Basin Landing was a high water boat landing on the Wateree River from 1760 to 1825. It shipped goods to and from Charleston to Goodwill Plantation, German Town, and other farms in the area. This sketch is by Grover Rye. In 1729, the South Carolina authorities saw the importance of settling its middle region. Governor Robert Johnson was concerned about the danger from the Indians after the Yemassee War, and he designed a plan for the expansion of settlements along the rivers in the central part of the state. European settlers were offered land, transportation, food, and tools if they settled in townships and helped protect Charleston from Indian attack.

Just above what would later become Goodwill Plantation a group of Germans were settled in what would become German Town. Basin Landing was built on the Wateree River to ship and receive goods from Charleston.

This landing was a high water boat landing. Even during flood stage in the swamp area, shipments could be shipped and received at this landing. Basin Landing not only served German Town but all the other land grants that later became Goodwill Plantation. This landing was used until 1865.

Colonels Creek runs through Goodwill Plantation and provides water for the mill pond and the rice fields. Bay boats were first used to ship from Basin Landing. They took six weeks to make the 400–mile trip to Charleston. They were later replaced by canal boats that were narrower, nine–feet–wide by 50–feet–long, so they could go through the Santee Canal that opened in August 1800. After this canal was opened, the trips could then be made in 17 days.

After unloading their cargo in Charleston, the empty boats would be placed inside each other because they were charged per boat when going through the Santee Canal. (In the summer of 2008 during the very low water period on the Wateree River, James Rye discovered a canal boat on Goodwill Plantation.)

At that same time, it took a week to ride a horse from Goodwill Plantation to Charleston. A trip by wagon took two weeks.

James Cook,

British Sympathizer

In August of 1780 just before the battle of Camden, General Horatio Gates weakened his force by sending 400 continental soldiers to assist Col. Thomas Sumter who had requested reinforcements to conduct raids down the west bank of the Wateree river. The raids were successfully carried out at a point below present day Lugoff. Next, Sumter sent part of his militia down the west bank of the Wateree River in search of James Cook, who had been raiding river boats on the Wateree and supplying the British at Camden.

James Cook was a surveyor who made a map of South Carolina in 1773. He had received a land grant at Goodwill for 360 acres in 1772.

The American militia burned James Cook’s house and other houses at this site. Some of his kin people, John Cook Sr. and John Cook Jr., were in the British militia at Camden. Later in 1783, the Continental Congress passed a bill and confiscated James Cook’s land because he was declared a British sympathizer.