Sea Control - Sea Control 270 - The Ferry's Role in South Carolina's Development Dr. Ed Salo

Episode Date: August 22, 2021

We have a great team at Sea Control and the bench is deep! How deep? So deep we have a Ph.D as our senior serving editor and Dr. Ed Salo is on the podcast today to discuss his thesis on the ferry’s role in South Carolina’s development. We hope you enjoy, and feel free reach out to Ed if you want to read his work!

Hey folks, Jared here. We've got our very own Dr. Ed Salo on the program today, and we're going to be discussing his thesis topic, The Ferry's Role in the Development of South Carolina, Good Maritime History Topic. Don't miss everything going on over at the website, simsec.org. The final iteration for Project Triton is live. We partnered with Lockheed Martin and Naval Warfare Studies Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School for our topic, Emerging Technologies. And we got so many submissions that we had to expand it to two weeks. We've also officially put out our call for articles for the end-of-year fiction contest, so go over to simsec.org for full details. And finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network,

The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Let's put it down, we shouldn't hold it out with which we may be associated. So, Ed, would you mind introducing yourself to the listeners? Sure. My name is Ed Salo. I'm currently an associate professor of history at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Before that, I was a consulting historian for several

cultural resource management firms, archaeology companies that did contracting work primarily for the government, for regulations, both state and federal. I did lots of work for the Navy, naval bases all over. It was a really fun job. Got to travel, got to go to Japan for a couple months, Guantanamo Bay, which I know isn't always that cool of a place to be. But, you know, it was fun to research these things to help determine what was historic, what isn't historic. And And that was did that for about 14, 15 years before coming into academia to teach people how to do similar type things. So I'm going to before we go into your thesis topic here, I want to ask you a little bit about your job for us, because one, I think you're the first editor that we actually had on to, you know, occasionally we put out calls for volunteers. and i wind up sort of describing what that job entails but what would you describe what does

a c-control editor do well i will say it was one of those things where i i saw one of the calls for volunteers i had enjoyed the website and the podcast and so i said hey i'd like to volunteer and yeah they were like would you like to um help edit the podcast and i listened to podcasts all day long uh walking walking dogs you know working everything and i was like i have no idea about any of that i mean i was like technologically you know not very i'm like i can't do this and i got a lot of support uh got a lot of um you know guidance at the beginning and they were like sure you can do this and after that playing around watching some youtube videos and you know some advice yeah yeah i figured it out pretty quickly and yeah it's editing the podcast making these things

sound um better for the listener taking out the long pauses uh you know kind of pulling back the curtain sometimes we make mistakes and have to re do a question and you know edit it so it sounds a little more professional and just making it all around better experience for everyone and it's really cool because you get to listen to these uh podcasts before anyone else does well thank you for all the work that you do for us like i said i think you're the the longest serving uh continuous editor that we have right now and we appreciate like one apologies on my behalf for all the times i screwed up and create extra work but two thank you for uh for everything you've done to us and continue to do um but today we're going to be talking about

your PhD thesis topic, the role of the ferry in the development of South Carolina. And I've heard a lot of stories as I've interviewed different academics about how people arrive at their ultimate thesis topic. So what was the journey for you to decide to focus on ferries in general and then their role in South Carolina's development in particular? Well, I had been working on my course to work in the late 1990s. And around 2000, I got a job and continued working. And I had gone and I had a bunch of ideas for dissertation topics from copper mining in Southeast Tennessee, where my family's, my mom's family's from, to the preservation of space exploration, to looking at some military because of what I was working on. And I just could never

getting started and so I was working in South Carolina we had a project that went over the Cumbie Ferry which has you know luckily in the past couple years has gotten into the news because of the site of the Cumbie Ferry raid that was co-led by Harriet Tubman where they one of the u.s african-american um forces raided some plantations liberated between 700 and 800 enslaved people you know really important thing and our road project went right over this it's a really dangerous road they needed to widen it and they were going to have to you know make a new bridge and so i went to you know like i do for these projects i went to get the book on fairies that we have would have in our library to copy down the secondary information i found out

there wasn't that kind of source and as i was doing research i found a whole just plethora of primary sources on these fairies that hadn't been studied except for like an article in a popular history journal in like 74 so i was like hey this is a topic that hasn't been explored I need to do the work for this project. And it's something that I can really tackle and look at through different prisms of history. So I was like, hey, this is a great topic. Yeah, I never had thought of going into, you know, studying ferries. I did find out that my great-great-grandfather had operated a ferry in southeast Tennessee later, so it was sort of like, okay, I guess I come to this honestly. So, can you describe South Carolina's geography and what it is that made ferries so integral to the transportation system there? Yes. I started out, I was going to look at the whole state of South Carolina. And then just like with any kind of these academic topics, you always have too big a selection and you have to kind of narrow it down. So I narrowed it down to the low country along the coast, which was, of course, the initial place the state was settled as the home of important cities like Charleston, Beaufort, Georgetown.

