Charleston Time Machine

Episode 323: Firefight in Hog Island Channel: South Carolina's Tipping Point to War with Britain by Nic Butler, Ph.D.

The last vestiges of royal authority in South Carolina, huddled within two small warships anchored in Charleston Harbor, survived the autumn of 1775 by cultivating a largely forgotten terrestrial connection. Surrounded by increasingly hostile rebel forces, British mariners established a foothold on Sullivan’s Island, both to supply their wants and to nurture an improvised sanctuary for political refugees.

Episode 321: Posturing in Charleston Harbor, September 1775: Prelude to a Firefight by Nic Butler, Ph.D.

One hundred and five years after the founding of modern South Carolina, the king’s royal governor dissolved the provincial government and fled the capital in mid-September 1775. Lord William Campbell’s famous nocturnal flight to the warship Tamar followed a sustained summer campaign of rebel intimidation, and triggered an autumnal stand-off between hostile American colonists and British officials desperate to preserve control of Charleston Harbor.

Episode 319: The Tamar in Rebellion Road: Asylum for Loyalists in 1775 by Nic Butler, Ph.D.