USS Yankee (1861) USS Yankee (1861) USS "Yankee" (1861) was a steam-powered side-wheel tugboat acquired by the Union Navy just prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. The "Yankee"—a side-wheel steamer built in 1860 at New York City—was one of three steam tugs chartered early in April 1861 at New York City for use on the expedition to provision Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the first U.S. state to declare its secession from the Union, which it had done on December 20, 1860. She departed New York on 8 April 1861 and arrived off Charleston Bar on the 15th, a few hours
Fort Sumter Hotel in 1946. In April 1947, Tennessee Williams and agent Audrey Wood met with Irene Selznick at the Fort Sumter Hotel to discuss her producing his newest play A Streetcar Named Desire (just recently renamed from the original title Poker Night). Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr, 2014, p. 127. In 1956, the hotel considered an expansion of 60 to 100 rooms to accommodate the increase in convention business seen in Charleston. In 1973, the hotel, then operated by Sheraton Hotels, was purchased for $850,000 with plans to convert the building into a condominium project with about