Jim was 3 ½ and his sister, Anne, was 5 when their father, James H. Gullette, took charge of the fort’s Coast Guard beacon station around 1937.
The family lived in a white, two-story frame house inside the fort’s walls. They shared the premises with a few Army and Coast Guard personnel, a big black lab named King, and an unknown number of ghosts, judging from the clammy cold that occasionally emanated from the fort’s dungeon.
Fish, Shrimp and Capers
A couple of years before his death in 2004, Jim wrote a short book, "Sonny's Fort," (WorldComm, Alexander, N. C.) about his life on the fort. Among the memorable characters he encountered was Capers.
Sonny first met him when the old man came puttering up to the island in an ancient outboard, casting his net for fish and shrimp. Later, Capers rowed ashore and built a cooking fire. Sonny was fascinated by the fisherman's Gullah dialect and tantalized by the smell of fish boiling in a can on the beach. Capers shared his meal with the boy, and they became instant friends.
Later, Capers and Sonny stayed overnight beneath a tarp stretched over some stakes anchored in the beach sand.
Capers, King and the Ghost
As darkness descended, Jim said, they could see a smoky shape near the entrance to the dungeon. Capers wondered how the smoke could have gotten over there, since the wind was blowing the other way.
King saw it too. He went toward it, teeth bared, hair bristling. He leaped toward the form, and either slipped or was thrown back to the beach. The form disappeared over the rocks and into the fort. King followed it into the dungeon. Later, he brought a piece of tattered gray cloth into the tent. Remnant of a Confederate uniform?
"Whatever it be, I wouldn't want to be shaking its hand," said Capers.
Riding Out the Hurricane
A hurricane around 1940 proved as hazardous to the Gullette family as Rebel shells were to the fort’s occupants of 1861.
Caught without adequate warning, James H. Gullette moved his family into a magazine room just below one of the big gun turrets.
During the night, the wind-driven sea breached the low wall on one side of the fort and surged onto the parade ground, turning the crater-like area into a lake. It began rising inside the magazine room.
Climbing the Ammunition Cradles
The room had a hoist that led to a trapdoor through which ammunition had been fed to the big gun above. Using the ammunition cradles as a ladder, Gullette and a Coast Guardman who accompanied the family forced open the trapdoor in the ceiling, secured a rope to the gun mount, and led the family to relative safety in the gun pit. They wrapped themselves in raincoats and rode out the storm.
The Book He Never Wrote
When it came time for Sonny to start school, the family moved to nearby Sullivan's Island, but they still spent their summers at the fort until the radio beacon station was closed and their father was transferred to Fort Moultrie.
Jim promised himself that some day he would write a whole book about Capers. He died before he could keep his promise or unravel the mystery of the ghosts at Fort Sumter.
