Cow Head Cut Quoted from last month’s article, I wrote: “A few months back I asked for help from any Tybee mariner knowing the location of Cow Head Cut. No one came to my assistance. Study of coast charts brought no help. My best guess is that it’s located, with a different name, somewhere in the Bull River/Lazaretto Creek area. Even the name is a mystery to me since Clerk of Council Frank Storer’s writing of “Cow Head” is particularly hard for me to transcribe.” I am pleased to announce that help has arrived and I can now tell you just where Cow Head Cut is located. Although of little importance today, it was a big deal a hundred years ago in that it brought steamships and other vessels with passengers and freight directly from Savannah to the south end of Tybee. A reader in Atlanta with Tybee connections, Mark Winn, with whom I have corresponded in the past on another historical matter, saw my plea in last month’s article and sent me a link that allowed me to locate the cut. Of all things the link took me to records from the Government Printing Office covering approvals by the Secretary of War of Corps of Engineers navigational projects around the nation. Being that I worked for the Corps on navigational projects for 34 years, including a 5-year stint in the Savannah District, you’d think I would have found the link myself in short order. But I have good excuses: 1) I did not know it was a federal project; 2) the feds insisted on calling it Cow Head “River” (no doubt allowing the feds to fund this tiny dredging project under “River and Harbor” legislation); and 3) the name of the cut/river changed soon after it was dredged in 1913. Instead of using Chatham County’s dredge as indicated in earlier minutes of Tybee Council meetings, the Corps offered to deploy it’s new dredge brought down to work in the Savannah River to spend a few days making this 1500-foot long by 75-foot wide by 6-foot low-water depth connection
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Tybee Breeze
between Lazaretto Creek and Tybee Creek (locally called “Back River”). The Corps’ offer was apparently intended to lower the cost, thus leading to more certain and quicker approval from the Secretary of the Army. Although no maps were included with the Government Printing Office reports, it was stated in the reports that the cut would be made at the furtherest point to the west where Lazaretto Creek and Tybee Creek were the closest to each other and both had navigational depths at all tides. A look at NOAA’s current coast chart clearly shows this point to be at a location labeled “Morgan Cut.” I then recalled and verified that one of the many pieces of correspondence leading to approval had mentioned the name of dredge to be used: “The Dredge Morgan.” Bingo. Mystery solved. “Cow Head Cut” was renamed “Morgan Cut” soon after she was dredged. But now I best return to what I told you last month would be the first installment of Tybee’s long ordinance controlling the use of its Public Wharf being built to accommodate landings from vessels coming from Savannah through Morgan Cut. The ordinance passed August 14, 1913 consists of the regulations governing the use of Tybee’s soonto-be-completed public wharf in the Back River at the foot of Alley #2 (now Fisherman’s Walk). Tybee had established a Wharf Committee to handle affairs related to the construction and use of the new public wharf, cleverly named “The Public Wharf.” I feel sure this committee wrote the regulations for use of the wharf. You’ve heard of things designed by a committee as being convoluted. Well the same thing can be expected of regulations crafted by a committee. The regulations were adopted by the Town in the form of an ordinance as follows: “The following ordinance was read [I doubt it] and by unanimous consent, read a second time [I really doubt that], passed and ordered put on record: An ordinance to provide regulations No One Covers Tybee Like The Breeze