A Song For Lazaretto, and a ghost story... on The Tybee Times Online

A few years back, I started doing research on the history of Lazaretto Creek, and wrote a poem/song about it. I don't presume to know any particulars other than those written here, and of course there may be others on Tybee and elsewhere who can add more accurate details.

Some people have labeled this tale and the song itself, "a ghost story." I agree, but the fact is I can't say I believe in them, not as the souls of the departed walking among us though I hear others say they do.

I've never encountered a human ghost, but I will say as the bitter cold of Ohio's winter in 2001 piled snow high outside our basement windows I had what some might describe as a 'visitation.’ Frankly, the encounter caught me off guard, but whatever happened, it cured my writer's block once and for all. Never again will I put off writing when such "inspiration" calls.

The following story was published in the December 2005 issue of The Tybee Breeze, though the song was published much earlier. The story has been revised twice and also appears on MySpace with updates. The events are true but since feelings are subjective, I'll let the reader decide between fact and fiction.

It was January, on the eve of the death of my family friend and mentor, Emma Kelly in 2001, Johnny Mercer's "Lady of 6000 Songs." (John Berendt's novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil devotes an entire chapter to this beloved local character.) I was carrying out a New Year's resolution to clean out my desk, sorting through stacks of papers and junk mail that had accumulated in the middle drawer, when I noticed a small blue pamphlet brought back from Tybee. We'd visited the lighthouse the summer before, and the small promotional piece provided a pleasant diversion from the howling blizzard outside.

To my surprise, it mentioned "a quarantine" that had once operated on the far west side of the island. Though I'd grown up in the area and paid many visits to Tybee, I’d never heard of this. Since research rather than cleaning is usually my first choice, I went online, got out my southern history books and spent the rest of that afternoon and indeed a portion of the next searching for facts about it. It wasn’t the most documented of local attractions and information was sparse.

Tybee Island is the most northerly of Georgia's "Golden Isles." Twenty miles east of Savannah, it has a small strip of land that extends westward, out into a vast area of coastal marshlands. This strip, with immediate access to the shipping channel, became the location for two consecutive quarantines that operated in the late 1700's into the 1800's. The first, located on the island's western side on the tidal creek that now bears its name, was simply called a 'lazaretto.'

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, it housed unfortunate European immigrants who contracted contagious diseases such as yellow fever or worse on board ship during the transatlantic voyage to America. It was also the "welcoming station" for a host of infected African slaves who emerged from the cargo holds of the treacherous middle passage.

Like all seaports, Savannah could ill afford contamination of the mainland, so incoming vessels experiencing outbreaks had to unload the sick and cleanse the decks before continuing up river to port. Sometimes they were forced to remain at the mouth of the Savannah River for months on end before given clearance to proceed.

The present-day Italian term "lazaretto, or lazaret” simply translated means hospital, but in the Middle Ages it literally meant "pest house" - a place for those dying from the plague or leprosy. Derived from the Hebrew word "lazar" or "leper," it also refers to the biblical figure, "Lazarus," the one that Christ raised from the dead. Research also indicates that remote portions of the first quarantine, a 104-acre tract purchased in 1767 from patriot, Josiah Tattnall probably served as a leper's colony. After continuous use throughout the Revolution, the Grand Jury reported it in “ruinous condition” in 1785. It was abandoned, and a new site opened across the way on nearby Cockspur Island. I also discovered that in 1954 the Georgia Historical Society had placed the small historic marker (pictured below),

at the original site’s general vicinity along Highway 80.

That second evening around 9:30 p.m. after everyone else went to bed, I went to the basement to finish putting my desk in order. Then I sat down to write. I'd organized my thoughts into what I decided would be a poem about what I’d read of the history of Savannah, the quarantines and the surrounding marshes. However, in all the years I'd visited though I’d sailed in a hobie cat off north end, I'd never done any boating around the island, much less in the marshes, and didn't really know where to start.

I set out to describe the place as best I could imagine knowing that sometimes, if you just begin writing real substance eventually kicks in. But I'd barely gotten the words of the first two lines down, when a strange thing happened. It began as a slight tingle – then almost as if someone had slipped up beside me, and tapped me on the shoulder, there was whispering in my ear. Next moment I could feel myself standing in shoulder deep, cold, rushing water. There was tall green grass all around. It quickly dawned on me, I was in the marsh, and suddenly, being swept under, I felt like I was drowning. For several seconds, I was anxious, even sick to my stomach. Then as quickly as it came, the sensation was gone. I sat there wondering if maybe I was coming down with something, or having some sort of "sympatric” reaction – whatever it was, it was very real.

After getting a drink of water I sat back down at my computer to read over the words I’d typed – “It runs from the mouth of South Channel, with the tide it meanders round.”

It wasn't late, and I was anything but sleepy, so I decided to keep writing and see what else might happen. Except for the fact that I couldn't stop and a ten-versed poem emerged, the rest of the evening was "uneventful." But the following afternoon my mom called from Georgia to tell me that Emma Kelly had died.

Now, I don't believe for a minute the experience had anything to do with Emma other than the fact that the incident occurred and it served to mark her passing for me. The strange thing was that exactly one year later to that very day, I found myself living on Tybee Island, and in the months that followed, thinking about "Miss Emma" every time I passed the Pirate's House where she'd played at Hannah's East in downtown Savannah. Felt a little strange crossing the bridge onto the island at times that first year, too – still think about it.

