C.S.S. PLANTER’S LAST VOYAGE by Robert Walton

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a dramatization of the story of Robert Smalls and the amazing feat he pulled off early in the Civil War, leading a crew of enslaved men in seizing a Confederate warship and sailing it out of Charleston Harbor.

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“Someone’s outside.” Robert Smalls awakened in darkness as lips brushed his ear.

He sat up, listening.

His wife whispered again, “There was scratching on the door and then a thump.”

“Wait here, Hannah.” He slid off their bed. “I’ll slip out back and see what I can.”

“Should I light a candle?”

“No.” He moved toward their cabin’s rear door. “No light. Stay quiet.” He eased the door open and a body rolled onto his foot.

The body moaned, “Help me.”

“Is that you, Thomas?”

“Help me, Robert, please.”

Robert gripped Thomas by the arms, dragged him into the cabin, and shut the door. “What happened to you, man?”

Thomas’s voice bubbled up like water from a deep well. “The patty-rollers come.”

“Where?”

“Down in the quarter, old Mama Lizzie’s place.”

Robert turned to Hannah. “Light that candle now. Get me clean water and some rags.” He eased Thomas onto his back, cradling his head. “Why’d they whip you so?”

“I was learnin’ what you taught Boaz.”

“The letters I showed him?”

“Yessir. He were teachin’ what you taught, teachin’ readin’, the way to freedom.”

Light bloomed. Hannah returned with a basin of water and several rags. Robert took one and mopped blood off Thomas’s tattered ear. “Who all was there?”

“Me, Dora, Dora’s oldest Jacob, and her girl Sadie.” He raised himself. “Boaz—they broke his head with a hatchet. Blood everywhere.” Thomas looked up. “And brains.”

“What then?”

“Poor Boaz moaned and thrashed a bit.” Thomas looked down. “Then he died.”

Robert was silent.

“They beat Jacob first,” Thomas continued. “Then they lashed my head some, but I guess they figured they’d done enough. They left off whippin’ and let me lay on the floor by Boaz.”

“Thomas,” Robert took his hand. “Did someone say my name?”

He looked up, shook his head. “No sir, not that I heer’d.”

“Be at ease, Thomas.” Robert patted his hand. “We’ll care for you.” He glanced at the door. “And hide you.” He rose and stepped toward the door.

“Robert?” Hannah moved to his side. “Where are you going?”

“Mama Lizzie’s place.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got find out if they heard my name.” He looked at her. “I’ll be back soon.”

* * *

Robert knocked softly on Mama Lizzie’s pinewood door.

“Come,” called a woman’s voice from within.

Robert opened the door halfway and slipped inside. Mama Lizzy, grizzled hair bound up in a blue bandana, sat on a chair in the center of the room with a bowl in her lap. A Betty lamp cast a yellow glow from the table behind her right shoulder. Robert looked from one side of the room to the other. “You alone, Mama?”

“All alone.”

“Dora’s not here?”

“She took her chilluns and left.”

Robert looked at the bowl in Lizzie’s lap. “It’s late to be workin’, Mama.”

“Work calms me.” She sighed. “After what happened, I need calmin’.”

“What happened?”

“Master Mixon brought his patty-rollers here ’cause he heard there was learnin’ goin’ on.”

“Who’d he hear that from?”

“Mizz Mixon, likely.”

“She saw Boaz teachin’?”

“She heard it from a house slave.” Mama Lizzie looked up from the bowl of peas she was shelling. “Mizz Mixon don’t come down to the quarter.”

“Why not?”

Lizzie resumed working on the peas, pinching the tips, running her finger along the fat pods. “She don’t like seein’ all her chilluns’ half-brothers and sisters.”

Robert glanced at the spots of blood on the floor. “Master Mixon beat Jacob too?”

“He did.”

“Jacob’s his own child.”

“He’s just like all the rest of us.” Lizzie looked up again. “He’s a slave.”

