Robert Smalls put his plan onto action on May 12, 1862. That afternoon, the Planter had returned from two weeks of setting up artillery on James Island. Smalls correctly predicted that the officers would be tired and leave the ship that evening.
As the officers went ashore from the ship's berth at the Southern Wharf, the crew banked the fires in the Planter's boiler and remained aboard. Smalls' plan was to depart quietly in the pre-dawn hours and pick up the crew's families at the North Atlantic Wharf on the Cooper River.
Their departure was tricky: leaving the city just before dawn would put them near the forts at first light, but Smalls knew that of they were moving in the harbor in the darkness they would come under suspicion. They had one piece of luck: Smalls had learned that then guard boat, usually outside the harbor entrance, was under repaor and would not be on station that evening.
--Old B-Runner
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