Harbor of Revolution Summary

Charleston has always been an important port city and a strategic coastal location that connected, via seagoing vessels, the southern colonies to the rest of the world. The harbor brought economic prosperity, received news from around the world as well as shipments of human cargo, and it was witness to conflict and violence from across the ocean. The years of the American Revolution were especially fraught, and during the War for Independence, Charleston played a major role not once, but twice.

Harbor pilots have plied the waters here for centuries, with a “commission of pilotage” established back in the 1730s. The unbroken line of professional mariners who knew - and still know - these waters, sandbars, and shoals stretches back almost three hundred years. During the time of Revolution, many of the skilled sailors who drove the colonial economy in the harbor were enslaved Africans and…