“Mama Lizzie, did anyone say my name?”

“Ha!” Lizzie barked. “Don’ anyone have to say your name.” She stared at Robert. “You the only readin’ and writin’ black man in these parts.”

* * *

“Robert?” Hannah took her husband’s hand. “Will they come here? The patty-rollers?”

Robert nodded. “They’ll come. They didn’t hear my name, but they know I’m the teacher.”

Hannah dropped his hand. “What can we do?”

“Get away as soon as we can.”

Hannah looked at her sleeping children. “How?”

“By sea. I’ll steal a boat for us all.” He smiled. “And I know exactly which one.”

Hannah reached for her husband’s hand again. “What will happen if we are caught?’

“I’ll be shot.” He looked into her eyes. “You and the children will be whipped and sold.”

“They better kill me too.” Hannah raised Robert’s hand, pressed it to her heart. “For where you die, I will die.”

* * *

The sun rose from lavender clouds into an orange sky. Its long reflection skittered across wavelets in Charleston Harbor and touched the flanks of the steamship Planter, a sidewheel gunboat in the Confederate navy, as the cries of gulls welcomed the new day. Robert took in its beauty, pausing for a moment in polishing the binnacle’s already gleaming brass housing.

“Robert, a word.”

“Sir?” He turned as First Mate Smith entered the pilot house.

Smith, a short man with auburn hair and a wispy red moustache, stopped beside Robert and folded his hands behind his back.

“Captain Relyea will be delayed this morning.” Smith tilted forward, standing slightly on his toes to make himself a bit taller. “We must cast off as soon as he sets foot on deck, hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Steam up and hands at the hawsers.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll be ready.”

Smith turned on the balls of his feet and strode out of the pilothouse.

Robert waited a moment, leaned out the side window and called, “Abraham, come up. We have orders.”

Huffing and puffing, Abraham Jackson arrived at the pilothouse door. “What’s so important you couldn’t yell it down to me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” the big man growled.

“Nothing official.” Robert’s voice lowered. “Tonight is the night.”

“Tonight?” Surprise and anxiety spread across Abraham’s wide face. “You sure?”

“Sure as sunrise.” He patted Abraham’s round shoulder. “Tell the others.”

* * *

Captain Relyea tapped his fingers on the frame of the pilothouse window. “Come left after we clear the point, Robert. Steer for the battery.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Planter steamed on a Northwest heading, the slosh of its giant side-paddlewheels a refreshing sound in the heat of a May afternoon. The cannons mounted on a barge at the end of Sullivan Island came even with the pilothouse window. Robert waited. He knew that shallows extended from the island’s tip into the harbor. When the cannon-barge disappeared from his view, he turned the wheel, gently so. The Planter swung in an easy curve until it lined up with the battery on the Charleston shore.

First Mate Smith entered the pilothouse and stopped next to the captain’s elbow. Relyea continued to stare across the reach of Charleston Harbor.

At last, Smith cleared his throat. “Sir?”

“What is it, Smith?”

“Should I arrange to post a marine guard over our cargo, sir?”

Relyea chuckled. “You think someone is going to walk off with one of the cannons?”

Smith said nothing.

Relyea continued, “They weigh more than five thousand pounds each, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No guard.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The crew will remain on board tonight. That should suffice.”

“About that, sir.” Smith hesitated. “We received an order about the blacks, general order number five.”

Relyea turned, looking out from beneath the brim of his white straw hat. “Which says?”

“White officers are to remain on board their ships at night, sir—along with their crews.”

“How is the Planter armed, Mr. Smith?”

Smith looked straight ahead. “We have one cannon and one howitzer for bombardment, sir.”

“The cannon is a thirty-two pounder, a powerful piece of ordnance.” Relyea turned back to his view of Charleston Harbor. “But we are a dispatch boat, Mr. Smith. Our weapon will not be required tonight, nor will any dispatches likely be entrusted to us.” He paused. “Officers have better things to do than sit and watch the tide change.”

