The Sailor Who Escaped Slavery

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Pushkin.

The men of the gunboat USS Marblehead woke up to the sound of cannon fire.

It was blasting across the bow, splintering the wood of their ship.

It was early Christmas morning, 1863.

The Marblehead was a Union Navy vessel patrolling the slow-moving Stono River in South Carolina, just south of Charleston.

The ship worked its way past the tidal marshlands, past rice plantations and tiny towns, scanning for rebel activity.

The men on the ship had no idea that Confederate forces were hiding, waiting.

They had secretly placed guns in the forest near the shore.

Now,

those guns were pointed right at the marblehead.

firing their artillery, blowing holes in the ship and the shipsmen.

The Union sailors ran up from their cabins below decks, some of them still in their night shirts.

They sprinted to their battle stations.

In their midst was a young man named Robert Blake.

He raced back and forth to the hold of the ship, bringing boxes of gunpowder to one of the main guns.

The Marbleheads' rifles boomed and shook, sending fire to shore.

The rebel rebel forces returned fire.

Sailors fell wounded to the ship's deck.

It was a bloody scene.

More than anyone aboard, Robert knew that they had to keep the Confederate forces at bay.

Not just to save their ship, but because Robert understood something else.

If he was captured, Some of those Confederate soldiers might recognize him.

An enslaved man who had had escaped from a plantation not that far away.

The kind of man those Confederates hated most of all.

I'm J.R.

Martinez and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States.

awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.

Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.

This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

Today, we'll explore the story of Robert Blake, the first black sailor to receive the Medal of Honor.

Blake served in a cool and brave manner, according to his commanding officer.

But that doesn't make him an anomaly on that ship or any other Union vessel.

He was one of many black sailors to serve honorably during the Civil War.

They were a force that helped change the trajectory of the whole conflict.

But they are also a group that we know very little about.

At a time that was dangerous for any formerly enslaved person in the South, these black sailors took on even more risk.

And they did it to fight for a country they believe could be better,

would be better, not just for them, but for everyone who came after.

I'm going to preface this episode by saying, we don't know all that much about Robert Blake, which means two things.

First, there's a little speculation involved, a bit more than we usually have in an episode.

Second, it's kind of like a detective story.

So we found a detective.

We'll meet him in a bit.

Let's start with what we know for sure.

Robert Blake Blake was enslaved at the Oak Grove Plantation in South Carolina.

It was located on the South Santee River, just six or seven miles from the Atlantic coast.

Oak Grove was actually one of three plantations owned by a man named Arthur Middleton Blake.

He came from a long line of plantation owners.

His family had been enslaving people for more than 100 years.

The name Oak Grove might make it seem like some idyllic setting, but the reality was very different.

There were deadly mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and yellow fever, poisonous snakes, alligators.

But if the environment was inhospitable, the work was even worse because these were rice plantations and cultivating rice was backbreaking, dangerous work.

It was done by hundreds of enslaved people of African descent, toiling without a break day after brutal day.

And that's where our hero, Robert Blake, was born.

And to add to the confusion, he wasn't the only Robert Blake who lived at Oak Grove.

Many enslaved people born there were given the last name Blake.

It was a way to show who their slaveholder was.

R.

Robert Blake, the Medal of Honor recipient, was most likely born around 1840.

The fact that he made it through childhood was a miracle.

On rice plantations, more than half of black children did not survive to age 15.

Like other enslaved children, he wouldn't have had any kind of formal education.

Enslaved children were often separated from their parents.

Maybe this was true of Robert.

It's impossible to know.

But what is pretty certain is that as soon as he was able to work, he would have been out in the rice fields, digging and planting and harvesting from sunup to sundown.

And then, in 1861, shots were fired just 40 miles away at Fort Sumter.

And the Civil War began.

For Robert and the rest of the residents of Oak Grove, the world they knew was about to massively change.

For one thing, Arthur Middleton Blake, the owner of Oak Grove, fled the United States.

He left for England a week after Fort Sumter fell, in April of 1861.

The next key thing that happened?

