The chart of the harbor’s torpedo placements — the locations of the underwater mines that Confederate engineers had placed in the channels and approaches — was the most immediately actionable piece of intelligence. Union vessels operating off Charleston had been cautious about the harbor’s inner waters because they did not know what was there. Smalls knew what was there. He knew because he had piloted vessels involved in placing the mines and because his years on those waters had made the harbor’s topography part of his working knowledge.
The capture of Coles Island shortly after the escape — described in historical accounts as proceeding without a fight in part because of the intelligence Smalls provided — was the most immediate operational consequence. The island had been a Confederate artillery position. It became a Union position. The guns that the Planter had picked up from Coles Island were the same guns Smalls brought out on the night of the escape; the position itself followed within days.
Union commanders used Smalls’s knowledge of Charleston’s defenses throughout the subsequent months of operations along the South Carolina coast. He was not simply a pilot for hire. He was a primary source on one of the most important Confederate harbor positions in the eastern theater.
The money he received — $1,500 as his share of the prize money for the Planter and its cargo — was a formal recognition that the capture had value. But the prize valuation was contested. The official valuation of $9,000 for the vessel and cargo was criticized as below market value in contemporary accounts; the four artillery pieces from Coles Island alone, plus the Planter itself, were worth considerably more by the accounting of people who knew what such assets cost. An 1863 bill in Congress attempted to increase the award. The $5,000 additional congressional payment in 1900 came thirty-eight years after the escape. By then Smalls was sixty-one years old.