“Is it safe to leave the Planter with the crew alone, sir?”

Relyea laughed. “If this were a jolly boat, I’d say not. But the Planter is a sidewheel steamer, one hundred and fifty feet long and more than three hundred tons of her. These men…” He glanced at Robert. “These men perform adequately under our direction, but they are slaves. They have not the competence nor the courage to navigate this ship without us, believe me.”

Robert stared at the waters of Charleston Harbor, feigning the deafness required of slaves.

Captain Relyea hung his straw hat on its hook at the rear of the pilot house and donned his naval officer’s kepi. “Standing orders, Robert.” He studied his reflection in the small mirror next to the hat. “Keep the boiler fire low and the running lamps lit. I don’t expect to be called out tonight, but our duty is to be always ready.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hooked the collar of his uniform jacket closed. “You read well and the numbers on our charts are no mystery to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your skills are an asset to this ship.” Relyea turned, stared at Robert. “But they are not to be shared.”

“No, sir.”

“Asset or no, I will not shield you if you have been teaching other slaves to read. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Relyea stared for a moment longer. “A messenger will find me at home if orders come.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Carry on.” Relyea exited the pilot house, climbed down the ladders to the main deck, and strode across the gangplank without looking back.

* * *

Caleb Mixon paced forward, his beady, black eyes probing the corners of Mama Lizzie’s cabin. “You know what I want.”

Lizzie, again sitting in her chair with the lamp lit on the table behind her, shook her head. “I got no ideer what you want, Marse Mixon.”

Mixon stopped. “Robert Smalls’s shack is empty. He and his family are gone. What have you heard about that?”

“Nothin’.”

“Nothing? I thought all the news came your way, Mama.”

“It usually do. It’s your fault I ain’t heard nothin’”

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, you old fool!” The chief patroller advanced with his whip raised.

Lizzie smiled at him. “You gonna lash an old woman now?”

Mixon raised his hand. “Stop.”

The patroller lowered his whip.

Mixon stepped closer to Mama Lizzie, looming over her like a white buzzard. “Tell me why it’s my fault.”

Lizzie shrugged. “I been here in my chair, like always, but no one’s come to see me—too skeered of your patty-rollers, I reckon.”

“I’m going to teach you manners!” The patroller again raised his whip.

Lizzie looked him in the eye. “Go ahead. Try. I been whipped by meaner men than you. Bigger too.”

“We’ll see.”

Mixon stepped in front of the patroller. “We don’t have time for this. Smalls is getting away.”

The patroller took a deep breath. “She needs whippin’!”

“Not now. Maybe later.” Mixon pulled the patroller’s arm. “Come on, J.B.”

* * *

The sentry’s bayonet gleamed in a stray beam of light.

“He’s comin’ this way, Abraham! We’re done for!”

“Calm down, man!” Abraham gripped Gabriel’s arm. “He’s just makin’ his rounds.”

The sentry was a darker shadow among shadows. Then the shadow turned.

“See?” Abraham released Gabriel. “Just doin’ his job, guardin’ our dock. A soldier can’t stand in one place all night long.”

Robert leaned over the pilothouse rail and clucked like a chat-bird. Abraham looked up and waved. Robert straightened and then spoke in his best officer’s voice. “Prepare to cast off, forward and aft.”

Abraham pushed Gabriel. “Go aft, not too fast.”

Gabriel arrived at the aft cleat and Robert called down, “Let go all lines.”

The heavy hawsers splashed into Charleston Harbor. Abraham called, “Clear for running.”

Robert waited as the ebb tide pushed Planter away from the dock. At last, he leaned close to the engine room speaking tube. “Ahead slow, Alfred.”

The giant paddlewheels groaned and turned over. Ripples spread from Planter’s bow.