The Union decided to set up a blockade to keep trade ships from entering or leaving the Confederate

This had two purposes.

To prevent the rebels from getting supplies like ammunition and to keep them from trade with Europe, cutting off their source of income.

But while the Union wanted to create a blockade, the Confederates were equally set on breaking it.

Rebel blockade runners would find holes in the Union naval lines, then they would zip through them in small boats loaded with goods for waiting European ships.

So the Union Navy set up bases in Confederate territory to stop those blockade runners.

In South Carolina, they went to Port Royal, close to Charleston, an area that they called the Low Country.

It had a ton of plantations, including Arthur Blake's.

Now you have to imagine that the enslaved people on Blake's plantation knew something big was up.

The war was suddenly so close.

They must have looked at the Union ships on the horizon and thought, is our world about to change?

Do we dare to hope?

Most of the local plantation owners fled to England like Arthur did, or further inland where it was safer.

Which makes you wonder, did those owners really think that the people they'd enslaved would just stay there?

Keep tending to the rice?

Wait patiently for the war to end and their enslavers to return?

Okay, brief history refresher here.

There's something called the Fugitive Slave Act.

It meant anyone, even Union soldiers, were ordered by law to return escaped enslaved people to their owners.

And in the earliest days of the war, Union soldiers in the South followed that law and returned runaway slaves.

But then something sort of incredible happened.

A Union general in Virginia decided, I'm not playing by that rule anymore.

He refused to return three escaped enslaved men to their Confederate slaveholder.

He figured that A, Virginia had seceded from the Union.

So federal laws like the Fugitive Slave Act no longer applied.

And B,

just like anything else the Union Army might seize from the enemy, those escaped slaves were contraband.

So there was no point in slaveholders asking for them back.

The Union Army would hang on to them and give them freedom.

Thanks.

Word traveled fast.

Soon, enslaved people across the South were escaping and joining Union troops wherever they could find them.

This generated a ton of good press and goodwill in the North.

Pretty soon, the whole point of the conflict began to change.

It became a war to free the slaves.

Which brings us back to Oak Grove Plantation.

By June of 1862, it had become a posting for a regiment of Confederate soldiers.

Since it was on the Santee River, it was a perfect spot for blockade runners to sneak their cargo past the Union naval fleet.

Naturally, the Navy wanted to stop this kind of activity, so they had ships from the base at Port Royal patrolling the coastline and rivers.

And on June 25th, three Union ships steamed past Oak Grove.

The Confederate troops were hitting, but they couldn't help themselves.

They fired on the last ship and the convoy.

There were Marines on those Union ships, and you know Marines.

They were very happy to get off the boats and bring the fight to land.

As the Union ships returned fire, a group of 60 Marines and sailors got into rowboats and came ashore.

They raced to a Confederate battery, a gun position, in the woods.

But when they got there, it had been deserted.

The rebel shooters had fled.

Then the Union troops went to the plantation itself.

They discovered a cache of weapons and proof that the spot had been used by blockade runners.

So they burned the house, the mill, and a reported 100,000 bushels of rice.

The enslaved people of Oak Grove watched the fire burn Arthur Blake's property.

They saw the Union men in their sharp navy blue uniforms.

And they realized, now is the time to escape.

So 400 of them, pretty much everyone enslaved at Oak Grove, grabbed what they could.

They raced to the union ships.

And in their midst was a young man named Robert Blake.

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As I mentioned earlier, we know so little about Robert Blake that we needed the help of a detective.

He's Joseph P.

Reedy, professor emeritus at Howard University.

He is the expert on the experiences of black men in the Navy during the Civil War.

And yet, even he thinks Robert Blake is a mystery.

There's so much we don't know.

We don't know he was married and if he had any children and what have you.

Here's what we can tell you about Robert Blake.

He stood five feet five and had a dark complexion.

What we're not so sure about,

his exact age.

But Professor Reedy checked the records on this.

When he shows up on a muster robe, he's listed as age 22.

That seems to be the sensible age that he was.

So Robert, along with hundreds of other enslaved people, left Oak Grove as the plantation burned.

