The mammoth container ship disappeared under the Ravenel Bridge. The thrill-boat ride shot away. The sun sank into clouds and the mists came up. And out of the mist came the tall sails. It looked like something from another time.

"Sweet," said Logan Johnsen, first mate of the Amistad, as he got his first glimpse of the Spirit of South Carolina heeling by. "The trim, the sails, the way she's cutting through the wake. She's just a nice sight."  Around him the crew members from Sierra Leone took up the ship's Creole song, dancing and pattering the beat on deck barrels.

Charleston Harbor Fest 2008 opened Thursday evening with the Spirit, the Lowcountry's own tall ship, the Schooner Virginia and the Corwith Cramer ceremonially escorting the Freedom Schooner Amistad into port. The spectacle told a sea tale, one that carried centuries of significance, not only for the port city that made its name with sailing ships but also for the freedom ship and the Gullah nation performing a sacred libation ceremony on Sullivan's Island as it passed.

The Amistad is a replica of the famous 19th century sailing ship commandeered in 1839 by captive Africans en route to being sold as slaves in Cuba. They would win their freedom in the United States and eventually return home to Sierra Leone. It's completing its first trans-Atlantic trip, retracing the infamous Middle Passage that slave ships took from west African nations such as Sierra Leone, a dream of the sailors who launched it in 2000.

Asked how she felt to make that history and be greeted by tall ships, Capt. Eliza Garfield smiled, put her hand over heart and nodded. "It's a celebration in spite of incredible sadness. If you come out of (the Middle Passage) singing, with people calling you to be in spirit with their ancestors, that changes you. You are a different person," she said.

"Sometimes when I sit and think of the enshacklement of the Africans, my emotions get conflicted. So many emotions, really," said Sam Yokie, a crewman from Freetown, Sierra Leone. He looked over at the ceremony on Sullivan's Island. "I think about our people taken without their will, to be in a whole new world, and I feel a connection to these people. I come to this place and I feel home also."

The Spirit of South Carolina fired its cannon and the tall ships trailed each other in, flags streaming like the seas beneath them. From the rails, the steepled port city in the mist looked much like it did two centuries ago. The motorboats, the container ship, looked strangely out of place.

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