## John Small and the Other Men
The NPS account names the enslaved crew members who participated in the escape, and the specifics deserve attention because they are sometimes compressed in the retelling.
John Small served as engineer on the Planter. He was not the same person as Robert Smalls — a distinction the NPS materials specifically flag, noting that the two names have sometimes been confused. His wife Susan and their son Philip were among the sixteen people aboard that night. Alfred Gourdine served as another engineer. Abraham Jackson and Gabriel Turner worked as deckhands. Abram Allston, described by the NPS account as an experienced pilot who had been enslaved at Fort Moultrie, also manned the wheel during the crossing.
Two crew members — David Jones and Jack Gibs — did not take part. The circumstances of their non-participation are not fully documented in available sources; what the records show is that the escape was not unanimous among those who could have joined.
Charles Chisolm, an enslaved crewman of the Etiwan, is named in the NPS account as the person who helped move the families to the pickup point that night. William Morrison, an enslaved tinsmith, may have been involved in the planning meetings, which accounts suggest may have taken place at his home. These details come from historical accounts reconstructed from later testimony and secondary sources; the contemporary documentary record is less granular about the preparatory period than about the escape itself.
What matters about these names is what they represent: a collective undertaking. The escape required coordination among multiple people over an extended period of planning. It required the women to agree to come. It required the crew members who were brought into the plan to keep it. It required Chisolm to act on the night itself. Robert Smalls’s leadership was central and his maritime skill was the mechanism, but the escape was not a solo performance. It was an act of collective self-determination by people who had been denied both freedom and credit for their own capabilities.