They got on one of those three Union ships.

They were taken to a refugee camp near the naval base in Port Royal.

It was called North Island.

Refugee camps for escaped slaves had popped up everywhere the Union troops were.

They were nicknamed contraband camps.

They were a way for communities to stay together, to take care of one another, raise crops, and get jobs, paid jobs, probably for the first time ever.

Of course, the contraband camps were still deep in Confederate territory, so they weren't really safe.

In July of 1862, Union commanders learned that 500 rebels were preparing to attack North Island, quote, with the intention of destroying the contrabands, which number 700 men, women, and children.

But it was far, far better than life on a plantation.

And it showed people that the Navy and the Union wasn't just a way to escape slavery.

It was the basis for a whole new life and a whole new cause.

It didn't take long to realize that, especially on coastal areas or along the riverbanks, that U.S.

naval vessels potentially were a place of refuge, and that presented an opportunity for them to say, we will do whatever we can to help defeat the slaveholders' rebellion.

In the meantime, The Navy looked at the men in the contraband camps and thought, we would love their help.

When the officials in Lincoln's administration realized that African Americans were fleeing slavery and seeking refuge upon naval vessels, they realized here was a source of manpower that they could put to good use.

So they started recruiting them to join.

This wasn't an entirely surprising turn of events.

For starters, The Navy had long allowed black men to enlist, and they weren't even segregated like they were in the the army back then.

They couldn't be because of the cramped quarters on the ships.

At first, their numbers were small, like 5%.

But as the war heated up, so did enlistments.

By the summer of 1862, when we meet Robert, it was more like 15%.

In fact, More than 18,000 black men served in the Union Navy during the Civil War.

Many Many came from up north and had always been free.

They were allowed to work their way up the ranks, from boy, the lowest, to signal quartermaster.

But the newer conscripts, the formerly enslaved ones, were given a new designation.

Not boy, but contraband.

Unfortunately, these new sailors were treated as if they were less intelligent and even less strong.

They were weak, the reasoning went, because they'd been worked almost to death on the plantations.

But that was by no means true.

One Union commander said, quote, they fought energetically, bravely, none more so.

They felt that they were working on the deliverance of their own race.

Giving black men the chance to fight for the Union felt like a path towards civil rights.

The famous statesman Frederick Douglass wrote, quote, Let the black man get an eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulders and bullets in his pockets.

And there is no power on earth or under the earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.

We've seen this so many times before in this series, from Mary Walker to to Macario Garcia.

People seeing their military service as a way to become more fully part of America, with all of its rights, from voting to citizenship to freedom itself.

The Union Navy used that pitch as they walked through the contraband camp in North Island.

Military and naval recruiters were suggesting to the men, you must fight for your freedom.

That's the way you're going to secure it.

You're going to help the U.S.

defeat the Confederacy.

And in the course of doing that, you will free yourselves and you will free your family.

On July 3rd, the Navy asked for 60 volunteers to go to Port Royal for duty on the USS Vermont.

Robert was one of them.

Almost all of the enlisted men on the Vermont had African ancestry, and they had originally come from plantations up and down the coast.

They worked as laborers because the Vermont wasn't a warship, it was a supply station, a warehouse for all the things a sailor would need.

Clothing, ammunition, or letters from home.

It was also the entry point for men just joining the naval service.

That's where Robert would have been trained.

It had another benefit, too.

It kept him close to his community.

The people who escaped from the Blake plantation with him, whom he would have considered a family of sorts if they were nearby when he was stationed on the Vermont.

The possibility of interacting with them could have meant that he and other men could have maintained that sense of community even while they were in naval service.

And in a world that had been so hard and so painful, you can imagine how much that community might mean to Robert.

So he worked on the USS Vermont, most likely as a longshoreman, hauling supplies onto the ship.

Not glamorous, of course, but a solid paying job.

That only lasted about two months.

Then he was assigned to a gunship, the USS Marblehead.

There,

he would be fighting for his liberty and his life.

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To qualify for the $250 bonus, car purchase and financing must be completed by September 2nd, 2025.

