**Cross­ing the Bar: The Demon of Unrest**

On Jan­u­ary 8, the *Star of the West* was met with unex­pect­ed­ly fine weath­er while nav­i­gat­ing toward its des­ti­na­tion. The offi­cer in charge, Lieu­tenant Woods, unknow­ing­ly dis­trib­uted guns and ammu­ni­tion to the troops, obliv­i­ous to the rev­e­la­tion that their mis­sion had been can­celed. As the ship drew clos­er to Charleston at mid­night, Cap­tain John McGowan ordered all lights extin­guished to avoid detec­tion. Despite the dark­ness, which was fur­ther com­pound­ed by a new moon, the sol­diers were allowed on deck.

As they entered the Charleston Bar, McGowan found the har­bor light­hous­es dark­ened and a cru­cial nav­i­ga­tion­al buoy miss­ing. He resort­ed to sounding—an ancient method of mea­sur­ing depth by low­er­ing a weight­ed line into the water—until dawn revealed a light that he deduced was from Fort Sumter. Woods lat­er described their approach as “grop­ing in the dark,” reflect­ing the uncer­tain­ty of their nav­i­ga­tion. They pro­ceed­ed cau­tious­ly, wait­ing for day­light before attempt­ing to cross the bar, aware that an ebb tide was com­pli­cat­ing their efforts.

At day­break, a near­by steam­er, clear­ly on watch, prompt­ed McGowan to keep the *Star of the West*‘s flag vis­i­ble. The steam­er sig­naled with blue and red lights, demand­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion but when McGowan remained silent, it crossed into the har­bor, fir­ing rock­ets. As they neared the entrance, both Fort Sumter and Fort Moul­trie came into view, with Fort Sumter dis­play­ing an Amer­i­can flag.

The look­outs spot­ted a large red pal­met­to flag on Mor­ris Island, indi­cat­ing the pres­ence of a hid­den bat­tery of five can­nons, manned by cadets from a near­by small­pox hos­pi­tal. Cap­tain Abn­er Dou­ble­day at Fort Sumter was alone that morn­ing and was aware of the can­non’s pur­pose to pro­tect the ship­ping chan­nel rather than attack Sumter. Despite rumors of the *Star of the West*’s mis­sion, Dou­ble­day felt it implau­si­ble that the gov­ern­ment would send a mere trans­port ves­sel in such a sit­u­a­tion.

How­ev­er, as he scanned the hori­zon, he saw the steam­er approach­ing with the Unit­ed States flag aloft. Just then, a can­non fired from the bat­tery on Mor­ris Island, land­ing in the chan­nel ahead of the ship, seem­ing­ly to deter its progress. Yet, the *Star of the West* con­tin­ued for­ward, with a large Unit­ed States gar­ri­son flag raised, prompt­ing Dou­ble­day to hur­ry to noti­fy Major Ander­son of the unfold­ing events.