More Ghosts of Georgetown

by Elizabeth Robertson Huntsinger

  Appointed head of Confederate coastal defenses from Little River south to Georgetown as the war was coming to a close, Daggett took the surrender of Georgetown as a personal defeat. He resolved to do something about it.

  On February 28, Federal marines captured Battery White, an earthen fortification that guarded the sea access to Georgetown Harbor and the Santee River from its elevated position on Mayrant’s Bluff. The Harvest Moon anchored overnight at Battery White to give Admiral Dahlgren the opportunity to investigate the newly taken fort.

  That same night, Captain Daggett was wide awake. In the upper story of Stephen W. Rouquie’s harbor-front business, located next to the Town Clock in Georgetown, he was busy constructing a torpedo from a percussion cap and a keg of black powder.

  In the early-morning hours of March 1, the mine was finished. Captain Daggett floated his creation out of Georgetown and into Winyah Bay’s shipping channel a few hours before the Harvest Moon, accompanied by the tug Clover, weighed anchor and left Battery White, heading toward the Atlantic.

  As he waited for his breakfast that fateful morning, Admiral Dahlgren had every reason to feel secure. He had, however, underestimated the strong emotions flowing through the surrendered port town behind him.

  Shortly before eight o’clock, the Harvest Moon’s steel hull was rocked by a tremendous explosion. She began to sink. Crew member John Hazzard, rank unknown, was in the hold and was killed instantly. He was the only known casualty.

  It was not immediately clear what had happened. Only after being ferried by the Clover to the USS Nipsic did Admiral Dahlgren piece together the rapid events of the morning in a formal report to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.

  REPORT OF REAR ADMIRAL DAHLGREN, U.S. NAVY, REGARDING THE LOSS OF THE USS HARVEST MOON BY THE EXPLOSION OF A TORPEDO

  Flag-Steamer Nipsic,

  Georgetown Roads, March I, 1865

  Sir: My latest dispatches had been closed, and not hearing anything from General Sherman at this place, I was on my way to Charleston, but was interrupted for the time by the loss of my flagship, which was sunk by the explosion of a torpedo.

  This took place at 7:45 A.M. today and the best information I have now is from my own personal observation. What others may have noticed will be elicited by the court of enquiry which I shall order.

  The Harvest Moon had been lying near Georgetown until yesterday afternoon, when I dropped down to Battery White two or three miles below, intending to look at the work and leave the next day.

  Accordingly, this morning early the Harvest Moon weighed anchor and steamed down the bay. She had not proceeded far when the explosion took place.

  It was nearly 8 o’clock, and I was waiting breakfast in the cabin, when instantly a loud noise and shock occur[r]ed, and the bulkhead separating the cabin from the wardroom was shattered and driven toward me. A variety of articles lying about me were dispersed in different directions.

  My first impression was that the boiler had burst, as a report had been made by the engineer the evening before that it needed repair badly. The smell of gunpowder quickly followed and gave the idea that the magazine had exploded.

  There was naturally some little confusion, for it was evident that the vessel was sinking, and she was not long in reaching the bottom.

  As the whole incident was the work of a moment, very little more can be said than just related. But one life was lost, oweing [sic] to the singularly fortunate fact that the action of the torpedo occur[r]ed in the open space between the gangways between the ladder to the upper deck and the wardroom which is an open passageway, occupied by no one, where few linger save for a moment.

  Had it occur[r]ed farther aft or forward the consequences would have been fatal to many.

  A large breach is said to have been made in the deck just between the main hatch and the wardroom bulkhead.

  It had been reported to me that the channel had been swept, but so much has been said in ridicule of torpedoes that very little precautions are deemed necessary and if resorted to are probably taken with less care than if due weight were attached to the exsistence [sic] of these mischievous things. …

  I have the honor to be, respectfully, your obedient servant,

  J. A. Dahlgren

  Rear Admiral, Comg. South Atlantic Blockading Squadron

  Like many Georgetonians, Captain Daggett returned to the rice business before the economy forced him to seek another livelihood. As did a number of other Georgetown County war refugees, he then moved thirty-five miles north to Conway. There, in a case of true irony, he became the captain of a Federal snag boat that kept the Waccamaw River free of obstacles.

