Even in the early morning hours of May 13, 1862, the city of Charleston was still shrouded in a thick blanket of slumber. Waves lapping against a wooden wharf where a Confederate sidewheel steamer named the Planter was moored were only occasionally interrupted by the ring of a ship’s bell. Just a few miles from Fort Sumter, stood the wharf where the first Civil War bullets were fired less than a year earlier.
Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old enslaved man, stood on the deck as a few plumes of smoke billowed up from the ship’s smokestack above the pilothouse. Either he and his young family would be freed from slavery in the coming hours, or they would die. He knew that their future depended heavily on his bravery and the strength of his plan, so his resolve moved him forward.
Smalls, like many other enslaved people, was plagued by the fear that he and his family—his wife Hannah, their daughter Elizabeth, 4, and their infant son Robert, Jr.—would be sold and separated. It was well known that family members who are split up aren’t always reunited again.
Escaping slavery was the only way Smalls could guarantee the survival of his family. For years, he had been haunted by the realization that he was doomed to fail. However, escaping on one’s own was difficult enough; trying to flee with a young family was nearly impossible, as enslaved families rarely lived or worked together, and having children in an escape party would significantly slow the journey and increase the likelihood of discovery. Slave patrols could be alerted by a baby’s cries, so traveling with an infant was especially dangerous. Owners had the legal right to whip, shackle, or sell runaways if they caught them.
At long last, Smalls’ moment of liberation had arrived. He quietly alerted the rest of the ship’s enslaved crew with a scheme that was both risky and brilliant. It was now or never to take the Planter.
He intended to seize the Planter and deliver it to the massive Union fleet anchored outside of Charleston Harbor, which was Small’s ultimate goal. Following the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of all Southern ports. Because it was one of the Confederacy’s busiest ports, Charleston was vital to the region. Needs for war, food, medicine, manufactured goods, and other necessities had to be imported to the South, a largely agricultural society. Daring blockade runners smuggled goods into Charleston and exported cotton and rice to European markets while the U.S. Navy was preventing access to the harbor. Confederate states received supplies from Charleston via rail after they arrived in the city.
Blockading such a significant port was a monumental undertaking, but one that was absolutely necessary. Charleston was referred to as a “rat hole” in the North because of its numerous waterways, which made it nearly impossible to stop all traffic. The Union was able to capture or destroy a number of vessels that had evaded the blockade, despite the fact that many of them had escaped.
There were several heavily armed Confederate fortifications in the harbor as well as numerous gun batteries along the shore that Smalls would have to pass without raising an alarm. Detection and capture were almost a certainty.
Smalls knew that steaming past the forts and batteries undetected would be impossible because of the Planter’s smoke and noise. There were three white officers on board at all times, and their job was to make it appear as though the ship was going about its normal business when it wasn’t. And Smalls had come up with an ingenious way to accomplish this. Smalls would impersonate the captain, shielded by the night’s gloom.
Despite its simplicity, the plan posed numerous threats. First and foremost, Smalls and his team had to deal with the three white officers who stood in their way. Second, they would have to evade the guards at the wharf as they seized the Planter from the cargo ship.
As a result, Smalls and the rest of the crew would have to backtrack away from the harbor’s entrance in order to pick up Smalls’ family and other escapees who were hiding in a nearby steamer.
Sentries stationed along the wharves would be sure to notice the Planter as it made its way up the river and away from the harbor. The 16-person crew would have to sail through the heavily guarded harbor if they all made it on board. The Planter could be destroyed in a matter of seconds if any of the fortifications or batteries’ sentries noticed anything unusual.
Finally, Smalls and his crew faced a new challenge: approaching an enemy ship, which would assume the Confederate steamer was hostile. He must convince the Union crew that he and his party are friendly or they will take defensive action, likely destroying the Planter and killing everyone on board unless Smalls can quickly convince them otherwise.
These obstacles are formidable, but clearing them all would be a truly remarkable achievement. For the sake of his family and their freedom, Smalls was willing to take the enormous risks.
The Planter’s enslaved crew considered Smalls an important and trusted member. The Confederates refused to give Smalls, or any other enslaved man, the title of pilot, despite his reputation as one of the area’s best pilots.
Captain Charles J. Relyea (47), first mate Samuel Smith Hancock (28), and engineer Samuel Z. Pitcher (34), all white men, were on Smalls’ ten-person crew.
Six other enslaved black men, ranging in age from their teens to middle age, were on board the ship with Smalls, serving as engineers and deckhands. Engineers John Small and Alfred Gourdine (who was not related) and deckhands David Jones, Jack Gibbes, Gabriel Turner, and Abraham Jackson manned the helmsman’s post.
While serving as the Planter’s new skipper, Relyea and his officers would occasionally allow their wives and children to stay with them in the city while they were away from the ship overnight. For reasons that remain unclear, Relyea may have decided to take command of a Confederate ship in the belief that slaves would not be able to pull off a mission as risky and difficult as commandeering one of the Confederacy’s ships. Few whites at the time could imagine that enslaved persons could take a steamer through such a heavily guarded and difficult-to-navigate harbor.
