The Spirit of Carolina

Spirit of South Carolina is a traditionally-rigged wooden schooner, modeled after the historic pilot schooners that once plied Charleston Harbor. During the American War for Independence, the British Royal Navy brought both large war frigates and smaller, faster ships to attack the unfinished Fort Sullivan. Though Spirit is modeled after an 1879 vessel, the technology of the schooner has changed little over the past 300 years. Ships like Spirit would have been seen in Charleston's harbor in times of both war and peace. In peacetime, the pilot schooners brought merchant vessels or their cargo to the docks of the most significant and prosperous port city in the southern colonies. During the 18th century, the skilled mariners who sailed these vessels and who knew the harbor's sandbars, shoals, and inland waterways best, were enslaved sailors of African descent.