  The only Union flagship sunk during the Civil War, the Harvest Moon still lies where she went down in 1865, her rusted smokestack protruding as much as seven feet above the waters of Winyah Bay at low tide. Her uppermost deck and all below it lie solidly encased in the bay floor.

  Considering the roles played by Admiral Dahlgren and Captain Daggett in the demise of the Harvest Moon, it stands to reason that one of them might haunt her wreck. Neither does.

  The story of her haunting is more ethereal, involving the delicate thread of a young life lost and quietly mourned, the fear of reprisal in the domain of the living, and the fear of unrest in the domain of the dead.

  In 1963, representatives of the New England Naval and Maritime Museum in Rhode Island began a study of the sunken flagship’s integrity. Divers from the museum calculated the size and shape of the wreck and the amount and density of the mud encasing it. Other divers—explosives experts from the Charleston Naval Base—explored the hull to make sure there were no live shells remaining. The study indicated that the Harvest Moon was intact and in remarkably good condition. Soon, the Southern Explorations Association was formed to raise the vessel.

  Since the Harvest Moon lies close to the surface, raising her appeared to be a much less formidable task than that of salvaging the many vessels that had been raised from greater depths after being sunk for a longer duration. However, problems abounded in the form of inexplicable equipment failures. The navy formally abandoned the Harvest Moon on February 18, 1964, nearly ninety-nine years after her sinking. Shortly thereafter, the Southern Explorations Association relinquished its plan for raising her.

  During the late 1960s, a commercial fisherman began setting crab traps around the Harvest Moon, hoping she might be a haven for crustaceans. Invariably, any trap he set near the old wreck became damaged, drifted off, disappeared, or caught no crabs. Though he decided to set the majority of his traps elsewhere, he continued to place a few around the wreck.

  In hot weather, he always set and collected his traps between midnight and dawn, when his catch would stay coolest. The closer the moon’s phase was to full, the better he could see and the quicker he could work.

  One clear, warm, moonlit summer night, he was setting traps not far from the Harvest Moon when he heard a sound that chilled him through. A low, keening, unearthly moan that was not human, not animal, and not even very loud carried from the wreck through the balmy night.

  This solitary fisherman, an intrepid outdoorsman, was familiar with the sounds of all local wildlife. He knew the voices of the shorebirds and woodland creatures, as well as the terrible sounds that trapped animals make. He knew the sound of the panther calling from the woods on nearby Fraser Point. The otherworldly moan he heard coming from the Harvest Moon was not any of these.

  Unable to identify the eerie voice, he asked some fellow fishermen who lived at Hobcaw Barony if they had ever heard a similar sound while working in the bay at night. He knew that if anyone could tell him about the sound, these men could, for they were descendants of Friendfield Plantation slaves and had fished Winyah Bay all their lives.

  The men immediately asked if he had been near the Harvest Moon when he heard the sound. When he nodded, the normally jovial fishermen became rather grim. “Never go near the Harvest Moon during the moon,” they told him nearly in unison, shaking their heads
gravely. “Never.” None of them would give any further explanation.

  Wondering how the fishermen knew he had heard the sound “during the moon,” he asked them pointedly about it. They would not answer.

  Unable to find the source of the mysterious sound, the solitary fisherman stopped setting crab traps around the wreck of the Harvest Moon and soon put it out of his mind.

  Then one cold, frosty November dawn right before duck season began, he was passing the wreck while returning from the ocean with a nice catch of spot-tail bass. Eyeing the familiar rusty smokestack rising out of the bay, he realized it would make a perfect duck blind.

  Sunrise on the first day of duck-hunting season found him crouched with his twelve-gauge shotgun on crossed two-by-fours he had wedged inside the smokestack. But as innovative as this duck blind was, it was too uncomfortable to use regularly. He left the two-by-fours in the smokestack and did not return until nearly two months later in the season.

