Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island

• Built: July 1861
• Battle: November 7, 1861
• Renamed: Fort Welles, November 8, 1861
• Visit: inside Port Royal Plantation, or on a museum tour

Fort Walker was the Confederate earthwork that guarded the entrance to Port Royal Sound from the northeast tip of Hilton Head Island. General P. G. T. Beauregard recommended it in May 1861, on Coggins Point Plantation, and it was named for the Confederate Secretary of War, L. P. Walker. Work began that July. Island planters supplied enslaved laborers to haul palmetto logs, dig trenches and build a powder magazine and gun emplacements. Historians believe the work song with the line “No more peck of corn for me” was first sung on Hilton Head that summer, while men labored at Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard.

The Battle of Port Royal

On November 7, 1861 the most formidable Union expeditionary fleet to date came into Port Royal Sound. A gun in Fort Walker fired the first shot at about 9:26 that morning, and the battle was one of the most important of the early war. Shortly after 2 p.m. the Confederate defenders evacuated, and a Union officer landed under a flag of truce and raised the colors. The next day General Thomas W. Sherman renamed the work Fort Welles, for Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. The Union Navy’s hold on the sound turned Hilton Head into the headquarters of the Department of the South, which is why the island’s history changed so quickly afterward; the history of Hilton Head Island tells that story in full.

What Is Left to See

The Coastal Discovery Museum says the earthwork remains of Fort Walker (later Fort Welles) and of nearby Fort Sherman can still be visited. Fort Walker Park and the beach house at the end of the road have historical markers. We could not confirm how much of the fort’s walls stands today, so we do not describe them.

How to Visit

The fort site is inside gated Port Royal Plantation, so it is open to residents and their guests, not to drive-in visitors. The way in for everyone else is the Coastal Discovery Museum’s Forts of Port Royal walking tour, a two-hour docent-led walk that meets at the Port Royal Golf Clubhouse, covers both Fort Walker and Fort Sherman and the Steam Gun, and is not recommended for children under 7. Register online.