• What to know if you go

(ENLARGE)

Fictional trusty canine Scuttles helps Oliver Bennett recount at the Maritime Center what was happening in the lives of 'Coasties' leading up to and including World War II.

WILLIAM SCHEMMEL/Special (ENLARGE)

The recently opened Maritime Center is housed at the 1935 U.S. Coast Guard Station on St. Simons Island. Coastal life in the 1930s and Õ40s is highlighted.

WILLIAM SCHEMMEL/Special (ENLARGE)

The story of British troops landing in 1815 at Point Peter, a fort guarding St. Marys, is told in an exhibit at the Cumberland Island National Seashore Museum and Visitor Center.

WILLIAM SCHEMMEL/Special (ENLARGE)

Orange Hall, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a three-story Greek Revival house and museum in St. Marys furnished with period antiques.

St. Simons Island — What do you do at the beach when you've had too much sun or it's pouring rain?

If you're a St. Simons regular, you've already climbed the lighthouse and fought the losing battle with mosquitoes at Fort Frederica. New this April, the Maritime Center at the historic 1935 U.S. Coast Guard Station is good for at least an hour, by which time the sun should be out a few yards away on East Beach. St. Marys, 40 miles down the coast, also has some new attractions for rainy and sunny days.

Coastal lore

The Maritime Center's host is "Ollie" — Oliver Bennett, seaman first class — a fictional early 1940s "Coastie," from Nebraska, getting his first taste of military service and his first look at any ocean. Represented by a cutout with his dog, Scuttles, he interprets the museum's seven galleries through his "letters home" and field journal entries.

In the summer of 1938, he recollects, homesick Wisconsinite and fellow Coastie Dick Goebel was on lookout duty on the station's widow's walk when he was suddenly love-struck by an island girl walking the beach. He yelled to a fellow seaman: "Run and tell that girl I'd like to have dinner with her, and tell her I'm going to marry her." True to his word, Seaman Goebel married Virginia Cofer. They raised six children and spent the rest of their lives in Brunswick.

World War II came home to the Coasties in April 1942. A German U-boat lurking off St. Simons torpedoed the tankers Esso Baton Rouge and SS Oklahoma, killing 22 crewmen. The Coast Guard station rescued five survivors. The two ships were raised, repaired and put back into the service in the Atlantic, where they were both sunk before the war's end.

Learn about marshes, marine knots

Other exhibits include the recorded voice of a 1940s Coastie, "Coasties in Training," lifesaving techniques, digging for fossils, weather, tidal marshes, hurricanes, shrimping, fishing and other aspects of life on the coast.

Kids and adults can literally "Learn the Ropes," an interactive exhibit where they can try their hand at tying a square knot, bowline, figure eight, clove hitch, a cleating and sheet bend. Nimble-fingered kids have a lot more fun with the intricate knots than big-fisted grown-ups.

The Coastal Georgia Historical Society, which restored the former Coast Guard station, is raising funds for a new heritage center near the St. Simons Lighthouse.

Seeing St. Marys

Even if you're not taking the ferry over to the Cumberland Island National Seashore, the gateway coastal town of St. Marys is worth a day's visit.

Though the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base has brought explosive population growth to Camden County, from about 12,000 when it was opened in 1978 to more than 45,000 now, downtown St. Marys (pop. 8,500), chartered in 1799, has kept its historic charm intact.

A waterfront park, seafood restaurants, shops, piers, shrimp and fishing boats, museums and bed-and-breakfast lodgings shaded by magnolias and moss-hung live oak canopies make for a relaxing detour from the interstate.

Who knew the last battle of the War of 1812 was fought here?

What's known hereabouts as "the forgotten invasion" unfolded on the morning of Jan. 13, 1815, when 600 British troops anchored off Cumberland Island landed at Point Peter, a fort guarding St. Marys, and quickly overwhelmed the 130 American defenders. If only they'd had cellphones, they'd have known that five days earlier Andrew Jackson's backwoodsmen and Jean Lafitte's pirates bested the British at New Orleans, effectively ending the war.

The war's belated last battle went mostly unnoted until a couple of years ago when archaeologists funded by Land Resource Cos., developers of Cumberland Harbour at Point Peter, unearthed more than 67,000 military uniform buttons, musket balls, cooking utensils, pottery shards and other artifacts. Animal bones found in buried trash indicate that American and British troops spiced up their drab military rations with fish, rabbits, raccoons, opossums and birds.

