That’s “Bewfurt” please, we’re in South Carolina. So now you’re thinking The Big Chill, The Prince of Tides and all the Hollywood prices and style that go with such a history. There is some of that, but this is still a pretty small town, though it is the county seat; Wikipedia tells all.
There’s a lot more. It was occupied for the entire Civil War by the Union Army, so suffered little physical destruction; reconstruction was of course another matter. Port Royal, nearby, and looking pretty down at the heels (except for a fabulous restaurant, Dockside) was established very early on by the Spanish and the French. Across the bay is Parris Island 
and from the boardwalk at Port Royal, you can hear the Marine recruits yelling in chorus across two miles of marsh and water.
The number of rivers, creeks, coves, marshes and bays is impressive: 
There are marinas tucked into many of those coves and it looks as if the ICW traffic enjoys visiting here, though the day we left they were all hunkered down for a day of rain and wind. 
Normally it’s a lovely harbor 
Why were we not surprised that the harbor tour boat in this charming town is called “The Prince of Tides”? Beaufort, pronounced with a drawl, please, is Pat Conroy. The huge live oak trees lining street after street of antebellum houses drip with history and Spanish moss. 
The town is a miniature Charleston in architectural variety and grandeur, and each house has a long and colorful story known by hairdressers and waitresses as well as the carriage tour guides. And like every other place we’ve been so far in South Carolina, people here are genuinely hospitable to the stranger: go in to get the battery replaced in your watch and you’re included without so much as a by-your-leave in a crowd which includes grandpa and the grandkids, and it seems not to matter that you’re obviously from “away” and even have a “Yankee” accent.
In a way similar to our visit to Southport, we came away from Beaufort with a sense of a town which, despite its reknown and tourism, retains its sense of itself and an openness to others which is the kind of tradition that makes the traveler feel at ease, even if not necessarily at home.
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