Terms and conditions apply and are available at navyfederal.org slash truecar.

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In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

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With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

That's your business, Supercharged.

Learn more at supermobile.com.

Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

where you can see the sky.

Best network based on analysis by OOCHLA of of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

American Military University, where service members like you can access high-quality, affordable education built for your lifestyle.

With online programs that fit around deployments, training, and unpredictable schedules, AMU makes it possible to earn your degree no matter where duty takes you.

Their preferred military rate keeps tuition at just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's tuition.

And with 24/7 mental health support plus career coaching and other services, AMU is committed to your success during and after your service.

Learn more at amu.apus.edu slash military.

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Just around daybreak on December 25th, 1863, the sound of cannon fire burst through the quiet South Carolina morning.

Shot after shot came from shore,

catching everyone on the crew by total surprise.

The captain, Richard W.

Meade III, came running up from his cabin.

He was only 26.

a skinny guy with big sad eyes and a wispy handlebar mustache.

Meade was still wearing his nightshirt and slippers, gripping his sword in one hand and his revolver in the other.

The Marblehead was on duty in the Stono River.

It was part of the blockade, protecting troops who were working nearby.

And it was completely unprepared for battle.

For one thing, the crew was shorthanded, down to 70 men from the usual 100.

And the ship was partly disabled.

One of the boilers was being repaired.

And the crew had been getting ready to wash down the deck.

So they had pointed their largest gun inward, towards the middle of the ship, not out towards the enemy.

The shots kept coming from shore.

The Confederates had hidden cannons behind some earthworks in the woods.

They had been planning this attack for a while.

The goal was to disable the marblehead and capture its men.

That included the roughly 150 Union troops stationed nearby.

Captain Mead shouted for his men to assume battle stations, and Robert Blake went to work.

He was a powder man, sometimes called the powder boy.

His job was to carry gunpowder from the powder magazine to the guns on the deck.

The magazine was tucked away and designed to avoid explosions or fires by keeping the gunpowder safe.

So powdermen were usually young, small, and fast.

They had to be able to squeeze between the tight spots on the ship where the powder was kept.

Meade ordered the Marblehead to quickly move closer to the shore and to the Confederates.

That way, the ship would be harder to hit.

Then, he ordered the Marbleheads guns to be fired.

As the sailors got ready, blasts kept coming from shore.

Steel and wood fragments splintered across the deck.

In the first 15 minutes, three Union sailors had been killed.

Several more were wounded.

Meade later wrote that, quote, the decks were slippery with blood.

Robert was the powder man for a 20-pounder rifle.

It looked like a cannon, and it was located at the front of the ship, out in the open, totally unprotected from enemy fire.

He would have been running back and forth from the powder magazine to the rifle, up and down,

over

and over.

exposed to fire every time he reached the deck.

Robert had been on that boat since September.

He knew, of course, that he would face danger, and he was ready.

It was not that we're fighting for the freedom of enslaved South Carolinians or all enslaved people throughout the country.

No, it was literally their family and their homes.

people that they knew and they loved and they hoped to spend the rest of their lives with.

That love and commitment must have been an engine for his courage

but there was something else sparking that bravery as well a knowledge of what waited for him if they failed if he was captured being a prisoner during the civil war was horrific the death rate of pows was as high as 30 percent

But the fate of men like Robert, who were formerly enslaved, fighting for the Union, was much, much worse.

The battle went on.

A sailor was cut in two by a round from the Confederate cannon.

The men must have been screaming, screaming orders, screaming from the pain.

But according to later reports, Robert kept us cool.

He was fulfilling his assigned duty under extremely stressful and dangerous circumstances, and he was able to keep doing it at a rather extraordinary pace throughout the engagement.

Years later, Meade described, quote, the excellent manner in which he served his gun, his coolness, intrepidity and high spirits, and the merry laugh with which he cheered his comrades under the severe and galling fire of the enemy.

He seemed wholly insensible to fear.

He would cut jokes with his comrades as he passed along to the magazine with his box under his arm.

He showed a marked degree of intelligence and forethought during the hottest part of the fight.

