Wednesday, April 27, 2016

El Galeon in Port Royal

 This ship is AMAZING!  We toured "El Galeon" yesterday, which is moored at the old Dockside Restaurant at Port Royal.  Even the way it is docked, thanks to O'Quinn Marine, is incredible.  The ship, whose crew is mostly from Spain, is here until Saturday, May 1st.  Many thanks to the Santa Elena Foundation for arranging it to be here this week.








Monday, April 25, 2016

Sail Magazine sailing group in Beaufort


The morning started with the option of a movie history tour. We had two vans for our fleet — at the luxuriously late hours of 1000 and 1100 hrs! What? We didn’t have to get up at 0500 hrs this morning? That’s already a great start to the day! Here’s the second shift, ready to go see the film sites of Forrest Gump and The Big Chill with tour guide, Jill, a history major who had an incredible memory for all things Beaufort.




Full text of Sail Magazine's daily entry can be found at :  http://icw.sailmagazine.com/blog/11/a-day-in-beaufort/

Post Civil War Reconstruction

Come join us on our Reconstruction Tour of Beaufort, South Carolina! The National Park Service has been visiting Beaufort over the past two years looking for sites to include and we take you to a few of these sites here in Beaufort, including some related to Robert Smalls.  This article in the New York Times gives some of the current discussions on how to treat the Reconstruction era in our nation's history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/arts/park-service-project-would-address-the-reconstruction-era.html?_r=0

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Hunting Island erosion

South end of Hunting Island.  It looks like the lagoon will be beachfront within the next 10 years.






Thursday, April 21, 2016

El Galeon sails past Bermuda Bluff

 The Spanish ship El Galeon Andalucia as it sails into the Port Royal Harber from St. Augustine.  It is a replica of the ship used by Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1566 when he came to Beaufort to settle the colony of Santa Elena, which was the first capital of Spanish Florida.







Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Opening of the new Santa Elena History Center

http://santa-elena.org/

Get ready for the grand opening of the Santa Elena History Center on April 30th!

Beaufort Sunset

Another beautiful Beaufort sunset!


Gump Medical Center

Zoom in and you'll see that USC-B was the Gump Medical Center. You can see this movie location on our "Beaufort 101" tour by van.



Where is this Spaceship?

A little bit of South Carolina weirdness...  Can anyone tell me where this flying saucer monument is located?


Erosion South of Hunting Island Lighthouse

The new erosion at Hunting Island SOUTH of the lighthouse is saddening. North of the lighthouse has eroded a lot over the past 5+ years with palmetto trees laying everywhere, but to the south had pretty much been great beaches. Further south where the cabins had been greatly eroded too, but where these photos were taken today was just nice, wide sandy beaches a year ago. Now there is new fencing along the water and just a mound of sand to keep water from flowing up into the parking lot. At this rate, the lagoon could be oceanfront in a matter of years.

 

Santa Elena - Walking with Chester DePratter

Beaufort Tours spent Saturday with 20 archeologists from all over the US who were in Beaufort to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Santa Elena. We shuttled the scholars out to Parris Island, where the Santa Elena settlement by the Spanish began in 1566 and lasted until 1587. Santa Elena was the ORIGINAL capital of Spanish La Florida, until the capital was moved to St. Augustine. At its peak, over 400 people lived in this early colony, which existed before the Lost Colony of Roanoke (1584), Jamestown (1607) and the Mayflower (1620).