1718 – Piracy. 

Early this morning off the Charles Town bar, Governor Johnson’s fleet was waylaid by a sloop, the Eagle, which raised the black flag and called on the ships to surrender. Johnson raised the King’s standard, threw open his ports and delivered a broadside which swept the deck of the pirate ship. The Eagle surrendered.

Johnson discovered the ship was not that of Christopher Moody, but the captain was Richard Worley who had captured the Eagle in Virginia. Worley had been killed by the broadside, but his crew of twenty-four were arrested. The cargo included 106 convicts and covenant servants, thirty-six of whom were women, bound as settlers in Maryland.

1768 – Backcountry

Rev. Charles Woodmason

Rev. Charles Woodmason presented a petition to the Assembly which argued that the leaders of the low country (Charlestown planters and merchants) treated the inhabitants of the back country worse than their slaves. He pointed out that the area along the coast had forty-four representatives in the Assembly, while the back country only had six – despite containing two-thirds of the white population of South Carolina.

1779 – Births

 Washington Allston was born on a rice plantation on the Waccamaw River near Georgetown, South Carolina. He would grow up to pioneer America’s Romantic movement of landscape painting. 

Washington Allston, self portrait