Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in over on the zoom call.
Speaker 1: Here we've got our super producer, the one and only
Speaker 1: Max Williams. Give him a hand, give him to give
Speaker 1: him three? How many hands? Who do who? And who's that?
Speaker 1: Who's that hood? Who went over there? That's that's me,
Speaker 1: old Brown? Oh, I said my last name. I think
Speaker 1: I've ever said that. My last name is in fact Brown.
Speaker 1: For anyone that didn't know, um, you ever watched the
Speaker 1: Great British Baking Show or The Great British Bake Off?
Speaker 1: Is it as somehow? Sometimes I referred to I do oh,
Speaker 1: I should introduced myself. I'm beat, I've forgotten that part. Yes,
Speaker 1: who who is? Who is who? I was directing that question?
Speaker 1: So so I have, Like many people, I find it relaxing.
Speaker 1: It was sort of. It's it's got a what you
Speaker 1: would call its head lasso vibe that really does you
Speaker 1: know what? It really does? Yeah, and my boy Noel
Speaker 1: Fielding from the Mighty Bush. Very controversial decision to install
Speaker 1: him as the comic relief on that show alongside Um
Speaker 1: Matt Lucas I think is his name, who was in
Speaker 1: Little Britain, but no Fielding bit of a weirdo and
Speaker 1: I love the fact that he goes over there. Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: He's one of my favorite. He's he's one of the
Speaker 1: few guys with my name that is, you know, looms
Speaker 1: large in pop culture. The other one is Noel Gallagher
Speaker 1: who's kind of a jerk, so definitely expent to old
Speaker 1: Fielding has he though he's put us through a lot.
Speaker 1: You know what even is a wonder wall Um. I
Speaker 1: only bring this up bench because they do a thing
Speaker 1: on on the Great British Speaking Show where every week
Speaker 1: it's like a different theme. They've a biscuit week or
Speaker 1: trumpet week or pie week or whatever Japanese week. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what we're doing that they don't own that,
Speaker 1: they don't own that, then we're gonna do that. What
Speaker 1: what we what week is it for us? We are
Speaker 1: We're introducing a theme this week which is historical heist. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are as you know, a long time ridiculous historians.
Speaker 1: We love a good hist tale. In the heist, you
Speaker 1: can see uh, this cinematic scope of humanity. You can
Speaker 1: see the highs the lows. You can see inspiration, you
Speaker 1: can see villainy. And we thought, you know, we would
Speaker 1: today kick off this week by having a story that
Speaker 1: is technically a heist, but it's it's a heist, maybe
Speaker 1: not in the way you would expect. It's a story
Speaker 1: of inspiration, it's a story of audacity, ambition, it's ultimately
Speaker 1: a story about freedom, and it's an amazing story that
Speaker 1: we feel very fortunate to share with you. Uh, there
Speaker 1: is a guy we'd love to introduce you to. His
Speaker 1: name is Robert Smalls. So Robert Smalls if you've never
Speaker 1: heard of him. Um, let's make it cinematic. Let's lean
Speaker 1: into this. So there is a great like opening scene
Speaker 1: from a book called Be Free or Die, the amazing
Speaker 1: story of Robert Small's escape from slavery to Union hero.
Speaker 1: And no, you wanna you want to kick us off here,
Speaker 1: let's let's set this up and and Max, you're gonna
Speaker 1: lean on your amazing sound design powers. Okay, So that
Speaker 1: the logos popped up right, rh blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and then we fade out and it's nighttime, darkness still
Speaker 1: blanketed the city of Charleston in the early hours of
Speaker 1: May eighteen sixty two, m As a night breeze carried
Speaker 1: the bridy scent of marshes across the quiet harbor, only
Speaker 1: the occasional ringing of a ship's bell competed with the
Speaker 1: sounds of waves lapping against the wooden wharf. We're a
Speaker 1: Confederate side wheeled steamer named the Planter was moored the
Speaker 1: wharf stood a few miles from Fort Sumter. Were the
Speaker 1: first shots of the Civil War and fire just a
Speaker 1: little more than a year before. H As thin wisps
Speaker 1: of smoke rise from the vessel's smokestack high above the
Speaker 1: pilot house, a twenty three year old enslaved man named
Speaker 1: Robert Smalls stood on the deck. In the next few hours,
Speaker 1: he and his young family with either fine freedom from
Speaker 1: slavery or face certain death. Yeah, I think we stopped there.