The sentry ghosted toward the end of the dock. Abraham stood still as a tree, fighting the overpowering urge to run for the cabin’s shelter. The paddlewheels thrashed a bit faster and Planter pushed into a fogbank.

Robert called down from the pilothouse. “I’ll need you on the lead.”

“Aye, Robert.” Abraham took a deep breath and went forward.

* * *

Blood dripped from the tip of the patroller’s braided, rawhide lash. “Again?”

Mixon nodded. “Again.”

The patroller raised his whip.

Samuel Smith, his forehead pressed into the dirt floor of his shack, whimpered.

Mixon held up a hand. “Wait, J.B.” He leaned down. “You ready to talk to me, Sam?”

Samuel whimpered again.

“I don’t understand your sniveling, old man.”

Samuel bubbled and sobbed. J.B. snarled and hit him in the side of the head with his whip’s handle. The old man slumped to the floor.

Mixon turned and looked at a younger man seated in the corner. “Your turn, Joram. Where did Robert’s woman and children get to?”

Joram shook his head. “You don’t have to beat me none. I’ll tell everything I know.”

Mixon pursed his lips. “Go ahead.”

“For a price.” Joram shifted where he sat. “I’ll talk for a price.”

“I don’t need to pay you.” He glanced at his patroller. “J.B.?”

“Wait!” Joram held up his right hand. “I can be your ears in the quarter. It don’t pay to cut off your own ears.”

Mixon’s eyes narrowed. “How much?”

“A gold dollar, one of them Yankee dollars.”

“What makes you think I’ve got any of those.”

Joram smiled. “Oh, you got ’em, all right.”

Mixon stared for a long moment. “Tell me and I’ll decide if it’s worth it.”

“They gone to the wharf.”

“What wharf?”

“Up the Cooper River—the North Atlantic Wharf.”

“Pay him.”

* * *

Sadie stepped carefully on the wharf’s mist-slick boards, approaching her friend Hannah. When she was close enough, she whispered, “This fog is so thick! How can Robert find us?”

“He’ll find us.” Hannah turned and patted Sadie’s hand. “He knows this harbor like I know the inside of our cabin.”

“The children are bein’ so good! They’re all awake ’cept for the baby. It’s like they understand to keep quiet.”

“They understand how worried we are.” Hannah squeezed her friend’s hand. “It won’t be long. Light the candle. Dawn is near.”

* * *

Abraham called, “By the mark, two.”

Up in the pilothouse, Robert turned the wheel a spoke to his right.

“Need a knife to cut this fog!”

“Hush up, Gabriel!” Abraham flung the lead again. When it came vertical, he called, “By the deep, two and a half.”

Gabriel pulled on Abraham’s shirtsleeve. “What’s that mean?”

“It means we’re right in the center of the channel in fifteen feet of water. That’s seven feet between our keel and the bottom.”

An eddy of breeze parted the fog. Gabriel pointed. “A light there, over to our right.”

The Planter’s big paddlewheels stopped, and it slid forward on momentum alone, easing up to the North Atlantic wharf with scarcely a ripple, coming to a halt with the gentlest of bumps.

“Slick as a snake slidin’ down a hole!” Abraham slapped Gabriel on the arm! “I told you our Robert was the best pilot in Charleston Harbor!”

Figures moved on the dark dock.

Robert called, “Get everyone on board, fast! Dawn’s about here.”

* * *

Mixon scuffed his right boot against the dock’s rough boards and stared into impenetrable fog. “You smell that, J.B.?”

“Sir?”

“Smoke. There’s wood-smoke hanging in that fog.”

The patroller sniffed. “Yes, a little.”

“Robert is crew on that steamer, the Planter. Send a rider over to the main Charleston dock. See if it’s tied up there.”

“Yes, sir.” J.B. took a few steps and looked back over his shoulder. “What if it isn’t?”

Mixon spit tobacco juice into the water. “Wake up General Beauregard and tell him he’s got a steamboat missing.”

