Elizabeth Stice
Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas
There is a ferry from Key West to the nineteenth-century fort in the Dry Tortugas. Dry because there is no source of fresh water. Tortugas for the sea turtles, which sailors lashed to the deck and poured water over to keep them for eating later.
In 1868, Joseph Bassett Holder wrote about Fort Jefferson for Harper's Magazine. "The Dry Tortugas is not a perfect desert." Many plants grow here and birds flourish.
Tourists arrive daily by boat and seaplane. Depending on the season, they arrive soporific and calmed by dramamine. They sit and stroll and snorkel before returning to Key West.
It was a military prison when Holder visited in 1868. Men had died of scurvy and, in the absence of limes, they ate purslain, "boiled, and used as greens, with vinegar and pepper." Now tourists eat bagged lunches that come with them on the ferry. You can buy an ice cream sandwich for a few dollars.
It is bright and calm and dry. It does not seem like a hardship post or a prison when you come for a day. It is hard to imagine it filled with Yellow Fever and foul water.
A frigate bird sails overhead. You hear only the wind. You walk the ramparts without any safety rails.
Almost nothing is off limits at Fort Jefferson. Anyone can lean out of the windows or put their legs over any ledge.
Everything on the horizon is blue.
16 million bricks were brought here by sailboat and assembled by men, in the heat of the Florida sun.