Fort Pulaski celebrates the heroic life of Black Savannah boatman March Haynes
During the Civil War, a Black Savannah boatman named March Haynes was a lifeline for Confederate troops at Fort Pulaski.
Let me repeat, sort of. During the Civil War a Black Savannah boatman named March Haynes was a lifesaver for Union troops at Fort Pulaski.
He was always a welcome sight to soldiers on Cockspur Island. He was a welcome sight, an important sight, but not to the same soldiers at the same time. His is a story of tidal proportions, a story of bravery and slavery and freedom.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on March 2, Fort Pulaski National Monument celebrates March Haynes Community Day, and everyone is invited. Admission is free for a day full of programs that connect the fort to Savannah’s African American history.
There will be guided tours and remembrance ceremonies. Historians from Georgia Southern University will show a documentary film about the role African Americans played at the fort, from its earliest days when plantation owners leased their slaves to the U.S. Army to build it.
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Construction of the Fort began in 1829, and enslaved people did the most arduous work. They dug the ditches and built the dikes. Scores of men labored to sink over 5,000 pilings, 70- to 90-feet long, to form the fort’s foundation. They worked 10-hour days, 6 days a week, and their wages went to their enslavers.
Enslaved people laid the 3 to 4 million bricks the comprise the fort. Many of those bricks came from the Hermitage Plantation up the Savannah River. They were made by slaves there, and some of their fingerprints can still be seen on the bricks.
Community partners show out to tell the story of March Haynes
For March Haynes Day, numerous community partners will display in the shelter of the fort’s casemate arches. Among those will be the Reconstruction Era National Historic Park in Beaufort, South Carolina; the Coastal Heritage Society; and the Friends of the Cockspur Island Lighthouse.
A quilt celebrating March Haynes will be unveiled, the product of a month-long workshop at Godley Station school. A collaboration between Fort Pulaski, Loop It Up, and 21st Century Savannah, the workshop has focused on the importance of untold stories. With symbols and words on the quilt, students piece together the untold story of March Haynes.
In the Fort theater the 100 Black Men of Savannah will present video scenes from "Broken Wings 2/Devine Intervention" by playwright Winsphere Jones. With a cast of local youth, the play focuses on family dynamics and questions of trust.
There will be a special performance by the First African Baptist Church Children’s Choir. The church was an important local link in the Underground Railroad, and March Haynes was a deacon in the congregation.
The TybeeMLK organization will present information about the Tybee Black History Trail, Lazaretto Day later in March, and the visit in April by a delegation from Cape Coast, Ghana.
March Haynes’ story is heroic. He was born a slave in South Carolina in 1825 and eventually came to Savannah. He could read and write; he was a skilled carpenter; and most importantly for his connection to Fort Pulaski, he was an expert boatman. He knew the waterways surrounding Savannah like the back of his hand and could safely pilot a boat in the dead of night.
When Confederate troops occupied the fort in 1861, March Haynes’ owner took him there too. Once federal troops blockaded the fort in 1862, the Confederate commander relied on Haynes to carry mail, supplies, and critical information to and from Savannah, slipping through the waterways undetected by Union soldiers.
The fall of the Fort in April 1862 was life-changing for March Haynes and all slaves. Within days the Union general issued orders freeing the slaves in the Fort and then all the slaves in the state. Suddenly, at long last, March Haynes was free, and his former owner was a POW.
But slaves were only free if they could make it to Union territory. It was from 1862 to 1864 that March Haynes became a lifesaver. He used his boat to carry slaves from Savannah to the Fort. He had to silently slip past Confederate pickets at night delivering his passengers to the soil of freedom on Cockspur Island.
He rowed his boat on moonlit nights and moonless nights, on spring tides and neap tides, on ebb tides and flood tides, in northeasters and storms. It was dangerous. It was his calling.
In the summer of 1864 his luck ran out. His boat was spotted by Confederate troops, and he was wounded in an exchange of gunfire. He was scarred for life but still unafraid. He enlisted in a Colored Infantry Regiment on Hilton Head.
After the war, he returned to Savannah and operated boats for the rest of his life and became even more a pillar of the community. When he passed away in 1899, “Captain” Haynes was praised by the White and Black newspapers in the city.
Harriet Tubman said, “I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.” The tracks of March Haynes’ railroad were watery, and he could safely say the same.
If You Go >>
What: March Haynes Day
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., March 2
Where: Fort Pulaski National Monument, 101 Fort Pulaski Road
Info: Free Admission, nps.gov/fopu/learn/news/mhcd02fb24.htm