Unlike Bermuda, “one of the least salt-tolerant Southern grasses,” says Stone, paspalum has a number of mechanisms for dealing with salinity that are still only partially understood. Paspalum’s currency lies in its playability-it can be cut to any length-and its uncanny knack for processing salt. “And the difference between managing the two ,” says superintendent Jeff Stone, “is night and day. Since then, all five of Kiawah’s courses and its learning center have been converted to paspalum from Bermuda. The sod has been a course feature for the past 13 years, with the Ocean Course making the transition to paspalum ahead of its maiden PGA hosting in 2012. It’s virtually the same grass that once lined the hull of the Comte du Nord and the scads of other slave ships that crisscrossed the Atlantic between 15, during the largest forced human migration in recorded history. But the thing they all never seem to forget about this course is its viridescent surface-made up of a single grass type called paspalum vaginatum, or seashore paspalum. “You can play this golf course four days in a row and not have the same wind,” says director of golf Brian Gerard. Gorgeous coastal vistas and fickle seaborne gusts pull amateurs and major championships alike to the Ocean Course at South Carolina’s Kiawah Island Golf Resort. Different boats with altogether different cargo could be seen in the waters off Sea Island during the 1700s. Today, the same turf lines fairways and greens all over the world. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting.” To help sop up the mess, the ship was bedded with grass pulled from the Angolan deltas. The whole mix made for a steamy, unholy stench that, to the sturdy nose of Alexander Falconbridge, a British slave-ship medic who authored the seminal abolitionist tome An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa in 1788, “resembled a slaughter-house. In rough seas, the Comte’s portholes were closed, leaving the Africans in her belly gasping for breath and prone to disease. In addition to the excreta, the cargo floors were consistently glazed in mucus, blood and vomit. They could either relieve themselves over the edge of the ship or do their business in buckets-which, with the size of the crowd, overflowed quickly. Worse, the Comte had no commode for these men, women and children. In rough seas, the Comte’s portholes were closed, leaving the Africans in her belly gasping for breath. Daily rations might include yam, biscuits, rice and horse beans boiled to the consistency of a pulp, but the way it was served-in a single bucket to be shared among roughly 10 people-was as likely to lead to fights as infections. Men were bound together by their hands and feet to prevent insurrection, while women, considered lesser threats, were granted freedom to roam on deck and help with the cooking-though not without risking sexual harassment, assault or outright rape at the hands of the crew. The cries of those on the ship cut through the crackle of the swells crashing against the Comte’s groaning hull as the abducted were ripped from their families, customs and cultures of a native land on which they would never again set foot. Those considered for the voyage but deemed too sickly to make the trip were murdered on the dock where they stood. Over the course of six months, Penny packed these captives onto the Comte head to foot like spoons for a 49-day Middle Passage to Charleston, South Carolina. The Comte’s captain, a notorious Liverpudlian trader named James Penny, listed on the ship’s manifest 97 women, 131 girls, 197 men and 249 boys-all loaded into her lower holds for future sale. But according to -an international research cooperative run through Emory University that has been investigating the transatlantic trade since 1992-the Comte’s most impressive feature was her 700-ton payload, a size that would be tested some two months later when she ported in Malembo, a modest harbor in the West African country of Angola. Like the seafarers of her day, the Comte was hewn from impressive timber and sported colossal masts draped with great sails to harness mighty westbound gales. Though the name on her stern was French, the Union Jack flying just above left no doubt that the Comte du Nord was now a thoroughly English vessel. 26, 1783, a great schooner shoved off from London.
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