May 11
2019: Beaufort High School claimed its second straight Class 4A boys track and field state championship in Columbia. The Eagles won by a whopping 36 points despite having just three event winners – Alex Macias (pole vault), Desmond Gailard (triple jump) and Dexter Ratliff (discus).
May 12-13
1862: Robert Smalls steals the CSS Planter. On the night of May 12, 1862, three white crew members of the CSS Planter – Capt. C.J. Relyea, pilot Samuel H. Smith and engineer Zerich Pitcher – go ashore in Charleston, leaving Smalls, the ship’s wheelman, and the enslaved crew members unattended. Around 3 a.m., Smalls and his crew fire up the ship’s boilers and sail to a wharf to pick up their waiting family members, then sail past Confederate forces at Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie. Smalls, impersonating the captain, wearing his wide-brimmed straw hat to hide his face, uses the proper coded signals at two Confederate checkpoints, including at Fort Sumter itself, and other defensive positions. When the Planter cleared the Confederate defenses, just before dawn, Smalls raised a white flag and delivered the ship – and its 17 black passengers (nine men, five women and three children) to the blockading Union fleet.
May 16
2019: The Battery Creek High School softball team wins the Class 3A state championship, defeating Union County, 2-1, at Battery Creek. Senior pitcher Alexis Ortiz hurls a one-hitter and hit the go-ahead solo home run in the fourth inning for the Dolphins, just two batters after Emily Crosby homers to tie the game at 1. Ortiz pitched all 48 postseason innings for BC, striking out 66 and surrendering just 4 runs.
– Compiled by Mike McCombs
