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Trip Day:
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242
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Latitude:
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30°20.07'
N
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Locks Today:
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0
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Miles Today:
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25
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Longitude:
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087°08.66'W
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Locks Total:
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108
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Total Miles:
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5,249
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Location:
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Pensacola Beach, FLORIDA MM 189
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We watched as Reggie waited patiently for Katie or Jessie to take him ashore. There are so many boaters who have one or two dogs on board—a few cats, but not as many as one might expect.
No one seemed in a hurry to get underway this morning, enjoying the peace of the anchorage and wanting to give the sun time to burn off the chill.
Leaving Ingram Bayou, we watched as a man maneuvered his dinghy, with the halyard from a grounded sailboat, trying to heel the boat enough to get it to deeper water. A little later we heard the ketch call Tow Boat US for assistance. 
Then, just to sweeten the moment, we spotted porpoise on our port stern, then more off the bow. We were total tourists as we shouted to each other as they surfaced. I ran to the bow to film, when I realized several had turned and were running with us surfing off the bow wake. We passed by Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island on our way into the marina on Pensacola Beach.
We have been in touch with Betty and Marc (KatMan2) who live here and have offered to be our tour guides to show us their town. Within an hour of our arrival, Marc and Betty were on the dock—hugs all around—then we were off to see the fort. Madeline, Bob and their son, John, joined the tour group.
In 1559 Spanish explorer, Tristan de Luna, landed at Pensacola Bay with 11 ships and 1,400 people to became the first European-established settlement in the continental U.S. However, weeks later the colony was decimated by a hurricane which killed hundreds and sank 5 ships. By 1561 the settlement was abandoned and the people returned to Mexico or Cuba. The Spanish returned in 1698 and established Pensacola as an outpost to defend their claims to Spanish Florida. Five flags have flown over the city; Spanish, French, British , Confederate States of America and United States. Of course the original inhabitants were Native Americans and when the explorers arrived they made contact with a Muskogean-speaking tribe known as the Pensacola.
After the War of 1812 The US fortified all of its major ports and the construction of Fort Pickens lasted from 1829 to 1834. 21.5 million bricks were used to build the fort and most of the construction was done by slave labor. The fort is located on the tip of Santa Rosa Island in order to guard the island and the entrance to the harbor. Some locals contend that when shots were fired in January 1861 these were the first shots fired by the United States in the Civil War. 
Despite repeated Confederate threats, Fort Pickens remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War. In 1886 a train pulled into Pensacola with 16 Apache men; Geronimo and Naiche, the youngest son of Cochise, were among the Apaches held at Fort Pickens for two years. Their wives and children were not allowed to join them for a year, when the local newspaper reported that Geronimo was happy now that the sounds of women singing and children playing could be heard in the fort.
By 1923 two 12-inch Langdon guns were built at Fort Pickens with 17-foot thick concrete casements. These massive guns weighed 58 tons, fired one-foot diameter shells weighing 1,000 pounds, over 9 miles. Unfortunately the guns are no longer at the fort—they were sold for scrap when the fort closed in 1947.
We greatly enjoyed our tour of the fort which is now a National Park. We ended a great day with dinner at Betty and Marc’s house on Pensacola Bay. We counted ourselves lucky that they had made it home before this group of loopers arrived and could welcome us to their home town. Betty grew up on Pensacola Beach and Marc is a historian so they were perfect hosts!
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