## May 12 Into May 13: The Night of the Decision
The afternoon of May 12, 1862, brought a cargo that made the stakes clearer and also higher. The Planter picked up four additional artillery pieces from positions on Coles Island, loading them and their related ammunition and hardware into the ship’s hold. The Planter was already armed. It was now also carrying a significant quantity of additional Confederate weaponry.
That evening, Captain Relyea and the other white officers — First Officer Samuel Hancock and Engineer Samuel Pitcher — went ashore. This was apparently not an unusual occurrence; accounts suggest Relyea sometimes allowed the arrangement, which violated Confederate regulations but was not unprecedented. For that evening, the enslaved crew had the ship.
Smalls asked Relyea’s permission to have the crew’s families visit, with the understanding that they would leave before curfew. Relyea agreed. This cover story is what moved the families to positions where they could be picked up without raising immediate alarm.
Some of the women and children gathered that evening at the Etiwan, another vessel moored at the North Atlantic Wharf, with the help of Charles Chisolm, an enslaved crewman of the Etiwan who helped move the families into position. At about 3:00 in the morning on May 13, the Planter left Southern Wharf and moved up the Cooper River toward North Atlantic Wharf.
The movement up the river was itself a risk. Any vessel on Charleston’s waterways at three in the morning was potentially subject to scrutiny. But the Planter was a known vessel on these waters, and Smalls had calculated that its familiar silhouette and normal movement patterns were less likely to attract attention than a sharp deviation.