Free Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell Page B

hotel room for eye drops and antihistamine.)
    After nearly three hours of what the Yankee Clipper II ’s crew call “cowboying” up and down the bucking waves, Fort Jefferson pops into view. It is an impressive, six-sided brick stronghold built to scare off invaders. I have read Dr. Mudd’s letters home describing it as a “godforsaken isle,” a “place of woe.” I know that a reporter who caught up with Mudd back home in Maryland after his release remarked that in Mudd’s “sunken, lusterless eyes, pallid lips and cold, ashy complexion, one can read the words ‘Dry Tortugas’ with a terrible significance.” And yet, right now, for the simple blessed fact that it is not a boat, Fort Jefferson looks as bright and fluffy as a hexagonal lemon meringue pie.
    Facts about Dry Tortugas National Park: seventy miles west of Key West; the cluster of islands was discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513; named the Tortugas, the Spanish word for sea turtles (the adjective “dry” was tacked on later to alert sailors they would drink no fresh water here); Fort Jefferson, named after Thomas Jefferson, was established to protect the shipping lanes to the Gulf of Mexico; it was constructed between 1846 and 1874, when it was abandoned by the United States Army; the fort was never finished, though it was reoccupied by the navy in 1898 thanks to the Spanish-American War; it’s ninety miles north of Cuba; in 1861, it became a federal prison; in 1865, the four conspirators convicted of plotting Lincoln’s murder who were not hung in Washington were exiled here; three of them — Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Ned Spangler — would receive presidential pardons on the last day of Andrew Johnson’s administration; the fourth, Michael O’Laughlin, died here during the yellow fever epidemic of 1867; in its heyday, around two thousand people lived here, including a few women and children — mostly officers’ families, not to mention the odd laundress (because as punishment imprisoned men were hung up by their thumbs, but apparently a girl job like washing socks was considered cruel and unusual and left to the female hired help); the fort consists of sixteen million bricks shipped at great cost from as far away as Maine; designated by President Franklin Roosevelt a national monument in 1935, the Dry Tortugas became a national park in 1992, offering historical tours, bird-watching, shark research, and snorkeling around its reefs. Also, though this is an island, there is a moat.
    Mike Ryan, the interpretative ranger at Dry Tortugas National Park, is waiting on the boat dock. I must look about as healthy as I feel. “Fighting six- to eight-foot seas isn’t always that much fun,” he sympathizes, leading me across the moat and into the fort for my guided tour.
    “This was not an ordinary fort,” Mike begins. “It was extraordinarily large.”
    Inside the brick perimeter is a vast grassy courtyard dotted with palms. There are brick sidewalks and benches shaded by gnarled trees. It’s breezy, but peaceful. It is so pleasant I can almost imagine taking a vacation here without the extra tourist glamour of presidential killers and mosquito-borne disease. In fact, most of my fellow passengers are presently pulling on snorkel gear or lining up for the picnic; they will return to the boat hours later with sun-chapped smiles, having gone all day without mentioning yellow fever.
    Mike says, “I think it’s a paradox that this prison-in-paradise theme’s kind of interwoven through. The contrast makes it so compelling.”
    Guiding me through a brick arcade, Mike stands next to a cannon and points down a corridor. “Some of the views that you’ll see today you can’t enjoy anywhere else because of these long, unobstructed views looking down wings of archways.” He says that the arch motif is repeated a couple of thousand times. The loopy curves soften an otherwise oppressive slab.
    “It’s pretty funny. They’re building arches