* * *

Gabriel called from the port side of the Planter’s pilothouse. “Castle Pinckney is on our beam!”

Robert, standing on the starboard wing, stared into twilit mists. “Come a point left, Abraham.”

Abraham turned the wheel slightly.

“Good!” Robert stepped into the pilothouse. “It’s light enough to show our colors. Please see to it, Gabriel.” He turned to Abraham at the helm. “I’m going below. Keep straight on until I get back, standard speed.”

“Standard speed it is, Robert.”

Robert slid down the ladder to the second deck. Gabriel grumbled, “Don’t seem safe for him to be visitin’ his wife right now.”

“Didn’t he just lift all our folks off North American Wharf?”

“But…”

Abraham glanced at him. “And guide us through all them shallows in a blind fog?”

Gabriel muttered, “Yeah.”

“Then allow the man a few minutes with his family.”

Gabriel didn’t answer.

Abraham continued, “I told you he’s the best pilot in Charleston. Knows every shoal like my toes know the inside of my shoe. Spent years fishin’ with his daddy.”

“Well, his daddy ain’t up here now and he ain’t either!”

“So what?”

Gabriel took a deep breath. “Those forts up ahead are plum full of cannons, enough to turn this boat into kindling before I could scratch my back. If they figure out we’re escapin’ slaves, we’re dead.”

Abraham laughed. “If you’re so worried, you’d best get back and raise the Stars & Bars. And the Palmetto flag too. We got to look as Secesh as we can.”

Gabriel stepped glumly to the ladder.

“Don’ you worry none,” Abraham called. “Robert will be back here before you are, and he’s got a plan.”

* * *

Elizabeth stared up at her father. Robert smiled and rubbed the back of her neck. “You’re as wide-eyed as a little owl!”

“Not your son, though.” Hannah peered at her baby’s sleeping face. “He never sleeps this well at home.”

“It’s the sea air.” Robert squeezed her shoulder. “Does it for me most times too.”

“I hope you’re not feelin’ sleepy now, husband.”

“Not a bit.” He looked at her for a moment. “I’ve got to get back up top.”

“Robert…” Hannah smiled. “Take care.”

“Just a regular patrol.” He paused. “But if there is shootin’, keep everyone low. Stay here between the big wheels until I send for you, hear?”

She nodded. “I will.”

* * *

General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard looked down his patrician nose at J.B. Johnson. J.B., sweat-stained campaign hat in his hands, shifted nervously beneath the general’s unfriendly gaze.

“A steamboat? Missing?”

“Yes… yes, sir,” J.B. stammered.

Beauregard stared at him for a moment more. “That will be all, Mr. Johnson.”

“Yes, sir.” J.B. dipped his head to the general. “Thank you.”

Beauregard glared at the closed door after J.B. left, thinking. At last, he called, “Lieutenant Ewell?”

A young man with only the hint of a moustache beneath his nose entered. “Sir?”

“Send a message to the forts via the courier launch. Tell them to watch for the steamship Planter and detain it if they see it.”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant turned to leave.

“Ewell?”

He paused. “Sir?

“Please add that they may fire on Planter if she does not cooperate.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

“Fort Johnson is coming up on our starboard beam.”

“Thanks, Gabriel.” Robert stepped close to him and patted his back. “Now, get below and stay out of sight.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Captain?”

Gabriel grinned. “You the captain now, Robert.” He slid down the ladder to the deck below.

Robert reentered the pilothouse, stopped at its rear, and plucked Captain Relyea’s white straw hat from its hook. Placing it firmly on his head, he looked at Abraham. “Now comes the tricky part, Abraham.

A flag of fog unfurled ahead, revealing Fort Sumter’s stern walls.

“What course, Robert?”

Robert peered out at dawn’s dim beginnings. “We need some light, but not too much.” He thought for another moment. “We’ll pass between Cummings Point and the Fort, closer to the Fort.”