So it was easy to have that historic narrative starting at the beginning of the colonization all the way through. And geographically, it's a beautiful place, but it's also a very wet, low place. There are lots of rivers coming into the ocean. So if you're going along the coast, you have to cross these. And besides rivers, there's areas of bogs, low country, swampy land. It's very wet. and so this geography of these numerous rivers going into the ocean would have to be crossed and so that was one of the reasons that the ferry system was crucial at the beginning because bridges the bridging technology was it was there but I found that a lot of times the people were cheap I guess is the best chance they would build a bridge but then not set up a mechanism to maintain it so the bridge would be washed out or you know a hurricane or something would come in

and damage it and no one wanted to put the money up to you know rebuild the bridge so the ferry system seemed to be economically the best way to go um uh how did south carolina's ferry system develop well that's um and that's one of the interesting things is that the ferries were chartered by well the colonial government first and then later the state government and you were as an individual you were issued a charter to establish a ferry it was a monopoly given by the government um they had regulations on you couldn't have a ferry this many miles from your ferry to give you you know the monopoly of this and it kind of varied depending on the area but you know so you were protected that anyone traveling along this road basically would

have to go through your ferry the charter also established the fares um so that you weren't gouging people and they would know that okay it costs this much to get a person across it costs this much to get cattle across whatever um so you were you know but you also had to have so many boats they would tell you you had to have this many boats to operate it got told was pretty detailed in some places what types of ferry boats how many people they needed to require you had to have people operating there 24 7 in case it needed so it was a system where the government gave an individual this you know this money-making project but also required them to keep it at a certain level and you know yeah if you didn't do your

part of it they could bring um complaints to the you know next government level up you could have to pay fines so the system was developed as a way to you know get the interior infrastructure going and not really have to pay for the bridges um because someone else was paying for the fairies and the state or the colonial government didn't have to pay for their upkeep. So it was really a pretty a good system for everybody. And it was a money-making system for plantation owners. You know, we also, we always think of plantations as making their money off of the enslaved labor and the agriculture, which they did, but these plantations were money-making pursuits other things you know they made furniture you know they made boats a lot of

them and a lot of them operated these ferries is another way to make money so one of the really fascinating things as i read through your thesis was the level of regulation which you described something in your last uh but that's not something that i would think was a common a common thing back in the early 1700s you could see that ferries were regulated as early as 1703 so what makes a ferry a quote-unquote registered ferry well they all in south carolina had to be registered they had to um the the assembly um first the colonial assembly and then later the state legislation would pass an act that established uh this ferry a lot of times later the people you know petitioned to get these ferries established um i'm sure that there was a lot of

you know political you know maneuvering to get these because they were good money makers and you didn't want one of these to go other places. It also was the chartering system corresponded with the growth of the common house of assembly, which was the legislative branch. You know, they were gaining more power and they were able to use this power to grant these charters, you know, and it was like I was saying, it was a way to control what was going on because no one wanted unregulated uh ferries out there because the road system was established and the ferries were along the roads

having other ferries working in other places would just kind of take out this control a lot of times we think of you know we think of south carolina and you know but this was a very heavily controlled system. The people who were the large landowners wanted to control as much of the government, the economics, the politics as they could to make sure their investments were very profitable. And that involved making sure that the transportation infrastructure worked the way they wanted to. So this was kind of another way for those landowners to maintain their system of control um you know and overall it changed as you know you progressed as the um as new cities developed and they became more

important yeah more ferries established um we see later on that as the state goes farther inland You know, the different ferries are in different places than you would normally think. And a lot of these ferries developed to become important cities. Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, developed as a ferry. And one of the things that we think about is that also, excuse me for a second, is that the people who were put in charge of these were the local political leaders. So it all was like a big circle. You mentioned population growth and South Carolina developing inland. The ferry system developed organically because of population growth and expansion, or was it purposely developed to enable those things? And I think that's one of those questions that's probably 50-50. And it wasn't until the end of the Amnesty War, which resulted in the destruction of the tribe, that that area was really opened up for large-scale settlement. And of course, the establishment of the colony of Georgia also helped create that buffer with the Spanish in Florida. So with the people coming in, the road system and the ferries were open, helped open up the area, but also served as, you know, the needs.

