He was desperate when he wrote the poem, and his desperation lingers in the lines nearly 150 years later. He had every reason to despair, imprisoned in Fort Jefferson, America’s largest and most remote coastal fortress, on a tiny Gulf of Mexico island 68 miles west of Key West. One night, after another day of forced labor under the blazing sun, Union Army Private Thomas Moran sat in his cell by candlelight and spilled his soul out onto a scrap of paper.

The poem was addressed to Major General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, commander of the Union’s Department of the Gulf. It outlined Private Moran’s wartime service and undeserved incarceration, and contained a wrenching plea for freedom.

“I fear not the duty/Nor battle’s loud strife/But I care on Tortugas/To pine off my life,” the poem reads in part. The urgent refrain rings as compellingly today as it did when Moran wrote it: “My voice from Tortugas I ask you to hear.”

Fort Jefferson lies on a tiny island in the Dry Tortugas, nearly 70 miles west of Key West. (All photos by Rob O'Neal)

Private Moran’s is hardly the only voice emanating from Tortugas over the years. Fort Jefferson, begun in 1846 but never finished, housed numerous soldiers and prisoners whose journals and letters provide a vivid picture of life on the barren coral-and-sand islands.

Among them was Sergeant Harrison Herrick of the 110th New York Volunteers, who penned spare and unvarnished diary entries: “Friday May 6th. In the morning while the prisners on the Thames were comming ashore one of the guards, one of the 1st Del Artillery shot himself through the head he was crazy wether fair & plesant.”

No voice from Tortugas rings more lastingly than that of Dr. Samuel Mudd, imprisoned after being convicted of conspiracy in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. His only tangible “crime” was setting John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg.

“We are still in irons,” Mudd wrote in December of 1865, “compelled to wash down six bastions of the Fort daily. However, we are allowed to purchase articles of food, etc.”

Later, Mudd was released following a yellow fever epidemic when he treated and saved the lives of stricken soldiers. His captors were so impressed that they petitioned President Andrew Johnson on his behalf. 

America's largest masonry structure, the fort welcomes visitors who arrive by boat to view the Tortugas' natural and historic wonders.

Since the Dry Tortugas area became a national park in 1992, scores of voices have been heard from its shallows and islands — those of park rangers, historians, divers and naturalists, birdwatchers and travel writers.

A trip to the Tortugas takes visitors into a realm untouched by modern civilization, yet unmatched in historic and natural wonders. Most travel by excursion ferry from Key West, heading past Boca Grande National Bird Sanctuary, Marquesas Key atoll, the site of the shipwrecked Spanish treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Rebecca Channel.

During the crossing, passengers can sun themselves, listen to the cry of seabirds and watch the water shade from azure to Caribbean turquoise.

Eventually the Dry Tortugas appear, low against the horizon. These seven undeveloped islands were named Las Tortugas (The Turtles) by explorer Ponce de Leon in 1513. Awash in pirate legend and wild bird life, they soon became known as “Dry Tortugas” because they had no fresh water.

As visitors arrive by boat, the fort appears low against the horizon.

On Garden Key stands the 19th-century fort. Its construction was begun after American leaders realized that fortifying the Tortugas was essential to control navigation in the Gulf of Mexico. During the Civil War, the fort was a Union military prison for captured deserters. It was abandoned by the Army just a few years later.

In 1908 the area was designated a wildlife refuge. Named Fort Jefferson National Monument in 1935, it was later proclaimed Dry Tortugas National Park to protect its natural richness. More than 280 avian species have been sighted there, and the park attracts thousands of birders to observe the annual migration.

Entering Fort Jefferson, centered on an island hardly larger than its exterior walls, is like stepping back 150 years. Six-sided, its three levels loom up against the sky. Its millions of bricks are touched by the sweat and determination of the men who placed them.

Visitors can take a complimentary guided tour of the fort: stepping inside Dr. Mudd’s cell to feel the prison chill, peering through the gun casements, observing the panorama of sea and sky from the structure’s open third level.

Visitors to the park can snorkel the crystalline water surrounding the fort.

Afterwards, they can picnic, swim and snorkel in the crystalline waters, laze on the secluded beach or stroll along the moat surrounding the fort.

Around mid-afternoon, visitors begin the return journey to Key West. On the way back, they might spot frolicking dolphins, observe a soaring avian dance, or reflect on the lives of Private Moran, Sergeant Herrick and Dr. Mudd — and all the others whose voices still echo from the Tortugas fortress lost in the past.

“My voice from Tortugas I ask you to hear …”