse was destroyed by Confederate troops as part of a plan to prevent a blockade by the Union Fleet. It was said that if the Confederates hadn't destroyed the lighthouse, then the ocean would have. A natural pattern of erosion caused the beach to recede, and today the remains of the original lighthouse lie underwater about a mile from the shore.
A boom in trade occurred after the Civil War and Port Royal became a major trade center. More trade meant more ships and the U.S. decided to rebuild the lighthouse on Hunting Island. On July 1,1875, the new lighthouse went into operation.To learn more about the technical aspects of illuminating a lighthouse, see Side Notes below.
Erosion continued and by 1887, the water was 35 feet from the keeper's house. Two years later, the government was forced to move the lighthouse one and a quarter mile to the south. The entire light station was in place by spring of the following year. The Hurricane of August 1893 hastened the severe erosion that had prompted the relocation, and the infrastructure that had been built to support trade, was also destroyed by the storm. The Great Depression that followed the stock market crash negatively impacted maritime activity and eventually the naval shipyard was moved to Charleston and what trade there was transferred to the Charleston Harbor.
In 1933, the lighthouse was deactivated, and the internals of the light house sold as surplus. The Civilian Conservation Corps was brought in to improve the island and to create Hunting Island State Park. In 1939 Hunting Island was linked to to the mainland by the St. Helena Hunting Island bridge but it wasn't until after WWII road was built across from St. Helena. During WWII, the lighthouse tower proved useful to keep a lookout post for enemy ships and submarines, and the island was used for war exercises. Today, the uninhabitable barrier island is valuable real estate. Within Hunting Island State Park, the old tramway has been renovated into a nature walk led by park naturalists. Information about the park and the lighthouse are available within the Side Notes.
Volunteers, conservationists and Friends of Hunting Island have worked tirelessly to save the lighthouse and preserve its history. I hope that you will enjoy this treasure as much as I have.
Side Notes
- Fresnel lens - is a type of composite compact lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections.The simpler dioptric (purely refractive) form of the lens was first proposed by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and independently reinvented by the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) for use in lighthouses.
- Hunting Island State Park.- To learn more about the park and availability of tours.
- Wreck of Steamship City of Savannah - The Great Sea Island Storm of 1893. On Sunday night, August 27, 1893, the eye of the huge, slow-moving Category 3 hurricane landed just south of Savannah.
- A scow is a smaller type of barge. Some scows are rigged as sailing scows. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scows carried cargo in coastal waters and inland waterways, having an advantage for navigating shallow water or small harbors. Scows were in common use in the American Great Lakes and other parts of the U.S., Canada, southern England, and New Zealand. In modern times their main recreational purpose is for racing, but the hull type is widely used in the construction industry and as garbage scows for aquatic transport of refuse.
- Candle Power Lighthouses - The luminous intensity of a light, or its candlepower, is expressed in international units called candelas. Intensities of lighthouse beams can vary from thousands to millions of candelas.
- Robert Smalls was born in 1839, enslaved by a local planter in Beaufort, South Carolina. By the time he was 23 years old, Smalls had won freedom for himself and his family, and was a famous war hero. He became a prominent leader in the community during the Reconstruction era, including service in both the state and national legislature. His story illustrates the transformative potential of Reconstruction throughout the southern United States.
- CCC or Civilian Conservation Corps - As part of the New Deal Program, to help lift the United States out of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933. The CCC or C’s as it was sometimes known, allowed single men between the ages of 18 and 25 to enlist in work programs to improve America’s public lands, forests, and parks.
- William Tecumseh Sherman's March Through the South.
- Meet the Keepers | Friends of Hunting Island.