Seashore museum portrays 1815 battle

The developers funded the "Forgotten Invasion" exhibit in the Cumberland Island National Seashore Museum near the waterfront. Artifacts are complemented by maps, drawings, texts and mannequins in 1812-era uniforms. One exhibit explains that the Point Peter fort, built on orders from Gen. George Washington in 1776, was used by local militias until 1821, when it was abandoned and eventually disappeared under the marshes.

On the other side of the museum, artifacts and photos illustrate the human history of Cumberland Island, from ancient Guale Indians and African-American slaves, through the Gilded Age of the Carnegies, to the federal government's acquisition of the island as a national seashore in 1972.

About a block from the museum, Orange Hall is St. Marys' grande dame. Built in 1839, the photogenic three-story Doric-columned Greek Revival house and museum is furnished with period antiques.

A bronze plaque on the nearby Clark-Bessant House (St. Marys' oldest residence, built 1801) hints at more of St. Marys' place in history. After being indicted for murder for killing popular Founding Father Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 pistol duel, U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr fled south, first to Cumberland Island, where he was turned away by Revolutionary hero Gen. Nathanael Greene, then to the St. Marys home of his former classmate Maj. Archibald Clark. Mrs. Clark reportedly didn't approve of an accused murderer under her roof and Burr quickly moved on. Never tried for killing Hamilton, he returned to Washington and resumed his vice presidential duties. The plaque on the front of the house on Osborne Street notes Burr's visit and that of Gen. Winfield Scott, who stopped for R&R on his way home from the Indian wars in Florida. The descendants of Archibald Clark still own the house, which is home to A. Clark Antiques.

See submarines

From early America to nuclear America is only a few steps. For security reasons, the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, the East Coast home port for Ohio-class Trident submarines, is off-limits to visitors, but the St. Marys Submarine Museum gives an inkling of life in the nuclear fish.

Most visitors go straight for the Type-8 periscope. Originally used on a Benjamin Franklin-class submarine, the first to carry intercontinental ballistic missiles, the scope extends through the museum's two-story roof for a spectacular view of St. Marys and Cumberland Island.

Among the other exhibits are a claustrophobic re-created sub interior, steering columns from older subs, the door to a torpedo tube, a WWII dive suit and a memorial to eight submariners awarded the Medal of Honor. Computerized archives enable families to learn about their servicemen lost in WWII.

At the Cumberland Island National Seashore Visitor Center across the street, you can get tantalizing views of the island. You might luck out with a cancellation on the twice-a-day island ferry. Otherwise, put your name on the lengthy reservation list and wait for your adventure a few months from now.

IF YOU GO

St. Simons Island is about 350 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta by way of I-16 and I-95 to Brunswick and the toll-free Torras Causeway to the island.

• The Maritime Center, on East Beach, is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, 1:30- 5 p.m. Sundays. Adults, $6; ages 6-11, $3. 912-638-5481.

Information

• Brunswick & Golden Isles Convention & Visitors Bureau, 1-800-933-2627, www.bgicvb.com.

St. Marys

St. Marys is 9.5 miles east of Exit 3 on I-95.

Attractions

• Cumberland Island Seashore Museum, on Osborne Street a block from the waterfront, is open 1-4 p.m. daily. Free. 912-882-4336.

• St. Marys Submarine Museum, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 1-5 p.m. Sundays. Adults, $4; senior citizens 62 and up and military, $3; ages 6-18, $2. St. Marys St. W., 912-882- 2782, www.stmaryssubmuseum.com.

• Cumberland Island National Seashore Visitor Center, open daily. 912-882-4335, www.nps.gov/cuis.

Where to stay

• Emma's Bed & Breakfast. The main house, in four acres of wooded grounds, has four rooms with private bath; five rooms and large suites are in an adjacent cottage. $119-$189. 300 W. Conyers St. 1-877-749-5974, www.emmasbedandbreakfast.com.

Other B&Bs are Spencer House Inn (912-882-1872, www.spencerhouseinn.com) and Goodbread House (912-882-7490, www.goodbreadhouse.com). The Riverview Hotel, a favorite with Cumberland Island day-trippers, is for sale (912-882-3242, riverviewhotelstmarys.com).

Information

• St. Marys Welcome Center, 1-800-868-8687, www.stmaryswelcome.com.