Both things were happening at the same time. You could always transport your goods along the coast, but at the same time, that was more expensive. The road system was considerably going to be cheaper. So I would say that it was probably half and half that the road systems and the ferries helped open up the areas, but the areas were being opened up by other aspects too. So what sort of infrastructure would develop around the ferry landings? That was what was really interesting. um when i started looking at the ferries you know you just think it's okay it's a boat it's got some landings da da da but you think about it this is a transportation hub and one of the first things you can think of you need is a tavern with a place to stay eat because well you might get there and you're like well i'm done with my traveling this is a good place to stop so taverns um you know

places to stay developed and of course who was who usually owned this the person that um operated the ferry and you know so you had that and then well when people stop and gather there you know okay we need some warehouses to store stuff that's being transported again usually owned by the people that own the ferry or at least you know they offered that land to somebody else so a lot of times you have small um cities towns villages developing around these ferry boats uh sides because you know yeah it's a center for trade uh sometimes people in the area agriculturally would then establish homes there so they could be close to the transportation route one thing i found that was really interesting is their military aspect. Because South Carolina relied a lot on the

militia system, the ferry boats in many places were the militia site, because everyone knew where the ferry was. It was a defensible position. So, you know, the muster would be at the ferry site. And then during the Civil War, during the Revolutionary War, many of these ferries had fortifications built to protect them. You know, even during the Civil War, a lot of the ferries were along the coast that were captured by the U.S. Army were made into pontoon bridges for ease of transportation, but they still used the same fortification. So, you know, it was initially economics and then more, you know, commercial, residential. There were several communities like i was saying that was founded by on these um ferries and you know people trying to

make some you know trying to make some money trying to develop a new town especially if you're a large landowner and you wanted this to as a way to get bring those other people in to make some more money in for you know your endeavors but yeah it was the um you know it was i i kind of picture it like how people picture trains and other places that yeah the train comes into a town and people start building you know restaurants taverns hotels and the same thing was happening at the uh ferry sites some of them succeeded some of them failed um you know and then of course charleston there were several ferry sites that were established to go to the other sides of the rivers that surround the peninsula and connected it to the towns of um well west

ashley and then over mount pleasant and these you know started as normal ferries and then because of the importance of the town and the transportation became larger and larger ferries till by the you know late 1800s we're talking big steamer ships that you wouldn't think of as you know the ferry that we think about but they were still ferrying people back and forth now do the ferries themselves evolve over time and if so how i'm thinking really about the the boats now yeah i mean if you know first ferries were um you know just basically people were using the technology the native americans um you know dugout canoe type craft and then they started you know developing technology over time the uh more the flat

boat that were that you kind of think of with a ferry um that would be brought across depending on the river sometimes by poles a lot of times by ropes because these can be kind of deep places so the technology you know continued you know on really how to transport it a lot of it was just based on basic inland ship crafts and then you know by the 1800s with the development of steam in the larger places yeah charleston had steam ferries from charleston to mount pleasant interesting aspect is that we see a lot of them being advertised going to like sullivan's island for recreation. And, you know, you could buy a ticket on the railroad and it ends with a ferry

boat crossing to Sullivan's Island or one of those. So it was part of, they were becoming part of the larger transportation infrastructure. I was hoping, and this is one of those things where when you start your dissertation or one of these huge projects, you have this big dream of how you're going to find all this information and so i figured for the technology i was going to look at the archaeological record i was going to go to the archaeological um to the you know institute at the university of south carolina where they keep all the records i was going to gather all this archaeological data and study the development of the technology yeah it wasn't there um i found that in the 1920s when the progressive good road movement came into south carolina

and they put these bridges and these paved roads in they put them right over the ferry boat sites because that's where the road was and this was before any kind of environmental and you know historic site laws so they just dropped it right there and so all these sites that would have had all this information boom gone uh there's a few sites and there was a few boats that have been documented but really there was not enough to um really you know gain a lot of understanding from the archaeological record so i relied a lot on um advertisements and going back to those charters because the charters would get very detailed on how large of a ship or boat was needed and the ads you know the ads usually the best ads to do were after somebody had a charter for a while and they

