Ok, not really, but I did spend about an hour on a riverboat. So, back to the beginning. I started by driving into Savannah. I first went to book the sightseeing tour of the Savannah River. Incidentally, here are some pictures of the riverfront area.
If you look close on the right side of the pan shot, you can see the riverboat I was going on, the Georgia Queen. The picture of the road is to show the cobblestones, which date to colonial times, and are ballast rocks that were left by ships. If you don’t know what ballast is, I suggest looking it up, it would be a little to complicated to explain here. The statue is in honor of the men, women, and children who were brought here against their will and enslaved. There is a poem on the base of the statue that I tried to get a picture of, but it didn’t come out very well.
After I got the ticket, I had some time to kill, so I decided to go tourist and hit the shops that are there. I lasted about 20 minutes (no bookstore that I could see), and decided to check out a Maritime History museum that I noticed was in the area. It was very interesting, and had a lot of models and paintings, and some other things. A lot of it was focused on the Savannah shipping industry, but there was some other things there as well.
Clockwise from the top left: The ship that brought over a hundred settlers to colonize what is now Savannah (I can’t imagine sharing that small a space with that many other people for that long); A poster from the Savannah shipping company after one of their ships was sunk in March 1917 by a German U-boat, which along with 2 other sinkings that month helped propel the U.S. into war; a model of the Titanic sinking; and I assume this statue was on the prow of a ship, but I don’t know any details, there were no info cards connected to it.
I then walked down to where a statue of a girl waving to ships is on the riverfront.
As you can see, her name was Florence, and according to multiple sources, she did this for every ship going in and out of the harbor from her late teens, till she died. Sailors around the world knew of her, and apparently, sailors today look for the statue, because they heard about her from there fathers and grandfathers (or even great-grandfathers). Some dispute as to why she did it, but I’ll leave you some mystery to come out here for.
The riverboat was fun, and mostly just facts about the port of Savannah. Savannah is the 4th busiest port in the U.S., and to accommodate the big ships out there, the river, which for years has been dredged to a depth of 42 feet, is now beginning the process of being dredged to 47 feet. Long story short, because it’s late, I also visited Forts Jackson and Pulaski, which both were originally built to protect Savannah from the British, but played large roles in the Civil War. If anyone is interested in more, let me know, but I’ll spare you the history lecture for tonight and just share a few more pictures.
First is a picture of a dredging ship, and a couple pics of an incoming tanker that passed near the steamboat.
First, Fort Jackson (sorry it’s not a better picture: the sun was bright, I had sunglasses on, and it was hard to see what was on my camera’s screen), followed by a demonstration of a cannon firing from Fort Jackson. They apparently do this for every tour, but as far as I know, they haven’t hit the tour boat yet, so no worries. Finally, two pictures of Fort Pulaski. I don’t have much more there, because I only had about 20 minutes to look around before the park closed for the day, and I had to hurry. It was a very busy, long day. Happy Road-Tripping, everyone!
Ramblings of a Wandering Man 