The battle went on for an hour and a half.

Robert's gun fired 72 times.

A super high number when you consider how much work it took to fire a gun back then.

But his energy didn't flag.

And by 8 a.m., the skirmish was over.

The men of the Marblehead were victorious.

Three days after the battle, Meade went ashore with his men and took the rebels' guns.

It was the first Union naval victory in more than two years.

And Robert would get the credit he deserved.

Captain Meade was determined that Robert would be honored for his brave actions of Christmas Day, 1863.

First, he ensured that Robert got a promotion to seaman, leaving his contraband label behind him for good.

And Robert, along with three other sailors, received the Medal of Honor.

The order for the medal reads, quote, Robert Blake, serving as powder boy, displayed extraordinary courage, alacrity, and intelligence in the discharge of his duties under trying circumstances and merited the admiration of all.

Robert Blake would be the first black sailor to receive the Medal of Honor.

Robert re-enlisted.

He was on the USS Vermont where he had started the war at least through the summer of 1864.

And then, well, our trail goes cold.

Robert Blake just vanishes.

One possibility is that he stayed in South Carolina, so many formerly enslaved people did after the war.

That was the place they knew, filled with the people they loved.

And record-keeping back then wasn't great, particularly for black folks.

But maybe Robert didn't stay in South Carolina.

Our detective Professor Reedy points out that by now, Robert was a seasoned sailor.

He had naval experience at that point, and this is not to say he stayed in the Navy because he apparently did not,

but he could have continued to work as a mariner.

According to a report that Captain Mead wrote decades after the battle, Robert got $100 along with his medal.

That's worth more than $2,000 today.

That's enough money to kickstart a new life.

He was still serving on the Vermont in the summer of 1864

and the Vermont left Port Royal for the Brooklyn Navy Yard on August 2nd of that year.

Could he have still been on it?

Heading to New York?

We just don't know.

But I think it's an amazing idea.

At that time, there were close to a million people people living in New York City.

He could have slipped into those crowded streets.

Or Robert could have just boarded the next boat off to points unknown, skimming across the ocean.

Who knows?

We have no records of him.

It's possible that he changed his name and left Blake.

the name of his former slaveholder behind.

And if you're wondering what happened to old Arthur Middleton Blake, here's this, Jim.

For years after the Civil War ended, Arthur had the audacity to petition the government asking to be paid back for the slaves who had been quote unquote taken from him.

A sum that he said amounted to at least $400,000.

One man on Arthur's list of property is named Robert.

He's valued at $1,100,

almost twice the average of other enslaved people.

Whether that was our Robert Blake or the other Robert Blake is unclear.

In 1875, the U.S.

Congress unequivocally rejected Arthur's petition.

Good God, Arthur.

Captain Mead also wondered what became of Robert, as he later wrote, quote, whatever became of him does not appear, as there is no record of him in the books at the Navy Department.

But if he is still alive, he is doubtless as cheery as ever.

No man ever deserved a medal of honor more truly than this gallant young Negro.

From the captain down, Every man on the marblehead honored the ex-slave, Robert Blake.

I personally love the idea of Robert having a totally fresh start, a new city, maybe even a new name.

But whether he left the South or not, I hope he felt that his courage was rewarded.

Not by the Medal of Honor, not by the $100,

but by the hope for a country that might deliver on its promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone.

Hope for a new version of America.

Hope

at long last

for freedom.

Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane.

Our editor on this episode is Amy Gaines-McQuaid.

Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.

Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo.

Fact-checking by Arthur Gompertz and original music by Eric Phillips.

Production support by Suzanne Gabber.

Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

Don't forget, we want to hear from you.

Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.

Email us at medalofhonor at pushkin.fm.

You might hear your stories on future episodes of Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels at Pushkin Pods.

I'm your host, J.R.

Martinez.

This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union.

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Because the home buyer's choice loan has no down payment options available, which means you don't have to wait years to save.

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Learn more at navyfederal.org, Navy Federal Credit Union.

Terms and conditions apply, equal housing lender, loans subject to approval, and eligibility requirements.

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