On April 8, Cap­tain Fox pre­pared to launch his fleet with pride, hav­ing tran­si­tioned from a Navy man to lead­ing a sig­nif­i­cant mil­i­tary expe­di­tion to Charleston, con­fi­dent that the pres­ence of the **Powhatan** meant vic­to­ry. The tug **Uncle Ben** depart­ed New York that evening, fol­lowed by Fox aboard the **Baltic** the next morn­ing, expect­ing a suc­cess­ful ren­dezvous with his fleet off Charleston two days lat­er.

How­ev­er, as the **Baltic** nav­i­gat­ed out of New York Har­bor, it faced a fierce Atlantic gale that dis­rupt­ed Fox’s plans. The storm scat­tered his ves­sels: the **Uncle Ben** took refuge in Wilm­ing­ton, while the **Yan­kee** was blown past Charleston to Savan­nah. The **Free­born** skipped the expe­di­tion alto­geth­er due to its risks, as its own­ers chose to keep it in New York. Unaware of these set­backs, Fox remained opti­mistic, believ­ing the mis­sion was pro­ceed­ing as intend­ed but like­ly delayed by the tem­pest. He antic­i­pat­ed meet­ing the rest of the fleet, par­tic­u­lar­ly the **Powhatan**, equipped with troops and artillery, at Charleston Har­bor.

Mean­while, on the same day, Major Ander­son and his men at Fort Sumter were alarmed by an explo­sion near Fort Moul­trie, which revealed a new Con­fed­er­ate bat­tery equipped with four sub­stan­tial guns. This dis­cov­ery deeply unset­tled Ander­son and prompt­ed a reeval­u­a­tion of their defen­sive strate­gies. The new bat­tery increased the Con­fed­er­ate gun posi­tions around the har­bor to nine­teen, which wor­ried the Union forces sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Ander­son rec­og­nized the threat posed by the bat­tery, dic­tat­ing that their defens­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly the para­pet, would be off-lim­its to keep his men safer, though this deci­sion lim­it­ed their fire­pow­er.

In Wash­ing­ton, Con­fed­er­ate com­mis­sion­ers expressed their ris­ing con­cerns about mis­lead­ing assur­ances from Sec­re­tary Seward. On April 8, one com­mis­sion­er received a cryp­tic mes­sage urg­ing con­tin­ued faith regard­ing Sumter, which only height­ened their anx­i­ety. Frus­trat­ed with the per­ceived inde­ci­sion of Lincoln’s admin­is­tra­tion, they tasked their sec­re­tary, James Pick­ett, with demand­ing a for­mal meet­ing with Lin­coln, but he only received an out­dat­ed mem­o­ran­dum from Seward, exac­er­bat­ing their frus­tra­tions .