Sullivan’s Island sits at the mouth of Charleston harbor. As the war went on its defenses became more extensive. What is shown below is a coastal survey map created in 1865 at the end of the war. Below that is a modern day google earth satellite view of the island today oriented in the same direction of the coastal survey map. Battery Bee is at the far left and Fort Marshall at the far right. With the exception of Fort Moultrie these defenses have been lost to time. Some to housing development on the island and others were destroyed to create more modern concrete coastal defenses for the Spanish American War and World Wars I and II. All that exists of them now are photographs, sketches and paintings. Link to the Coastal Survey map below.

The defense line is interpreted on a tablet at Fort Moultrie. It reads- As the Civil War progressed from 1861 to 1865, Sullivan’s Island became the primary defensive position for Confederate forces guarding Charleston Harbor. Anchored at Fort Moultrie, by 1865 these defenses stretched the length of Sullivan’s Island with a total of 81 cannon mounted from the north end to the south end. These cannon were brought to the island from many places including the old federal arsenal in downtown Charleston, Fort Sumter, Fort Johnson, and Confederate ironworks in Richmond, Virginia and Selma, Alabama. Some of the cannon were common pieces seen throughout the Confederacy, while others were unique to the island.

From Edward Riley in sources- Following the outbreak of warfare, the Confederates began to strengthen the military installation on Sullivan’s Island. In 1862 Battery Bee, about a half mile to the west of Fort Moultrie; Battery (or Fort) Beauregard, the same distance to the east; and Battery (or Fort) Marshall, at the eastern end of the island were constructed. These works were of great strength, made of sharp sand, well sodded, and furnished with excellent magazines and bombproof quarters. In 1863, these fortifications, including Fort Moultrie, contained forty-eight guns. Apparently other works were added to strengthen the position; viz., Battery Rutledge, close to Fort Moultrie on the east, Battery Marion, between Moultrie and Bee, and four sand batteries between Beauregard and Marshall. In 1865, the installations on the island contained eighty-one guns of various sizes.

For the purposes of orientation when I was reading this tablet my back was to the fort and I was facing the ocean. The map on the tablet is the Coastal Survey map but it has been rotated 180 degrees.

Proceeding across the map from Battery Marshall through Fort Moultrie to Battery Bee.

Battery or Fort Marshall- The battery contained a bomb-proof magazine, four 24-pounders, and a 32-pounder rifled gun staffed by 3 companies of the 1st SC. It protected blockade runners and served as a place for communication under flags of truce with the Union Navy.

Shown below is a wartime photo of some of the fortifications between Battery Marshall and Fort Beauregard.

Fort Beauregard- Two companies of regulars were here under Captain Julius A. Sitgreaves. There was one 8-inch Columbiad here and two rifled 32-pounders.

Between Fort Beauregard and Fort Moultrie was Battery Rutledge.

Fort Moultrie is the only part of the line that still exists and was covered in a separate post (link).

Battery Marion- between Fort Moultrie and Battery Bee.

Battery Bee- was built in the 1780s. Lieutenant J.C. Simkins commanded 3 companies of infantry here. There were 6 Columbiad’s- five were 10 inch and one was 8 inch.

We covered the location of Battery Marshall in a previous post but where was Fort Beauregard?

Shown below is an image looking east from Fort Moultrie- Battery Rutledge is marked by the red R and Fort Beauregard by the red B. Fort Beauregard is very close to the shore.

Shown below is a drawing that appeared in Harper’s Weekly on October 31, 1863 of Sullivan’s Island. At the far left is the Moultrie House which would be on the 1863 shoreline between Station 13th and 14th Street. On the right of the drawing is Fort Beauregard also on the shoreline.

We can gain further insight on the relationships between these structures from the a painting below by Conrad Wise Chapman of Fort Moultrie during the Siege of Charleston. Chapman was a painter and Confederate soldier who spent a considerable amount of time on Sullivan’s Island and the area surrounding Charleston sketching defensive fortifications which he would later using in a series of paintings.

Below is a close up of the left side of the painting. The red letter A- marks Fort Beauregard you can see smoke near the fort from recent cannon fire, B- the Moultrie House, and C- tower in front of Fort Moultrie.

I took the picture below from the northeast corner of Fort Moultrie in a similar location to the wartime pictures.

What you will note above is that the maritime forest shown in the distance to the right of center was not present in the wartime photographs. In addition, neither is the shoreline! Although distances are hard to gauge from pictures it would appear that Fort Beauregard was built at or close to the end of the current site of Battery Jasper built in 1897. But where is the shoreline present in 1863? The answer to that question is explained in detail in the two posts following this one called- Shipwrecks off Sullivan’s Island and Why is Morris Island Disappearing. Shown in the image below is a preview to the answer. Man-made interventions to preserve the shoreline of Sullivan’s Island before and after the war resulted in the accretion of soil to the island’s shoreline moving it further away from the former location of Fort Beauregard and the current location of Fort Moultrie. The next two posts describe in detail what these interventions were.

Sources

A tour of Historic Sullivan’s Island by Cindy Lee.

Historic Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor by Edward M. Riley The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Apr., 1950, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Apr., 1950), pp. 63-74 Published by: South Carolina Historical Society

Remembering the Legacy of Coastal Defense: How an Understanding of the Development of Fort Moultrie Military Reservation, Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, Can Facilitate its Future Preservation by Karl Philip Sondermann Clemson University Tiger Press

Paintings by Conrad Wise Chapman. Daily observations of the Civil War.