Speaker 1: This is the moment, and we want you to have
Speaker 1: that image burn in your mind and keep it here,
Speaker 1: because this is about to be the defining decision of
Speaker 1: this young man's life. Let's learn a little bit about him,
Speaker 1: and let's learn about what led him to this moment.
Speaker 1: There on May thirt so Robert Smalls is born on
Speaker 1: April five, eighteen thirty nine. UH. He is born on
Speaker 1: a state on a plot of land at five eleven
Speaker 1: Prince Street in Beaufort, South Carolina. He has born into slavery.
Speaker 1: His mother, Lydia, was in the house at the time,
Speaker 1: but she grew up working the fields, and she was
Speaker 1: not from this town originally. She had been taken from
Speaker 1: her own family when she was just nine years old.
Speaker 1: The story of Small's father is largely lost to history.
Speaker 1: There are a few suspects, or there are a few
Speaker 1: suspected patriarchs, but none have been clearly identified. We know that,
Speaker 1: at least according to some great work by historians Quota
Speaker 1: with PBS, we know that the slaver family the McKee family.
Speaker 1: The patriarch of them was John McKee. For some reason,
Speaker 1: they seemed to favor young Robert over the other enslaved
Speaker 1: children that were living on the property, and that causes
Speaker 1: some historians to speculate that perhaps John McKee was Robert's
Speaker 1: biological That's all the detail that caused historians to lean
Speaker 1: most in that direction. Uh And speaking of historians, highly
Speaker 1: recommend checking out Henry Lewis Gates Juniors article on PBS.
Speaker 1: It's actually a transcript of a series that this historical,
Speaker 1: wonderful historian did called the African Americans Many Rivers to
Speaker 1: Cross Um. So you can find that on PBS dot
Speaker 1: org just search for Robert Small's Henry Lewis Gates. Don't
Speaker 1: want to read you the headlined quite yet because it's
Speaker 1: kit of a spoiler. But you're right then, a lot
Speaker 1: of times the history of family lineage in these slave
Speaker 1: situations were lost to history for obvious reasons. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this was by design in some cases. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: He he had, He had friends, and he would hang
Speaker 1: out with him, and he would be pushing the envelope
Speaker 1: against some of the draconian rules over class and behavior
Speaker 1: in this community. Most notably, he ignored the curfew that
Speaker 1: was set for all black people in town and he
Speaker 1: would hang out with his white friends. His mother was very,
Speaker 1: very worried about this because she thought he would grow
Speaker 1: up without fully understanding the horrors of slavery, and so
Speaker 1: she intended to give him a tough education. She said, look,
Speaker 1: he has to go work in the fields for a while.
Speaker 1: And he asked to watch people as they are being
Speaker 1: whipped and being being whipped in this time. Make no,
Speaker 1: make no mistake, It's not the same as like apparent
Speaker 1: spanking a kid with their hand. This is a traumatic,
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous thing to do to someone. You can lead
Speaker 1: to death, that will leave scars, right, so, absolutely so
Speaker 1: when he saw this. According to his great granddaughter, who
Speaker 1: would talked about this later in an historian w Marvin Delaney,
Speaker 1: Robert ended up in the Beaufort jail pretty frequently. And
Speaker 1: eventually his mom tries something else and she says, Okay,
Speaker 1: she goes to the McKay family and she says, I'm
Speaker 1: worried about my son's safety. Can you sent him to
Speaker 1: Charleston and so he can work there. It's a bigger town, right, uh.
Speaker 1: And it's a different town, and so the McKee family
Speaker 1: ends up moving to Charleston too. And when when Robert's
Speaker 1: about twelve years old, he's hired as a day laborer
Speaker 1: working on the waterfront and he eventually becomes a sailor,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the first step towards this big story.
Speaker 1: And he's lived a lot of life by the time
Speaker 1: he's nineteen. Let's see what was he up tonal Right,
Speaker 1: by this very young age, he had held down quite
Speaker 1: a few different jobs at various skill levels, but some
Speaker 1: of them included a lamplighter, which is exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like, a Steve Dore forman Steve a door for men,
Speaker 1: which is essentially UM an early version of what we
Speaker 1: would call a longshoreman, someone who was responsible for loading
Speaker 1: and unloading cargo from merchant ships. Uh. He also was
Speaker 1: a waiter, again being shown a little bit of preferential
Speaker 1: treatment here considering UH he was allowed to keep a
Speaker 1: dollar of his fifteen dollar a week wages UM. His owner,
Speaker 1: of course, took the rest. And he was able to
Speaker 1: kind of learn a lot from these jobs from listening,
Speaker 1: you know, especially the waiter job. He was able to
Speaker 1: kind of figure out who everyone was in the community.
