Palmetto Reinforcements, Channel Side

Palmetto logs, cribbed and stacked against the channel side of Fort Sumter.

The palmetto is South Carolina's emblem and the reason is military, not botanical. In June 1776 the palmetto-log fort on Sullivan's Island absorbed British naval gunfire without splintering — the wood is fibrous and spongy rather than brittle, so round shot sank into it instead of cracking it apart. The state put the tree on its flag.

Eighty-nine years later the Confederates were using it for the same property, on the face of the fort that looked out at the Federal fleet. The logs here are laid in cribs and packed, forming a thick, shock-absorbing revetment over what was left of the masonry.

There is a neat historical symmetry in it, and there is also a hard practical fact: by 1865 this was one of very few materials Charleston still had in quantity. Iron, powder and skilled labor were gone. Sand, wicker and palmetto were not.