It wasn't until 2005 however while I was working on an article for The Tybee Breeze I learned the spot on the western side of the island where the fishing fleet now docks was actually considered to be haunted by locals. I’d hoped to start off with a house on Officer’s Row and do a whimsical series on Tybee “ghosts” much like the pirate stories I’d just completed, but it was the holidays and the owners weren’t in town, so I ended up over at Lazaretto. When folks at the marina claimed to have seen at least one dark figure with tattered clothes walking out on the docks in the darkness, I wasn’t surprised. I was told that on two occasions, such a figure walked right into a room, stood and stared in silence then disappeared - a mystery to this day...

I guess if ever a place had reason to be “haunted,” this might be one. Granted, it isn't Gettysburg, Hiroshima or Dauchau, or a place where millions have suffered, and I don’t wish to labor the point, but eighteenth century necessity paid a brief, but costly visit to Lazaretto Creek - another lonely little corner of the world, where outcasts perished. For someone dying in quarantine on the outskirts of the New World after traveling across the vast ocean in hopes of finding a better life, it was a terrible fate. Worse, imagine being torn away from loved ones and homeland, and thrown into the pain and horror of slavery. Languishing in chains from an illness you'd contracted while lying in the stench and filth below deck with the rest of your unfortunate comrades, you probably would have welcomed death rather than recovery, especially if there was no hope of freedom.

The song I wrote that snowy night in Ohio is a tale of history influenced by what I “felt and saw,” and what I believe.Try reading it on the dock at Lazaretto Creek at sunset, and let me know how you feel.

"SONG FOR LAZARETTO" f# minor (copyright Jan. 2001)

1. It runs to the mouth of South Channel, with the tide, it meanders 'round winding its way through the marsh's waving grasses and soggy ground. It curves like a rippled gray ribbon, the sash on a satin gown, and touches the back of the island on the side where the sun goes down. Many red sunsets have lingered high above this floating plain, and promised relief from the storms at sea - from the waves, the wind, and the rain.

2. The Euchee walked on Tybee long before the Spanish came. Their word for salt was 'tybee,' and the island was named the same. Though fearsome pirates ventured here whose deeds became renowned, where Blackbeard buried his treasure dear, has never yet been found. While pirate days were numbered, also, French and Spanish gain, the English anchored at Tybee, determined to remain.

3. The founders envisioned Savannah: 'No tenured property - a vice less, yeoman's utopia; no rum, no slavery.' Then trade in Chatham began to fail, and small farms but survived, while over in South Carolina, the rice plantations thrived. As loss and disenchantment overshadowed past convictions, they offered the land grant titles, and lifted the slave restrictions.

4. For years, when ships reached Tybee Light, they'd stop at South Channel Sound. They'd unload the sick and the dying, both the free, …and the bound. They'd leave them here, where this little creek, still far from Savannah town, touches the back of the island on the side where the sun goes down… at a place called 'lazaretto,' where a quarantine would hold all the ones with dreaded diseases, and the ones too sick to be sold.

5. While great blue herons nested out beyond the island's view, mosquito swarms would buzz and bite 'til evening breezes blew. Windswept cedars, and pines, and palms, and crooked oak trees spread... alms of mercy at 'lazaretto,' like a summons to 'raise the dead.' Though comforters braved the perils, and full moons waxed and waned, there was no such 'resurrection,' for the dying who remained.

Refrain 1: Lazaretto! Here, beyond the stormy sea, was no promise for tomorrow, in your sunset reverie? Why must these things be so? What hope can ever be, as we lye here, Lazaretto, to rise again and be free?

6. Now, the South had known misfortune, but the price was high to pay, when the Union armies marched right in, and took it all away. Though Sherman spared Savannah the flames that others knew, the way of life was ended … and the means of living, too. While great plantations emptied, and fields were laid so low, the slaves were freed, but many stayed. They'd nowhere else to go.

7. But the worst they’d fear on Tybee now were fevers and hurricanes, and the days of the quarantines would close, leaving the last remains of the site where many perished, tide-washed and over-grown,… while rails were laid, then a road was made, and seeds of progress, sown... Nothing survived to mark the graves of the souls lost in that place - nothing perhaps, but a secret mark, that time cannot erase.

8. Today, the bridge that spans the creek affords a scenic a view of the waters off Cockspur lighthouse, as they rush to the ocean blue. Here, the island 'shrimpers' dock, and nearby, dolphins play, While hungry seabirds circle low to scavenge what they may… and out on the west horizon, where the miles of marshes grow, the sunsets still do linger as they did so long ago.

9. Many tales are told of those who've walked these timeless beaches, and the ways of former slaves live on where the GeeChee culture reaches. The creek still curves like a ribbon, as it winds along with the tide, though it cannot tell a single word how any have lived or died, but at times out here, there's a sound on the wind, the voice of a memory, that fills the heart of these marshes, like the tide that's up from the sea,

Refrain 2: "Lazaretto,...many things should never be as the deeds and reasons sleeping fill the pages of history. Yet, there is no doubt as the years rush out to meet eternity, they who lie here in the depths below, ...asleep in mystery....

10. … May also hear that trumpet blow beyond the stormy sea – down… where your waters flow the day you set them free…. down, ...where your waters flow on the sundown side of Tybee.… Like a witness, Lazaretto, you wait so patiently - a witness, Lazaretto, wait and see..."

By the way, The Tybee Times is gathering information for a series on local “ghosts,” so if you have any at your house, I’d like to hear from you!

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