South Carolina History Changed Forever By The Battle Of Port Royal
An important chapter in South Carolina history was written November 7, 1861 at the Battle of Port Royal. The first critical step in Lincoln's "Anaconda Strategy" to blockade key Southern ports was secured by this early Union victory. The South was thereby denied import of strategic war supplies.
South Carolina history was never the same with that victory. The South relied heavily on foreign imports because it was largely an agrarian economy. With Port Royal secured, Hilton Head Island became a base from which the North could deny those vital imports up and down the Eastern seaboard.
<b>Battle Of The Brothers</b>
It is often said that the Civil War divided families and pitted brother against brother. Nowhere was that more dramatically played out than at the Battle of Port Royal. It might just as well be called the Battle of the Brothers. Here's how the Fort Walker interpretative marker describes it:
<em>Thomas Fenwick Drayton, Brigadier General, C.S.A., a West Point graduate, and his brother, Commodore Percival Drayton, U.S.N., Captain of the USS Hartford, met at the outbreak of the Civil War, shook hands, and each went the way his conscience directed.</em>
<b>Battle Of Port Royal</b>
<em>On November 7, 1861, the brothers met in combat at the Battle of Port Royal. Commander Percival Drayton, on the Union gun boat Pocahontas, attacked fort Walker of which General Thomas Drayton was in command.</em>
The Battle of Port Royal marker provides further details on this decisive battle in South Carolina history. <em>18 Union warships with about 55 supporting craft led by Adm. S.E. DuPont bombarded for 4 ½ hours the Confederate forces in Fort Walker on this shore and Fort Beauregard on the opposite point.
About 13,000 troops under Gen. Thomas W. Sherman then landed on this beach to establish the main Union blockade base on the South Atlantic coast.</em> And so, one of the earliest and largest amphibious operations of the American Civil War transformed South Carolina history.
<b>For More Information</b>
To learn more about how the Civil War was lost on Hilton Head Island, America's #1 vacation destination, follow the links below.