“They’ve got forty-two pounders up on that wall and two ten-inch columbiads.”

“I know.”

Abraham chuckled. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t tryin’ to make it too easy for them.”

“Pass about three hundred yards off the southwestern wall.” He winked at his helmsman. “That should be easy enough.”

Robert leaned over the engine room voice pipe. “Take ten turns off the wheels, Alfred. We don’t want them to think we’re in a hurry.”

As the Planter slowed, Robert reached for the whistle cord and glanced at Abraham. “Just a normal patrol, no?” He pulled the cord, sounding a long blast. A thin streamer of white steam briefly wrapped and then swept past the Confederate flag flapping in the wind of their passage. He pulled it twice more, one long and one short, the required signal for friendly ships approaching Sumter.

Abraham tucked his chin into his chest and kept his eyes focused straight ahead. Robert adjusted the straw hat so it tilted low over his eyes. “Well, here goes.” He stepped out of the pilothouse to the portside rail.

Dawn was pearl gray and close. Robert allowed his left hand to rest casually on the railing as he studied the Fort’s grim walls. Movement caught his eye. A sentry on the lower rampart turned at the end of his round, stopped. Robert half expected the soldier’s musket to level upon him. The man instead offered a salute, arm held horizontal across breast and rifle, and shouted, “Blow the damned Yankees to hell!”

Robert tipped his white hat in reply.

Five hundred yards, a thousand—the Planter’s wake grew longer. Robert went back into the pilothouse.

Abraham whispered, “What are they doin’? I don’t dare look!”

“Watchin’ us sail away is all.” Robert smiled. “Come left three points, Abraham. We’ll try the south channel.”

Abraham turned the helm. “I hope them Yankee blockade ships is in close this mornin’!”

A gun boomed behind them.

Abraham’s eyes went wide. “They shootin’ at us?”

“Not yet. That’s the signal cannon, the twenty-four-pounder, just letting us know that there are Yankees about and it would be a good idea to turn around.” Robert shouted down the speaking tube to his engineer. “Full speed ahead, Alfred!”

Sparks flew from Planter’s smokestacks. The paddlewheels dug deep, churning the harbor’s water to white froth.

“Now it’s a race, Abraham.”

Abraham, both hands on the helm, glanced at him. “A race?”

“A race between us and those columbiads that have you so worried.”

“Right.”

“Find us a Yankee ship.”

“Which one?”

“The closest.”

Abraham’s eyes scanned the harbor mouth for the line of blockading Union ships. “There! The three-masted steam frigate!”

Another boom, far greater than the first, sounded.

Robert shouted, “Go!”

Abraham turned the helm two points to starboard. “That was a big gun, Robert.”

“Don’t fear, old friend, the barrel is cold yet. They can’t get our range properly and we’ll be passing three thousand yards soon.”

“How far do them big guns shoot?”

“Five thousand yards, more or less.”

A mushroom of silvery water, taller than a church’s steeple, rose off the Planter’s starboard bow. Abraham whispered, “Lord, have mercy!”

“Steer for it!” Robert called.

“What?”

“Steer for the splash. It’ll throw off their aim.”

Abraham, muttering another prayer, turned the Planter further to starboard.

Robert paced out to the starboard wing. “Now turn back toward that Yankee frigate. We’re coming up on four thousand yards.”

Abraham swung the wheel left. The columbiads both fired, almost together this time. Twin towers of water rose to their starboard but hundreds of yards distant.

“Those cannon balls weigh more than a hundred pounds each. It takes even a good crew time to load one.” He began counting to himself. When he reached a hundred, he turned to Abraham. “Come right again, hard.”

Abraham turned the wheel. A few seconds later, the columbiads roared, their blasts rolling across the harbor like the howls of monsters. Twin columns of water rose well behind and to the left of Planter’s wake.

“Look at that!” Robert grinned. “We’re out of range!”