  What he found was very curious. Laid on the two-by-fours, safe inside the smokestack, were three pieces of broken crockery. Who had put them there? A chill colder than the icy January dawn ran through the solitary fisherman. Broken bits of family crockery, he knew, had long been used to adorn the graves in old slave cemeteries.

  Rather than stepping on the crockery, he placed the three fragments in the pocket of his jacket. After a few hours of hunting, he left, taking the two-by-fours and the broken crockery with him.

  Soon, shad season began, and he joined the groups of fishermen setting nets in the Waccamaw River just north of Georgetown. At the end of one successful day of fishing, he was enjoying a supper of mouth-watering shad stew with a group of black fishermen from Sandy Island. As the hungry men shared the feast, the moon rose over the river to replace a spectacular winter sunset. As the camaraderie grew around the stew pot and its warming embers, the solitary fisherman told the group about his puzzling and eerie experiences at the wreck of the Harvest Moon.

  The Sandy Island fishermen, distant relatives of the fishermen from Hobcaw Barony, listened carefully to his words. When he finished recounting his tale, they told him the long-guarded reasons for the curious occurrences he had witnessed.

  Just before the close of the Civil War, while the Harvest Moon was anchored in Georgetown Harbor, a young black man from Friendfield Plantation had made friends with the crew of the ship. When the capture of Georgetown had been finalized and he knew the flagship was leaving Georgetown for good, the young black man, scarcely more than a boy, had made a brave but ill-advised decision: he stowed away aboard the vessel that to him represented freedom.

  Only his family members knew of the young man’s secret adventure. Unable or perhaps unwilling to hold him back, they accepted his leaving with mixed emotions.

  Upon hearing the shocking news that the Harvest Moon had hit a torpedo and sunk with one enlisted casualty, the youth’s family hoped he had survived the disaster. But after a few days, when he did not return home, they knew he was dead.

  The family dared not ask for his body to be recovered from the wreck, for that would mean admitting they knew of his plan to travel aboard a Federal vessel without permission. With the rapid change of local government from Confederate to Federal, with slavery barely over and Georgetown under martial law, their fear of a conspiracy charge was understandably great. The family mourned the lost young man in agonized silence.

  The conjure woman of Friendfield was as disturbed about the young man’s demise as was his family. Her distress, however, was of a different nature. She feared that the youth’s spirit would not rest in the unhallowed grave of the great gunboat. A proper grave needed broken pieces of crockery placed reverently upon it to signify that the family had been broken, to keep evil spirits away, and, most of all, to keep the spirit of the deceased in the grave. Had the young man’s body been brought back to his family members, they would have made sure he was buried decently and his grave marked with broken crockery so his spirit would sleep peacefully. After suffering his unfortunate fate, then being interred in the sunken wreck, the young man’s spirit would surely moan, she knew.

  Worse still, the conjure woman knew that during the brightest phase of the moon, which normally caused reflections to be seen in the water, anyone who looked into the bay above the old wreck would risk seeing clear into the world of the restless spirit on the other side.

  She was determined that the young man’s spirit not be left to moan with unrest The only course was to give him some semblance of a proper burial immediately.

  Soon, the conjure woman visited the wreck. From the wooden seat of her small rowboat, she saw there was no place to lay anything permanently on the young man’s iron tomb. With a sigh, she ceremoniously dropped several carefully chosen pieces of broken crockery into the water directly above the Harvest Moon. Perhaps this would help the spirit to rest, she thought. But what would happen as the crockery was eventually shifted off the wreck?

  Until she died many years later, the conjure woman made sure that a few pieces of crockery were placed at the site of the wreck every so often. After her death, her successors continued the tradition. That is why the solitary fisherman found broken pieces of crockery on the two-by-fours inside the Harvest Moon’s smokestack.

  But what keeps the young man’s spirit at rest when the crockery disappears and none has yet been brought to replace it?

  During those intervals, nothing soothes his disquieted spirit. That is when his low, keening, unearthly moan carries through the moonlit night over the place where Winyah Bay is broken by a lone smokestack.

