Sullivan's Island
Sullivan's Island is an island in Charleston County in the US state of South Carolina . It lies on the Atlantic Ocean , is counted among the Sea Islands and forms the northeastern part of the Bay of Charleston , one of the few deep water ports in the southern United States.
The island has an area of 6.3 km².
history
The name goes back to the Irish captain Florence O'Sullivan, who worked there as a beacon keeper at the end of the 17th century . The area was completely deforested in order to identify the port entrance.
Corresponding to Ellis Island for immigration to the US from Europe, Sullivan's Island was North America's gateway for about 40% of black Africans . In the slave trade with the British colonies between 1650 and the American War of Independence, around 4-8 million Africans were quarantined via the Middle Passage to Sullivan's Island .
On June 28, 1776, Fort Moultrie , built here, withstood an attack by the British under Charles Cornwallis during the War of Independence . According to legend , the palm trees used in the construction of the fort turned out to be spongy, so they simply absorbed the cannonballs . A palm tree has been part of the South Carolina flag ever since , and the victory is celebrated annually on this day as Carolina Day .
The landscape is dominated by the extensive military coastal fortifications of Fort Moultrie. 1827/29 Edgar Allan Poe was stationed here as a soldier in the US Army and used the impressions in the short story The Gold Beetle . In 1838 the Seminole Osceola died in the fort's prison.
The fort served as the command center of Charleston's city defense, closed in the late 1940s and is now a federal memorial. Opposite it, on the other side of the passage into Charleston Bay, is Fort Sumter , which the Confederates attacked in 1861, starting the Civil War .
The places Moultrieville and Atlanticville are now combined to form the Town of Sullivan's Island . The population was 1,911 in 2000, with 98.7% white people and a household income of approximately $ 96,000 / year.
The Charleston Bay lighthouse is 42 meters high and has an elevator.
Web links
Coordinates: 32 ° 46 ′ N , 79 ° 50 ′ W