A Castle’s Ruins Rising in the Mist
Ever wondered what you would do if you were in a 12 feet long sail boat when a hurricane hit your deserted island?
During the next few days I will be posting a synopsis of my new book, The Lords of Cumberland. Each blog will be a summary of a chapter. It is a true story. There are no "bad guys" and all the violence is from Mother Nature. The scarry thing is that since yesterday, Hurricane Hanna's landfall has been changed from Savannah to Cumberland Island!
When our flotilla first waddled up to Cumberland Island, we saw the reflection of the setting sun on something on the far end of Beach Creek that was reddish in color and nothing like the natural vegetation. It was several miles away, and soon the island blocked the view. It must be remembered that is was in a time when few Georgians had even heard of Cumberland Island. There was no such thing as the internet and the most recent book on Georgia’s Golden Isles dated from the early Fifties. Few people in St. Mary’s had ever been on the island or knew much about it. My USGS map just called the mystical object on the horizon, Dungeness Ruins.
Our camp sites the first two nights were set back into the forests, where there were no long distance views. It was only after we set up a permanent camp on the promontory, were we able to see again the strange object to the south. I studied it closely with Craig’s binoculars. The object was enormous and appeared to be the ruins of ancient castle. What was a castle doing on Cumberland? It looked nothing like a typical antebellum plantation house. It was much taller and wider than those houses typical of the coast. Also, it clearly had towers, or some things constructed of brick that were taller than the trees.
After hauling the water and seafood back to the camp in the mid-day sun, we were exhausted. It was mutually decided that another mid-day feast would be held, before the fish begin to rot. After stuffing ourselves with swordfish steaks, boiled crab legs, roasted mussels and canned cream corn, we chilled out – except colloquial expression of being “chilled out” was not in the English language back then. Toward mid-afternoon, we decided to try our hand at fishing again. There was no energy left for any activity more demanding. To everyone’s surprise, we all quickly caught fish – big fish - more fish than we could possibly eat for breakfast in the morning … assuming that the fish in the wire basket in the water, weren’t gobbled up during the night by crabs.
I volunteered to try my hand at smoking the fish. My grandfather had taught me how to smoke hams and bacon. It couldn’t be that different. I built a crude mini-smoke house out of driftwood and marsh muck. Woody and Craig dressed the fishes. While I got the smoldering fire going, Craig piddled with his “swift boat” engine – trying to make some adjustment to get it working right. It finally started and continued running until he cut it off. Woody took the sail boat out into Beach Creek to practice sailing. He had never sailed before. The next morning we planned to launch an expedition to explore Dungeness, whatever is was.
Things didn’t turn out as planned. The smokehouse fire had gone out during the night. The fish were not rotten, but would rot in the hot sun, if I didn’t get them dried out more. Craig couldn’t get the “swift boat” engine to start. We decided to roast some sweet potatoes in coals, while Craig tried a series of adjustments to the motor. Eating sweet potatoes did nothing to start the engine, and made little progress toward preserving the fish. Woody asked if he could practice sailing the boat down the river for a mile or two, while Craig continued to tinker and I continued to stoke the smokehouse fire. That seemed to be a reasonable solution. We could visit Dungeness the next day.
Soon after Woody was out in the middle of the river, the wind began to pick up from the south. He quickly disappeared from sight. That bothered me. I was the only one, who knew much about sailing. I was in the Tech Navy ROTC program. We assumed that Woody would be messing around in a barely perceptible breeze - not 20 mph steady winds from the south. Soon massive spirals of dark clouds appeared to the south that ran from horizon to horizon. The wind shifted to blowing hard from the east. Even with my experience, I would have had a hard time tacking the home made sail boat so it could get back to camp.
Hour after hour past. There was no sign of Woody or even any fisherman’s boat that we could flag down to go pull him back to camp. The sky grew darker and darker. Large waves began to form on the normally tranquil river. Massive displays of lightning in the southern sky appeared to be moving closer and closer to us. The time of sunset came, and Woody had not returned. Our haunted landscape oscillated between being pitch black and being surrealistically illuminated by the massive lightning bolts. If only the high tide had not shorted out Craig’s transistor radio that first night. We had no idea what was happening, but I began to expect the worse.
“Craig, I think we are about to be hit by a hurricane.”
“Rich, I am afraid you are right. God help poor Woody. Heck, God help us. We are up shit creek. “
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| Hurricane Hanna Is A-Coming to Savannah - Part 7 |
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