  Cape Romain Lighthouse

  _____________________Just off Cape Romain lies lonely Raccoon Keys, now known as Lighthouse Island. Near the center of the island stands the black-and-white Cape Romain Light, a glorious reminder of the days when ships depended on lighthouses to keep them from foundering on dangerous shoals.

  Although no beacon has burned in the lofty lantern room for over half a century, the beautiful sentinel can still be seen for miles by day. Over the last century, the lighthouse has listed more than two feet to one side. The keeper’s cottage has been gone for many years.

  A romantic air of loneliness surrounds the island. The once-manicured grounds have given way to overgrown paths winding among the majestic Cape Romain Light, a smaller, earlier lighthouse, and an untended old grave.

  It is sad indeed that this lone grave had to be dug, for in it was laid to rest one who would not rest. Buried in this long-neglected plot is a woman who died an untimely, pointless, and cruel death at the hands of someone she loved, here on this wild and lonely island. Unable to accept her fate, the victim has long haunted her island home, her ghostly footfalls familiar to light keepers years after her death.

  The story of how the lighthouses came to be built and a grave laid nearby began in the nineteenth century.

  In 1827, the federal government built a sixty-five-foot redbrick lighthouse on Raccoon Keys approximately ten miles southwest of the entrance to the Santee River. Its purpose was twofold: to warn ships from running aground on the dangerous shoals near Cape Romain and to aid southbound vessels attempting to steer clear of the Gulf Stream.

  One reason ships had been running aground on the shoals was that an abandoned windmill on the cape was being misidentified as the Morris Island Light, located at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, farther south. Confused captains, believing they were entering Charleston Harbor, were soon at the mercy of the Cape Romain shoals. Plans to build a light atop the windmill were halted when no ground high enough for a keeper’s cabin could be found nearby. Therefore, Cape Romain’s lighthouse was built on nearby Raccoon Keys.

  The original light received criticism for its height. Its lantern room was eighty-seven feet above sea level, and its light did not shine far enough to save ships from the dangerous shoals. In 1851, the Lighthouse Board recommended to Congress that Cape Romain have a new, taller tower.

  In 1857, the government constructed another bric
k tower nearby. Laid on a foundation of timber pilings, the new octagonal structure stood 161 feet. Its bottom third was painted white, while the eight sides of the upper two-thirds were painted black and white alternately. The new beacon shone far up and down the coast and into the Atlantic.

  During 1861, in an effort to keep Federal troops from making use of the new lighthouse, Confederate soldiers destroyed its lantern and costly Fresnel lens. In 1866, this damage was repaired and the lantern relighted.

  Three years later, cracks began to show themselves in the walls of the tower. By 1873, more cracks were apparent, and the district engineer discovered that the lighthouse had taken on a slight lean to the west that misaligned the lens by twenty-three inches. Careful adjustment brought the lens back to its correct level, but within a year, the lighthouse leaned nearly four more inches. No additional settling occurred until 1891, when adjustments were made once more.

  The Cape Romain Light was deactivated in 1947. During the late 1950s, the keeper’s quarters were removed, leaving the tall, black-and-white octagon and its smaller red predecessor the only structures on the island.

  No keeper mans the Cape Romain Light now, but in bygone days, a neat frame house ringed by a white picket fence rested at the base of the tower. This cozy dwelling was where each keeper of the light lived with his family while fulfilling his responsibilities in maintaining the beacon.

  Many decades ago, a light keeper named Fischer lived in the cottage with his wife. The couple was Norwegian, and as beautiful as life was at Cape Romain, Fischer’s wife missed the old country and wanted nothing so much as to travel back home on a visit.

  Fischer’s wife had been married before; she was a widow when they met. Her first husband had left her an inheritance of jewelry and gold This treasure, she felt, was her ticket back to Norway. Fischer, however, was against it. He adamantly refused to let his wife make the journey.

  This disagreement grew and grew. Though Fischer and his wife rarely referred to it, it was always there between them. The gold and jewelry that Fischer’s wife wanted to use to finance a trip rested heavily on both their minds. Being isolated together at their beautiful home on the island was torture for them both.