Speaker 1: People would pass to the restaurant, and he began to
Speaker 1: learn a lot about who who was who within the
Speaker 1: um sports kind of hierarchy here in Charleston. There were
Speaker 1: very few people, according to Gates the story we talked
Speaker 1: about in Charleston, who knew more about the harbor than
Speaker 1: Robert Smalls, and that just came from him literally keeping
Speaker 1: his ear so open. So around eighteen fifty six he
Speaker 1: met his wife there in Charlestown. Um, Hannah is what
Speaker 1: her name was. And she was a slave that belonged
Speaker 1: to the Kingman family. Uh. And she worked at a
Speaker 1: hotel there in Charleston, and Robert got the owner's permission
Speaker 1: to marry her, and the two then moved in together
Speaker 1: into an apartment and had two children, Elizabeth and Robert Jr.
Speaker 1: And even though they were kind of granted this permission
Speaker 1: to marry, they knew that it was possible that they
Speaker 1: would be asked they would be forced to you know,
Speaker 1: separate um, depending on the nature of the work, or
Speaker 1: if the family that owned one or both of them
Speaker 1: decided they wanted to move. So Smalls asked the owner
Speaker 1: of his wife if he could just buy his family,
Speaker 1: which would have been at a very dear cost at
Speaker 1: the time, around eight hundred dollars. He only had around
Speaker 1: a hundred though at the time, and proposed that he
Speaker 1: would save up the other seven hundred after making that
Speaker 1: down payment. Yeah, and for Max, could we get some
Speaker 1: inflation calculator action fired up here there? It is okay, good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes this a second, folks, the further we go
Speaker 1: back in time. So just for comparison, eight hundred dollars
Speaker 1: was just under thousand, four hundred dollars today, So this
Speaker 1: was this was steep, especially when you consider that this
Speaker 1: guy was able to save money despite only receiving one
Speaker 1: of his pay the other fourteen dollars each week. Is
Speaker 1: it's insanely going to This guy's doing nothing. He's doing
Speaker 1: nothing on the docks, so so this price, it's crazy,
Speaker 1: and he is rightly wondering how long is it going
Speaker 1: to take me to save up this other seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: He's thinking this, by the way, during the Civil War,
Speaker 1: because he was hired as a deckhand in March of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one on that Confederate supply ship. From the
Speaker 1: very beginning of our story, the Planter. The Planter was
Speaker 1: back in the day, it had been a cotton steamer,
Speaker 1: but it got converted to carry supplies between forts in
Speaker 1: the Charleston Harbor. And so just the way that Robert
Speaker 1: learned everything about the Charleston Docks, he learned everything he
Speaker 1: could about steering and running this steamer, running the Planter,
Speaker 1: and he began to brainstorm slowly over time way a
Speaker 1: way to escape the heist began to form in his head.
Speaker 1: So let's fast forward. It's spring. It's a sixty two.
Speaker 1: This is the second full year of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Civil War. Smalls is still working aboard the Planter, and
Speaker 1: he has learned a lot of stuff. He's also very
Speaker 1: cognizant that he is working for the enemy, for the
Speaker 1: people who want to keep him enslaved. Right, It's not
Speaker 1: like he had a choice though, you know, no, no,
Speaker 1: And so he learns how to steer the boat, he
Speaker 1: learns how to plant sea mines, he learns the codes
Speaker 1: and the signals that you need as a vessel to
Speaker 1: safely pass Confederate forts. Uh. And he becomes familiar as
Speaker 1: ship becomes familiar to these locations. And yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: a really great mental Flass article about this topic as
Speaker 1: well by Lucas Riley highly recommended checking that out for
Speaker 1: some additional details. But there was this was a time
Speaker 1: when I think the writing was somewhat on the wall
Speaker 1: that the the Union was going to win out. They
Speaker 1: were doing some pretty significant blockades of Confederate supply vessels,
Speaker 1: and this is something that Smalls was very much aware of, right.
