Cooper River Ferry

 

1764 – 1792: Cooper River Ferryⁱ

i Cooper River Ferry

In the autumn of 1764, Joseph Scott took over the ferry formerly known as Codner’s Ferry, plying between his property on Daniel Island and Charleston Neck, and in the spring of 1765 he petitioned the provincial legislature for their endorsement. At the same time, Captain Clement Lempriere (also spelled Lampriere), a veteran mariner, likewise petitioned the legislature to re-activate the old ferry from his property at Hobcaw Point, formerly occupied by William Watson. The legislature granted both requests by passing an act in August 1765, and all seemed well for the moment.

Joseph Scott died in May 1766, however, and his heirs discontinued the ferry service. Meanwhile, across the Wando River at Hobcaw Point, Captain Lempriere wasn’t operating his ferry with the consistency and punctuality required by law. Seeing this lapse in service across the Cooper and Wando Rivers, an Englishman named Andrew Hibben inaugurated a new ferry service in September 1769. At that time, Hibben advertised a ferry route from Charleston to Hobcaw Point, and from Hobcaw to Scott’s Ferry on Daniel Island.[9] This service encroached on the ferry franchises held by Clement Lempriere and the heirs of Joseph Scott, of course, so the aggrieved parties complained to the provincial government. After hearing several petitions and reports on the matter, the South Carolina legislature determined that Lempriere and the heirs Scott were in violation of the terms of their franchises, and so they empowered the interloper Hibben to continue his ferry business.[10] On the eve of the American Revolution, therefore, Andrew Hibben held a virtual ferry monopoly across the Cooper River, plying between Hobcaw Point and a hard beach near the east end of Pinckney Street in Charleston

Let’s take a break from the chronology and turn to some practical issues related to this transportation topic. For example, what sorts of boats were used in the first century of ferry service across the Cooper River? To transport people (without animals), they used long, narrow row boats, described as either “canows,” canoes, or “passage boats.” When someone stole such a vessel from ferry owner Charles Codner in 1744, he described it as a “cypress canow, with three planks in her bottom, rows with 6 oars, and has a locker abaft; she is the ferry canow from St. Thomas’s Island to Long Point.” Even as late as the 1820s, both Hibben’s Ferry and Milton Ferry continued to use long rowboats to transport pedestrians. To carry men on horseback, or carriages, or cattle, sheep, and hogs, ferry operators deployed what they generally called “horse boats,” which were larger, wider, oared vessels with flat bottoms. For the first century of our ferry operations, enslaved oarsmen rowed these boats back and forth across the Cooper River. In his 1783 will, for example, Andrew Hibben directed his heirs sell some of his slaves, but to keep fourteen “Negro fellows” constantly employed in the four boats of his ferry fleet, seven on the Charleston side and seven at Haddrell’s Point.