In the early hours of May 13, 1862, a sidewheel steamer named the CSS Planter slipped away from its berth at Southern Wharf in Charleston, South Carolina, with no white officer aboard. At the helm stood Robert Smalls, twenty-three years old, enslaved, and one of the most skilled harbor pilots in the city. He was wearing the captain’s coat and straw hat. He knew the signals for every Confederate fort between the wharf and open water. He was heading straight for the Union blockade.
Charleston Harbor in 1862 was one of the most heavily defended positions in the Confederacy. Fort Sumter sat at its mouth, the symbol of the war’s opening. Fort Moultrie guarded the channel from Sullivan’s Island. The Planter was a Confederate Army transport, armed with artillery, and carrying more artillery in its hold. If the plan failed, everyone aboard faced, at minimum, re-enslavement and likely death.
Smalls had sixteen people with him. Among them were his wife Hannah, his two young children, the wives and children of other enslaved crew members, and six other enslaved crewmen who had agreed to try. They were not a rescue mission from outside. They were people who had decided to free themselves, using the ship they were made to operate, through waters they had been made to learn.
The escape succeeded. What happened afterward is a story that took another fifty years to complete.
## The Harbor He Was Made to Know
To understand what Smalls did on that May morning, you have to understand Charleston Harbor, which is not a simple body of water.