Parker's nine warships bombard Fort Sullivan; Moultrie's palmetto walls swallow the cannonballs
Six weeks before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Britain's first attempt to crack open the South ran aground — literally — off the coast of South Carolina. On June 28, 1776, Admiral Sir Peter Parker's fleet of nine men-of-war and nearly 300 cannon opened a sustained bombardment on Fort Sullivan, a half-finished palmetto-log garrison held by Colonel William Moultrie and 435 men. The fort's spongy walls swallowed British cannonballs whole, one British ship ran aground on a sandbar, and General Henry Clinton's land assault stalled when the channel between Long Island and Sullivan's Island proved too deep to wade. The British withdrew to New York and did not return to South Carolina for four years.
The victory rippled north almost immediately — Charlestonians learned of it within days of July 4, 1776, adding wind to the sails of independence. The battle also established the South's capacity for self-defense and bought four years of breathing room that allowed the southern colonies to supply the northern war effort. Fort Sullivan was renamed Fort Moultrie, and the palmetto became the emblem of South Carolina's state flag — still there today.
QWhy did General Charles Lee, the senior Continental commander in Charleston, tell Moultrie he wasn't needed during the battle?
Lee had spent much of the day convinced the fort would fall and that Moultrie should abandon it rather than be trapped inside. He repeatedly urged retreat; Moultrie refused. When Lee finally came to the fort to see the situation himself mid-battle, he found the garrison calmly working their guns and the palmetto walls intact. His response, recorded by those present, was essentially a shrug: 'I see you are doing very well here, you have no occasion for me, I will go up to the town again.' The man nominally in command of the Southern theater took himself off the field, and the battle was won without him.
QWhat happened to the grounded British warship Acteon — and why did her crew set her on fire?
The Acteon ran aground on an uncharted sandbar during the battle, stranding her in range of the fort's guns and out of position to deliver the flanking fire Parker had planned. Her crew spent the night trying to free her and failed. The next morning, to prevent the fort's garrison from capturing the ship and her guns, her crew set the Acteon ablaze and abandoned her. A small party of Americans rowed out, boarded the burning vessel, fired her cannon at the rest of the retreating British fleet one last time, and escaped before she blew up. It was a small, sharp coda to the whole affair.
QHow did a half-finished fort's missing wall nearly become the battle's deciding factor — and what stopped Clinton's troops from exploiting it?
Fort Sullivan's landward wall had not been built when the British arrived. Clinton had roughly 2,000 troops on Long Island, just across a narrow channel from Sullivan's Island, and a land assault through that open rear could have overwhelmed Moultrie's 435 men regardless of what Parker's fleet did at sea. British intelligence reported the channel as fordable at low tide — eighteen inches deep. When Clinton's men waded in, they found it was actually seven feet deep in places. The channel could not be crossed without boats, which Clinton did not have in sufficient number. The fort's unfinished wall never mattered, because the water held the British army in place the entire day.
