On May 12, Smalls enlisted the other enslaved crew and sailed away. The white crew couldn't conceive of a Black man being capable of stealing their ship, so they often went home for the night, leaving him on board. LAWRENCE: Union ships just outside Charleston Harbor a few miles away. To make a long story short, he knew that there was a blockade just outside the mouth of Charleston River, a Union blockade. And he knew that - in slavery that his family could be separated from him in an instant. He had two children, among them my great-grandmother, Elizabeth. LAWRENCE: Michael Moore is a descendant of Robert Smalls. MICHAEL MOORE: He worked on a boat called the Planter, which was a 150-foot side-wheel steamer that carried munitions based in Charleston Harbor. LAWRENCE: Robert Smalls was 23 and already such a skilled mariner that his enslaver rented him out as a pilot. LAWRENCE: The ship now named for Robert Smalls, who in 1862 stole a Southern steamship and sailed to the Union side.ĪNGELINAS: Going from Confederate victory to this incredible story of a former slave who commandeered a Confederate ship and turned it over to the Union Navy. Today, Captain Edward Angelinas commands the ship.ĮDWARD ANGELINAS: It is a move much more consistent with the Navy's values. Lee and Stonewall Jackson displayed on board. Only seven years ago, there was still a portrait of Robert E.
As recently as 1989, it still seemed OK for the Navy to name a U.S. QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: The Confederate Army won a decisive victory at Chancellorsville, Va., in 1863. NPR's Quil Lawrence sent this report about one of the most recent name changes and the remarkable man one Navy ship's name now honors.
military has begun renaming bases and warships that honored Confederacy figures, including Civil War generals who were enslavers and led troops against the U.S.
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