While the ship was docked at the wharf, white officers and their crews were required to remain on board 24 hours a day, seven days a week in order to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, per General Orders, No. 5. However, Relyea’s role in Smalls’ plan went far beyond his decision to leave the crew alone on board the ship.
So when Hannah found out what Smalls was planning, she immediately enquired after him about the consequences. He didn’t hold back on telling it like it was. “I shall be shot,” he proclaimed. The women and children on board would be severely punished and possibly sold to new owners, while the men would almost certainly be executed.
Hannah, who was kind and strong, remained calm in the face of the situation. She told her husband: “It is a risk, dear, but you and I, and our little ones must be free. I will go, for where you die, I will die.” In order to secure their children’s freedom, both parents were willing to go to any lengths.
Smalls, of course, had to make contact with the rest of the crew. It was risky enough that he told them about his plan. Even mentioning the possibility of fleeing Charleston during the Confederacy was fraught with danger. Smalls, on the other hand, had no choice but to trust the help of the men onboard.
In late April or early May, the crew met secretly with Smalls to discuss the idea, but their individual decisions could not have been easy given the circumstances. Everyone was aware that whatever decision they made at the time would have a lasting impact on their lives. The possibility remained that the South would prevail in the conflict. A life of servitude would await those who chose to stay behind. As the promise of freedom and the thought of slavery were so repulsive to the men, they ultimately decided to join Smalls’ band of fugitives. Every one of them agreed to participate in the escape and be ready for action whenever Smalls deemed it necessary.
Smalls ordered the steamer to depart when he felt it was time. The crew raised two flags as the fog began to dissipate. South Carolina’s blue-and-white state flag displayed a Palmetto tree and a crescent while the first official Confederate flag, known as the Stars and Bars, featured the Stars and Stripes. As a Confederate vessel, the ship would benefit from both.
In spite of the fact that a Confederate guard stationed about 50 yards away from the Planter could see the ship departing, he assumed the ship’s officers were in command and did not raise the alarm. Similarly, a police detective noticed that the ship was departing, and made the same determination. As of now, Smalls seemed to be in the best of hands.
The Planter’s next stop was at the North Atlantic Wharf, where he would pick up Smalls’ family and the rest of the group. The ship’s crew arrived at North Atlantic Wharf quickly and easily. “The boat moved so slowly up to her place we didn’t have to throw a plank or tie a rope,” Smalls stated.
As planned, they were all together now that everything went according to plan. Leaving Charleston and their lives as slaves behind, the Planter continued south toward Confederate Fort Johnson with 16 people on board and the women and children belowdecks.
In the early hours of the morning, the Planter came within 50 feet of Fort Sumter’s massive walls, which towered over the water. There was a palpable sense of fear on board the Planter. Smalls was the only one who was unaffected by fear. “When we drew near the fort every man but Robert Smalls felt his knees giving way and the women began crying and praying again,” Gourdine said.
During the Planter’s approach to the fort, Smalls pulled the whistle cord, offering “two long blows and a short one.” Smalls, a former member of the Planter’s crew who was familiar with the Confederate signal, knew exactly what to do.
“Blow the d—d Yankees to hell, or bring one of them in,” yelled the sentry. Despite his desire to say something aggressive, Smalls simply responded, “Aye, aye.”
Steam and smoke billowed from the ship’s stacks as its paddle wheels tore through the murky water. The crew hurried to lower the Confederate and South Carolina flags and hoist a white bedsheet as a sign of surrender.
The steamer and its flag were completely obscured by a thick fog that had quickly rolled in. There was a good chance that they would not see the Confederate flag until they were too close to the Onward, a 174-foot three-masted clipper ship, when they approached.
Those on board the Planter began to realize their homemade flag had been seen as the steamer headed toward the Onward. Freedom had never been so close to their reach.
Acting volunteer lieutenant John Frederick Nickels, captain of the Onward, yelled for the steamer’s name and intent as the two ships approached. The captain ordered the ship to come ashore after the men provided the answers. In either case, they missed the captain’s order and started going around the stern, whether it was because they felt relieved that the Onward hadn’t opened fire or because Smalls and his crew were still quite shaken. When Nickels saw what was going on, he yelled, “Stop, or I’ll blow you out of the water!”
When they heard the harsh words, they jumped into action and steered the steamer into position next to a nearby warship.
Those on board the Planter became aware that they had arrived at a Union ship as the crew managed the vessel. In a spontaneous celebration, some men jumped, danced, and shouted, while others turned their backs on Fort Sumter and cursed it. They had never been free from slavery before.
Once again Smalls spoke to the Onward’s captain with a triumphant tone: “Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir! —that were for Fort Sumter, sir!”
His political career began after the American Civil War, when he was elected to both the South Carolina Legislature and the United States House of Representatives. Smalls was the author of legislation that made South Carolina the first state in the United States to implement a free and compulsory public school system. The Republican Party of South Carolina was founded by him. Before the election of Mick Mulvaney, Smalls was the only Republican to represent South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District.
From The Smithsonian Magazine article “The Thrilling Tale of How Robert Smalls Seized a Confederate Ship and Sailed it to Freedom“
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