were did a really horrible job and they would lose it the next person that would get it would put ads in the paper you know basically like they do at a new restaurant or hotel like hey under new management you know come come see us and they would talk about how nice their ferry boats were so you could get an information on what the boats were like because of that it was yeah and I did see several complaints and you know one person was even advising someone to go about 30 miles out of the way not to have to go to this ferry and when you think about travel in the late 1700s 30 miles is a long way to go out of the way so it must have been a horrible ferry for them to say not to go into that one well i think uh you know people in their mind probably

have a conception of a ferry as like oh we're just going to cross this small river if you've ever looked at a title chart or the uh the charts going in and out of charleston south carolina of there's a very intense current that runs through there is a difficult navigation detail so i mean that's not it's no small amount of skill to take an unpowered vessel uh and go from place to place just around the charleston area so i can imagine if you're if you're not a skilled mariner if you're not a skilled you know waterman um it's it's going to be readily apparent to your passengers that a you don't know what you're doing and b perhaps they're in actual danger with you out there right and that and that goes into uh one of the things is these were skilled

um you know skilled sailors skilled maritime men um they were valuable the people who actually because you had the person who owned the ferry and he wasn't always of course the person that operated the ferry and and they were required to be manned 24 hours a day so you know yeah they they would hire people to operate them. At the very beginning, a lot of times these were enslaved people. That changed pretty quickly in the 1700s with the fear of slave revolts becoming pretty ingrained in South Carolina's political culture. You start seeing regulation of slaves and ferries so is south carolina unique in its use of ferries compared to other states initially no you know all the i compared it with the other southern colonial states and all of them

had ferries um most of them had some form of regulation to keep it went from the british tradition of granting charters where the crown would grant the charter so however South Carolina did keep them longer than some of the others because of you know I'm guessing especially after the Civil War you know the state was not entirely you know it suffered really hard economically so you know to me it was probably one of those economic that they you know continued to operate them even into the early 20th century like i said the good road movement didn't come into south carolina until the 1920s which you know is 20 years later than a lot of the states so it was initially they continue you know initially it was just like everyone else and

And then it just slowly continued on for probably economic reasons. You know, some of the charters after the Civil War were granted instead of to individuals, to corporations, as we see corporations rising in America. We started then also seeing some of the charters were granted to small municipalities. um you know and they were given the same responsibility that anyone else had but it was a small you know town operating it rather than an individual or a corporation so what ultimately led to the decline of ferries as a transportation node you mentioned the good good road movement a couple times now and that i mean i think that that's you know the progressive of the good road movement the building of better roads bridges across the U.S. is one of the main

reasons you know to get you know this development of the new south industry coming in you know people just realized that the ferry was not the most efficient way of getting across and they could build bridges you know Charleston was linked to Mount Pleasant by the first bridge in 1919 i think or 1920 um you know before that it was if you wanted to get across you had to go either way up the neck and way over and across the bridge and come back down or take a ferry um so really you know wasn't till the early 20th century that you could cross that um so it's it was the changing finally the changing of the tech uh transportation technology getting to south carolina in the early 20th century was a major change um and then of course

you know 20th century early 20th century was a big change for south carolina especially during world war one the period between the wars um especially during the new deal with an infrastructure with the influx of federal money for projects and then world war ii brought tons and tons of change to the low country with expansions of you know the air force base well what would become the air force base the naval base there at charleston the marine and the naval installations around buford um you know all these other places the air force base that would become the air force base up in um myrtle beach all these places brought in uh not only money but more people, of course, the tourism. And so, you know, the transportation system had to be a lot

more robust. Well, that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Ed Salo. So, Ed, is your thesis available online anywhere? It is available on ProQuest, which universities have subscriptions to. It's one of those things where I'm still working on revising it. There's always some other project that is there but I would like to eventually get it down to a book. I would look forward to seeing it in book form.

I think you could find some very evocative paintings to go along with this as well. But where can we find you online and what else are you working on? Well, I don't have as much online presence as I probably should as some of my colleagues. Arkansas State University, which is A-S-T-A-T-E dot E-D-U.

I've got pages there. I'm in LinkedIn. It's easy to find me. What am I working on now? Well, I've got several articles I'm trying to finish this summer that are kind of for some collected journals looking at urban warfare. And what I'm kind of exploring now is some aspects of the U.S. Army Air Corps in the 1920s. Some of their larger, like around the world, around South America, goodwill flights, how they were used as A, diplomatic, B, kind of, you know, showing the force and getting skills for the pilots in long range operations. and how that training later helped the U.S. during World War II and after that experience.

So I've got a whole bunch of that information that I've been trying to plow through. Well, thanks again, Ed. To our listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Thank you. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 We'll be right back.