Located on Shutes Folly, a small island about one mile off the Charleston shore in the harbor, is Castle Pinckney named for the Revolutionary War hero Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. It was erected over the ruins of the destroyed Fort Pinckney.
By the late 1850s, Castle Pinckney was part of a network of defensive positions in the harbor, which included the larger and more strategically placed Forts Sumter and Moultrie. Nine days after South Carolina seceded, the fort was surrendered to the South Carolina militia and the US Army moved to Fort Moultrie.
Due to the difficulty of maintaining the structure, it has been all but abandoned. William Davis’s painting imagines what it would have looked like in it’s heyday.

Oil on panel
Image size: 6 x 8 inches
Framed size: 8 x 10 inches