December 8, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/8/2011
Original Newspaper, Harpers Weekly, June 14, 1862, 16pp., 11” x 16,” complete, filled with war news and wood-cut engravings. From an interior page, under the report “The Steamer ‘Planter’ and Her Captor,” we get the news of Robert Smalls, in part, “Nine colored men comprising the pilot, engineers and crew of the rebel gunboat Planter, took the vessel under their exclusive control, passed the batteries and forts in Charleston harbor, , hoisted a white flag, and ran out to the blockading squadron ...” The report is complimented with an image of Robert Smalls, and a second of the gunboat Planter. Disbound, former owners stamp, else VG. In 1862 Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old mulatto slave, was employed by Confederates in Charleston, S.C. as pilot of Planter, area commander General Roswell Ripley’s transport steamer. In the early morning hours of May 13 the ship was loaded with armaments for the Confederate forts. Contrary to regulations the white captain and crew were ashore for the night. At about 3 a.m. Smalls commandeered the 147-foot vessel from a dock fronting General Ripley’s home and office. Smalls and his crew sailed to a nearby dock, collected family members from another ship and headed toward sea.
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