* * *

“What’s all the fuss about, sir?”

John Frederick Nickels, acting captain of the U.S.S. Onward, lowered his telescope. “I don’t know, Peters. The Secesh are firing their columbiads at that paddle-wheeler. It’s a harbor craft, so it must be one of theirs.”

“It might be a trick, sir.”

“It might be.” Nickels raised his glass again. “We’ll soon see. It’s headed straight for us.”

Ensign Peters glanced at his young captain. “Your orders, sir?”

“Bring the crew to quarters and run out the starboard guns.”

* * *

“Pull down those Secesh flags and run up our bedsheet, Gabriel.”

Abraham glanced at Robert. “Bedsheet?”

“It is our white flag of victory!” He motioned to Gabriel. “Hurry, Gabe! We don’t want that fine frigate to think we’re a threat.”

“Bless me,” Abraham chuckled. “You think of about everything.”

“Half speed, Alfred,” Robert called down the speaking tube. “We don’t want to shake this old girl apart before we turn her over to the Yankees.”

* * *

Captain Nickels watched as the squat, impudent paddle-wheeler pulled slowly into Onward’s lee. He called, “What ship are you and what do you intend?”

A man wearing a white straw hat stepped to the pilothouse rail and replied. “We are the gunboat Planter and we intend to surrender.”

“Come alongside and stop.”

* * *

Cheering and shouting broke out from Planter’s lower deck where the families and the rest of the crew had sheltered.

“What did that Yankee-man say, Robert?”

“I missed it too.” Robert thought for a moment. “Steer for his stern.”

“Stop!” Captain Nickels roared. “Or I’ll blow you out of the water!”

“Let’s do what the man says.” He called down to Alfred, “All stop!”

The big paddlewheels froze in place and the Planter coasted to a halt. Gabriel hopped into the pilothouse, grabbed Abraham by the shoulders, and danced him around the helm. “We’re free! We’re free men!” He let Abraham go, grabbed the whistle cord, and blew three long blasts.

Robert stepped back to the pilothouse railing. “Good morning, sir!” He took off his white hat and waved it. “I have brought you some of the old United States guns taken from Fort Sumter!”

* * *

“Papa!” Elizabeth’s right index finger curved upwards, pointing into the teal blue sky. “An egret!”

“A snowy egret!” Robert chuckled. “You’ve got sharp eyes for a four-year-old!”

“A young child,” Hannah stepped to Robert’s side, “really looks at things, really sees them.”

“And where’s our son?” Robert glanced up. “Down crawlin’ through the engine room?”

“No, course not!” Hannah poked his shoulder. “He’s belowdecks with Sadie, sleepin’ like a baby.”

“He is a baby.” Robert smiled.

“This old Planter is better than a lullaby.” Hannah took her husband’s hand. “You did it, Robert. You got us all away from slavery.”

His smile faded. “But I have no idea what will come next.”

“Don’t matter. We’ll deal with it.” She squeezed his hand. “Our children are free.”

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AUTHOR BIO:

Robert Walton retired from teaching after thirty-six years of service at San Lorenzo Middle School. He is a lifelong rock climber and mountaineer with ascents in Yosemite and Pinnacles National Park. His published works include historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and poetry. His Civil War novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction. Most recently, his Joaquin’s Gold, an anthology of Joaquin Murrieta stories, was published and is available on Amazon.website: http://chaosgatebook.wordpress.com/

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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “C.S.S. Planter’s Last Voyage”:

Dramatizing a real historical event can be quite a challenge for a writer. In our opinion, author Robert Walton successfully met the challenge with his story. He takes us into an uncomfortable period in the American Civil War and captures the personalities of the participants in a very believable way to craft a compelling story. It’s a great way to bring history to life. And that’s why we chose to publish it.

We hope that any reader previously unaware of Robert Smalls’ role in American history found this piece enlightening and uplifting.