{"id":1376,"date":"2016-04-13T22:05:17","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T22:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/?p=1376"},"modified":"2016-04-19T11:41:59","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T11:41:59","slug":"pulaski-and-tybee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/2016\/04\/13\/pulaski-and-tybee\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulaski and Tybee"},"content":{"rendered":"

We woke up to a pretty dreary and slightly windy day. \u00a0But we didn’t let that stop us. \u00a0With a lunch packed we headed off to Fort Pulaski National Monument to catch the 11:00 tour. \u00a0We arrive in the nick of time. \u00a0The volunteer giving the talk was named….ah crud, we never did ask his name. \u00a0But this fella was a story teller and he did it in a style where he took us back in time and made us feel like we were part of the action. \u00a0He got so into taking us on a tour of history and the fort that he ran out of time and had to speed through the last little bit. \u00a0But he hung around for questions of which we had a few.
\n\"Our<\/a><\/p>\n

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The engineering that went into this fort was pretty amazing. \u00a0The whole thing is sitting on a bunch\u00a0of yellow pine timbers driven into the marshy ground. \u00a0EVERYTHING to build the fort needed to be brought in from somewhere else. \u00a0There were millions of bricks used of two different types: a less strong but more readily available brick and one that was much sturdier but harder to acquire. \u00a0There was no fresh water so a massive rain catchment, filtration and storage system was designed and built. \u00a0It turns out\u00a0the place has tidal flushing toilets like the ones at Fort Zachary Taylor<\/a>. \u00a0There were cannons on the top level but also in each of the arched casemates below. \u00a0The casemates had large wooden doors that would be closed during battle. \u00a0So an ingenious ventilation system was designed to evacuate cannon smoke from the casemate area.<\/p>\n

We learned a lot about the evolution of the cannons from the inaccurate smooth bore cannons to the more devastating rifled cannons. \u00a0And, just like at Fort Zachary Taylor, the advent of the rifled cannon made obsolete this masonry fort that only a few years before was considered state-of-the-art.<\/p>\n

We went to the visitor center so Dacen could do a video call with his class back in Longmont. \u00a0Then we ate our picnic lunch in the truck to stay out of the wind. \u00a0I stayed in the truck to do some work while Steph and the kids explored the outside of the fort where you can see some impressive damage that one of the fort walls took.
\n\"Wall,<\/a>