These scenes show the activities that sprang up around
Hilton Head after the success of the
Port Royal expedition.
The picture above is of the foundry shop erected by the
Federals.
Here hundreds of mechanics were kept constantly employed, repairing the
iron work needed aboard the gunboats and doing work for which the ships other-wise would have had to go North.
The central picture shows the anchor rack, where were kept all sizes of anchors from the small ones used for mooring buoys to those of the largest ships.
In the early part of the war hundreds of anchors were lost to the navy by ships slipping their moorings to stand off-shore in bad weather.
Later the employment of long heavy deep-sea cables obviated this necessity, enabling ships to ride out gales.
Not a single vessel of the regular navy foundered or was wrecked during the whole war. One of the first things done by the
Federal authorities after gaining a foothold at
Hilton Head was to replace all buoys and lights.
In the lower picture one of the monitors is convoying the new lightship that was sent down from the
North to replace the one removed, at the outbreak of hostilities, by the
Confederates.
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The outlying navy-yard — Hilton Head, 1862--the anchor rack |
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