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Robert Smalls · Anonymous America

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  Speaker 1: I'm Jerry Broadway, and this is Anonymous America where we
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  dig a little deeper into American history to look for
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  those unsung heroes who you really should know about, but
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  no one ever taught you. In this episode, you're going
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  to meet a gentleman who stole a ship in the
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  middle of a war and sailed it right through enemy territory.
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  From Hey Dad Productions, This is Anonymous America. Before sunrise
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  on May thirteenth, eighteen sixty two, a Confederate transport vessel
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  called the Planter was docked in Charleston Harbor. Its captain
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  and all the officers had gone ashore for the night,
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  which left the ship entirely in the hands of its
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  enslaved crew. Now, the man in charge of that crew
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  took a look at that empty pilot's chair, turned around
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  and looked at his people, and made a decision. They
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  were going to steal that Confederate warship in the middle
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  of a war in one of the most heavily fortified
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  harbors in the South tonight. That man's name was Robert Smalls,
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  and believe it or not, he pulled it off. Robert
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  Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, in
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  eighteen thirty nine. He grew to be a gifted seaman,
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  so gifted that his enslaver hired him out to work
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  on boats in Charleston Harbor, where he learned to pilot
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  ships through some of the most complex waterways on the
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  Eastern Seaboard. Robert knew those waters, and he knew the
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  Confederate military codes. He knew the signals that they used
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  to pass through checkpoints because he had been watching the
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  officers so carefully for so long, he even knew how
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  to mimic their behavior, including wearing the captain's distinctive straw hat.
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  So when the officers left the Planter unattended for the
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  night on May twelfth, Robert Smalls saw his moment and
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  he seized it. He and the crew quietly loaded their
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  families onto the ship. There were sixteen people in all,
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  and they fired up the boilers, and they raised the
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  Confederate flag, and then Robert Small's put on that straw
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  captain's hat, took the helm and sailed the CSS Planner
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  directly through five Confederate checkpoints in the harbor. As I said,
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  he knew the passwords, he knew the whistle signals. He
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  mimicked the captain's posture and movements so well that no
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  one even thought or raised an alarm. Well. Once they
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  cleared the Confederate lines, Robert lowered the Confederate flag and
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  raised a white bed sheet as a flag of surrender,
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  and sailed straight to the Union blockade. When he arrived,
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  he handed over the planter, its cannons, its ammunition, the
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  Confederate code books, and detailed intelligence about Confederate fortifications in
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  Charleston Harbor. The Union commanders were, to say the least stunned.
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  This was one of the most significant intelligence since windfalls
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  of the entire war. Later, the US Congress voted to
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  give Smalls and his crew members prize money for the
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  captured vessel, and Robert went on to become a captain
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  in the Union Navy, helping to command, among other ships,
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  the very vessel he had stolen. When the war ended,
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  Robert returned to Buford. He bought the house where he
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  had been a slave, and he would later serve five
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  terms in the United States Congress. Robert lived until nineteen fifteen,
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  so to sum it all up, he stole a Confederate
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  warship in the middle of a war, sailed it through
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  five checkpoints, handed it to the Union, and then went
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  to Congress. That's Robert Small's and that's anonymous America