Speaker 1: He sees these blockades of Union ships, and by this
Speaker 1: point in the war, these blockades are are a regular thing, right,
Speaker 1: the Union forces are cutting off supplies, and if you're
Speaker 1: in if you're in Confederate lands at this time, then
Speaker 1: depending on your position in society, those blockades can represent
Speaker 1: very different things. So the many of the white Confederates
Speaker 1: and supporters of the Confederate Army, they, without a hint
Speaker 1: of self awareness or irony, saw these blockades as oppressive
Speaker 1: to people who were actually being oppressed. To actual enslaved people,
Speaker 1: these ships represented not oppression, but they represented the possibility
Speaker 1: of freedom. And so Smalls knew that due to the war,
Speaker 1: Union naval commanders have been accepting runaways, like if you
Speaker 1: could make it to Union Land, then you would have
Speaker 1: a chance of being free. And so he knew he
Speaker 1: couldn't pay for you know, he knew he couldn't save
Speaker 1: up another seven hundred dollars anytime soon. So he thought,
Speaker 1: what if, what if we can pull a heist? What
Speaker 1: if we can steal ourselves? For last better phrase, and
Speaker 1: this is something like we've got this cinematic moment if
Speaker 1: we go back to the film. This is from that
Speaker 1: mental phlass article you just mentioned. The uh there was
Speaker 1: a captain of this ship, and this captain was a
Speaker 1: white guy's named C. J. Reliat, and he had this
Speaker 1: wide brimmed straw hat and it was kind of like
Speaker 1: his thing, you know how like in some places the
Speaker 1: boss has their funny coffee mug or whatever. He was
Speaker 1: known for his hat. So picture this moment in the
Speaker 1: film where there's another crew member, also an enslaved person,
Speaker 1: the cap and out away doing something and this this
Speaker 1: guy grabs the hat and he puts it on Small's
Speaker 1: head and a Small as again remember he's only like
Speaker 1: in his early twenties, and he says, you look just
Speaker 1: like the captain. And then that's when Falls is looking
Speaker 1: out at the ocean. He's looking pass Fort Sumter and
Speaker 1: he's seen that those Union ships in the distance, and
Speaker 1: then it dawns on him he could steal the planter.
Speaker 1: He could actually do it. Smalls was probably one of
Speaker 1: the most skilled of all of them. He was what
Speaker 1: was considered the wheelman because he was a slave, he
Speaker 1: was not able to have any kind of rank, and
Speaker 1: typical of this time period, you know, the white captain
Speaker 1: didn't really do a whole heck of a lot except, like,
Speaker 1: you know, occupy that official role. But it was really
Speaker 1: Smalls that was doing all of the steering, so he
Speaker 1: knew exactly what to do, and he knew how he
Speaker 1: could use that likeness to kind of create a diversion. Right. So,
Speaker 1: late in the evening of May to the planner returned
Speaker 1: to Charleston after a two week supply expedition. The White
Speaker 1: crew were supposed to stay on board to you know,
Speaker 1: keep an eye on the the enslaved crew, but um,
Speaker 1: they were scheduled for another mission the next day, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to get a little bit of shore leave
Speaker 1: time in. They wanted to you know, sleep in a
Speaker 1: comfortable bed, you know, maybe in a hotel, maybe have
Speaker 1: the company of a woman or something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, these guys were definitely ready for a night
Speaker 1: on the town. So they left the boat. Um, and
Speaker 1: they trusted the enslaved crew members to take care of it,
Speaker 1: because that's what they always did. They always took care
Speaker 1: of everything of including steering the actual ship. Um. Captain
Speaker 1: Relia did the same thing under threat of court marshal,
Speaker 1: Like this is a big deal. This would have been
Speaker 1: considered abandoning his post or what is it called going
Speaker 1: a wall ben right away without leave. Yeah, yeah, if
Speaker 1: he was, if he was caught not manning the boat,
Speaker 1: then it would clearly be a dereliction of duty. But
Speaker 1: he had been relaxing, right. They had done a successful
Speaker 1: two week run, so he, like the other white officers,
Speaker 1: are in town to unwind. And once they get to shore,
Speaker 1: Robert turns to his fellow crew members and he says, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's go time. Essentially, that's not a verbatim quote, by
Speaker 1: the way, I don't think people said it's go time
Speaker 1: back then, but you get the gist of what we're saying.
Speaker 1: And he's very honest about the dangers involved, and he
Speaker 1: says that you know, I have no intention of being
Speaker 1: taken alive. Being captured is not an option for this operation.
Speaker 1: We will escape and we will use whatever guns and
Speaker 1: ammo you have on board to fight if necessary. And
Speaker 1: if worst comes to worst, we are sinking this ship.
