A Little-known Georgia Island’s Role in an Early Epidemic
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| One of the Quarantine Station buildings on the south end of the island. |
The pirate was Blackbeard, whose real name was Edward Teach (or Thatche), and the island was Blackbeard Island, an island located northeast of and practically connected to Sapelo Island in McIntosh County. Legend holds that Blackbeard buried his treasure on the island, even though no buried treasure has ever been found. [2] Given the myriad of secluded inlets and waterways around the island and its proximity to his piracy activities, it is likely that Blackbeard spent time there. The island was first officially designated “Blackbeard Island” in 1760 when that name appeared on a map of the region drawn by William de Brahm [3] who was appointed a surveyor-general of the newly established royal government of Georgia in 1752.
Records indicate that French investors owned the island from 1789 to 1800 when it was sold at public auction to the US Navy which then used it for a timber reserve. Live oak timber from Georgia's coastal islands was used in the construction of naval vessels and was in high demand. The venerable wooden Navy frigate USS Constitution known as “Old Ironsides,” for example, was constructed of live oak cut on St. Simons Island nearby.
But in 1880, Blackbeard Island was put into service for a different use, not one related to shipbuilding, but to prevent the spread of a deadly virus.
Four years prior, the yellow fever epidemic of 1876 had claimed thousands of lives in the United States. In Savannah alone, over 1000 people succumbed to the disease. Unlike Covid-19, the yellow fever virus could not be transmitted by person to person contact (only mosquitos could spread the virus), but it still spread very quickly. The description of the virus outbreak in Brunswick, Georgia reads like a current day article describing the spread of Covid-19:
Yellow fever most likely arrived in Brunswick aboard the Marietta, a Spanish ship that arrived from Cuba…….. Yellow fever hit Cuba hard in May of that year, taking out the Marietta's entire crew. The ship’s owners rounded up yellow fever survivors from a nearby hospital to crew the Marietta on its journey to Brunswick…..The Marietta tied up beside American and British ships at Brunswick city docks. With the heat, sailors on the ships slept out in the open on the decks. The burgeoning mosquito population feasted. The first yellow fever victims in Brunswick emerged in August, sailors onboard the American schooner William H. Boardman, which was tied up beside the Marietta. Local merchants returning from visits aboard the ships [and the rampant Brunswick mosquito population] spread the disease into Brunswick. Soon townspeople began to report new victims among vendors who visited the ships, from butchers who supplied the vessels with meat, to a seamstress who came aboard to collect several suits that needed mending……..The impact of the disease spread like a blast pattern from the water front into the interior of the town. [4]
The outbreak in Savannah was also rapid and deadly. On August 11, 1876, the first fatal case of yellow fever developed near Savannah's East docks. Within two weeks, 1066 Savannahians had died from it. By September, 28,000 residents had fled Savannah. In general, about 60% of those infected died of the disease which usually ran its course in about six or seven days.
Continued outbreaks prompted Congress to pass the National Quarantine Act in 1878, which opened the path to federal involvement in the fight against epidemics and pandemics.[5] In 1880, in an attempt to contain the yellow fever epidemic, the US Marine Hospital Service opened the South Atlantic Quarantine Station on Blackbeard Island to monitor ships from abroad coming in to the Georgia ports of Brunswick, Darien and Savannah. Vessels headed for these Southern ports were required to stop for inspection at Blackbeard Island, and be disinfected if needed.
The quarantine station on Blackbeard Island was comprised of 13 buildings and had a staff of 23 people which included two engineers, a stockman to manage the station’s small herd of cattle, a cook, a laundress, a head surgeon and a male nurse. The station used a small boat, appropriately named the “Hygeia,” to disinfect ships and their ballasts.
A hospital and general offices were built on the south end of the island as there was no standing water there. It was comprised of a large storehouse and several large tents for those infected with the fever. Tents were used instead of a permanent building so they could be easily burned after infected patients were housed in them. The disinfection station for the ships was built on wharves on the north end of the island, 8 miles to the north. A steam-powered boat, the Gypsy, cruising at 10 mph, provided the communication link between the hospital and the disinfection station. At the disinfection station, the ballast (bricks loaded into the hull of the ship to add stability) of the ships were removed, disinfected and loaded back on to the ships. In 1904, a brick crematory was also built on the island, but there is no documentation to indicate it was ever used. It is the only remaining structure on the island from the quarantine station.
The protocal for ships en route to the Georgia ports was described as follows:
Ships suspected of harboring the disease were anchored off the north end of the island while passengers and crew disembarked. The ill were transported to the hospital, and the healthy were quartered separately and examined daily for symptoms. Sulfur gas was used to disinfect the quarantine station crew and the ships after all the cargo was removed. Fumigation extended to the entire vessel and all its furnishings [6]
Activity at Blackbeard Island slowed after 1900, when the shipping industry began to transition from wooden sail-powered boats to steam-ships. In 1909, the quarantine station was decommissioned after a vaccine for yellow fever was developed by Walter Reed. All in all, ninety ships checked into Blackbeard Island quarantine station. President Woodrow Wilson subsequently made Blackbeard Island a wildlife preserve. It was later designated as a National Wildlife Refuge and it is presently managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Blackbeard’s treasure remains unclaimed. The last serious and authorized hunt for Blackbeard’s spoils was launched in the 1880’s by a party equipped with divining rods and a map pinpointing the treasure at a burial site on the north end of the island. Unfortunately much of this area had been lost to erosion. No treasure was ever found.
[1] The CDC’s decision to locate its headquarters on Clifton Road in Decatur was largely the result of a gift by Robert W. Woodruff, Chairman of the Board of the Coca Cola Company. The stated purchase price of the property was $10.00. CDC employees purportedly took up a collection for the $10.00 to buy the 15 acres which is still the CDC's headquarters. Woodruff had an interest in malaria prevention because the parasite had had a deadly impact in areas where he often went hunting. Also worth noting, the CDC originally had only seven medical officers on duty. Most of its 369 employees were engaged in engineering and entomology according to the CDC website.
[2] Blackbeard conducted pirate raids on merchant ships in the area in the early 18th century. His most audacious act however was blockading the port of Charleston for a week.
[3] Some scholars argue that de Brahm, and not Benjamin Franklin, should be credited with being the first to chart the Gulf Stream.
[4] Hobbs, Larry. The Brunswick News, Mar. 14, 2020 (quoting Leslie Faulkenberry, a Glynn County historian).
[5] The practice of isolating the sick dates back to Biblical times when leper colonies were established to separate the ill from the rest of the population. The history of “quarantining”, i.e. isolating for a specified number of days, dates back to 1377. At that time, the governing council of the seaport town of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia) passed a law requiring a “trentino” or 30 day isolation period to prevent the spread of the Plague. During the next 80 years, similar laws were passed in places like Venice, but the isolation period was changed to 40 days, thus a “quarantino” as opposed to a “trentino.” The precise reason for the change to a 40 day period is apparently not documented.
[6] “Blackbeard Island, National Wildlife Refuge” www.fws.gov/refuge/Blackbeard_island/about/history.html
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| The crematory on Blackbeard Island is the only remaining structure from the Quarantine Station on the island. |
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| Disinfection station on the north end of Blackbeard Island where ships and their contents were fumigated. |
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| Staff quarters and executive building on south end of the island. |
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