At each installation, Smalls gave the appropriate signal. The steam whistle sequence that identified the Planter to Confederate sentries who could not yet see the ship’s crew in the pre-dawn darkness. The signals were correct. The forts responded as they would to any familiar vessel.
The approach to Fort Sumter, around 4:15 in the morning, was the critical moment. The fort was the most significant and the most likely to scrutinize a passing vessel carefully. Inside the ship, the enslaved crew and the families in the hold were aware that they were at the most dangerous point in the crossing.
Smalls had dressed in the captain’s coat and the straw hat that was associated with Relyea. From a distance, in darkness or early morning light, from the high walls of a fort to a vessel moving through the channel, the silhouette would read as the captain’s. He kept his pacing consistent with what a sentinel watching from Fort Sumter’s walls might expect of the Planter’s captain.
He gave the signal.
The fort acknowledged it. The Planter was allowed to pass.
The precise details of what that signal exchange looked like — what exact motions were made, what specific call was given and returned — are not fully documented in contemporary records in a form that historians have verified. What is documented is the result: the Planter passed Fort Sumter without being stopped or fired upon.
On the other side of the fort, the Planter was in open water between the two land masses, heading for the blockade line. Once past the effective range of Fort Sumter’s guns, Smalls gave the order to lower the Confederate flags and run up the white bedsheet that Hannah had brought. The ship turned toward the Union blockade.