Speaker 1: So now is your chance. He basically says, are you
Speaker 1: in or are you out? And two people in the
Speaker 1: crew said it's too dangerous for one reason or another,
Speaker 1: maybe family, maybe fear bodily harm. They said they were
Speaker 1: gonna stay behind. And so after that, after everybody had
Speaker 1: confirmed whether they were in or out, Robert Smalls takes
Speaker 1: the skipper's jacket, he puts it on. He takes that
Speaker 1: obnoxious straw hat and he puts the signature signature moment
Speaker 1: picture the swelling crescendo as he orders the crew. Now
Speaker 1: he's captain, and he says, light the boilers. So they
Speaker 1: light the boilers, and at two am the planter starts
Speaker 1: sneaking out into the Charleston Harbor. Perfect. It's a perfect plan.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole crew. Anyone that would have said
Speaker 1: anything about this, they were probably pissed drunk at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, including the captain. Um, there's really I mean,
Speaker 1: once they got into the harbor, certainly plenty was going
Speaker 1: to go wrong, but they absolutely had the perfect opportunity,
Speaker 1: which they ceased. Uh So Smalls starts to steer the
Speaker 1: ship to a rendezvous point where he was going to
Speaker 1: pick up his wife and kids, along with a handful
Speaker 1: of other enslaved people. Um, he had sent word to
Speaker 1: his family of this possibility so that they would be
Speaker 1: waiting and ready, and ready they were. They got scooped
Speaker 1: up and were off. And there is a report from
Speaker 1: a newspaper account of this. Uh quote from Hannah herself,
Speaker 1: who said this, the whole party had solemnly agreed in
Speaker 1: advance that if pursued and without hope of escape, the
Speaker 1: ship would be scuttled and sunk, essentially going down with
Speaker 1: the ship. They would like, you know, this whole idea
Speaker 1: of not being taken alive, and they should all take hands,
Speaker 1: husband and wife, brother and sister and jump overboard and
Speaker 1: perish together. Wow. Yeah, and she says. This was also
Speaker 1: reported afterwards. According to the the accounts that were written
Speaker 1: of this escape, Hannah reportedly told Robert, it is a risk, dear,
Speaker 1: but you and I and our little ones must be free.
Speaker 1: I will go for where you die. I will die,
Speaker 1: which is profound. And the crew was, you know, like
Speaker 1: we said, they were more than capable and more than
Speaker 1: willing to fight back if they were discovered, exposed and
Speaker 1: pursued because this boat was a supply ship, so it
Speaker 1: has two rounds of ammunition, they've got five large guns,
Speaker 1: and if cornered, they decided in advance that they would
Speaker 1: take dynamite to the boiler because if they you know,
Speaker 1: if they die and if they take the ship down
Speaker 1: with them, then they're they're removing that ship from the war,
Speaker 1: so they're not just dying they're also injuring the Confederate Forces,
Speaker 1: which is very important. So no, I am pretty sure
Speaker 1: we're onto something. This should be a film. This definitely
Speaker 1: has to be a two parter. I think we've we've
Speaker 1: got a heist another week for highst week. I think so,
Speaker 1: and we've got one for you. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we're gonna close this one out. We've got some nice
Speaker 1: background for you, and we'll be back in just a
Speaker 1: couple of days with the heisty part of the superhisty
Speaker 1: part of this high story. So don't feel too let
Speaker 1: down in the meantime. Huge thanks to Max Williams super
Speaker 1: producer extraordinaire brother Alex Williams, who composed this theme. Big
Speaker 1: big thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, Big big thanks to Gabe Lousier.
Speaker 1: Big thanks of course to Casey Pegraham and um, maybe
Speaker 1: not a big thanks, but like a a medium thing
Speaker 1: to Jonathan Strictland. Oh there we go. That's like the
Speaker 1: just like when Dill Murray called Chevy Chase medium talent exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also heard a really funny story about Martin Short
Speaker 1: and Steve Martin. Apparently, when Martin Short visited Steve Martin's
Speaker 1: house for the first time he saw he had all
Speaker 1: these incredible paintings like Picasso's and hoppers and all that,
Speaker 1: and he goes, gosh, how are you this rich? I've
Speaker 1: seen your work. ULLU. We will We will be back, folks.
Speaker 1: Tune in for the second part of the story. We
Speaker 1: cannot wait to go on this journey with you. And
Speaker 1: also let us know, by the way, some of your
Speaker 1: favorite heist You can do that by going to Ridiculous
Speaker 1: Historians on Facebook, or you can do it by sending
Speaker 1: sending us an email or sending Max Milan email. It's
Speaker 1: gonna happen, Then it's gonna happen three eventually that email
Speaker 1: is ridiculous At iHeart media dot com, We'll see you
Speaker 1: next time, folks. Yeah. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.