(Credit: Naval History and Heritage Command) 
 
 NOAA announced today it has determined the probable location of the remains of the Civil War-era sidewheel steamer Planter, which gained national fame in 1862 when a group of enslaved African Americans commandeered the Confederate Navy transport ship in a daring escape to freedom. The shipwrecked Planter almost certainly rests beneath 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 meters) of sand and water off Cape Romain between Charleston and Georgetown, South Carolina, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this week. NOAA’s report helps fill gaps in the largely untold story of Robert Smalls and the Planter, which wrecked on a beach in March 1876 while trying to tow a grounded schooner. NOAA identifies probable location of iconic 
 
 Civil War-era steamer 
 
 Former slave piloted Planter to freedom 
 
 Planter at Georgetown, South Carolina. Under the leadership of Robert Smalls, the ship’s steersman, crew members navigated the steamer out of Charleston Harbor on May 12, 1862, and delivered the vessel to the United States Navy. "Once out of range of the rebel guns the white flag was raised, and the Planter steamed directly for the blockading [Union] steamer Augusta," Harper's explained in June 1862. However, by September of that year, the Navy transferred the craft to the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, where it supported Army operations around Charleston, Port Royal and Beaufort. The ship soon went back to its pre-war duties delivering supplies up and down the South Carolina coast. In 1876, the Planter was attempting to tow a ship that had run aground at Cape Romain up the coast from Charleston. The likely site where the vessel came to rest, off Cape Romain between Charleston and Georgetown, South Carolina, was confirmed with magnetometer and hydro-probing surveys that detected the presence of large concentrations of iron consistent with the remains of a sunken ship. The area is environmentally sensitive (Cape Romain, up the coast from Charleston, is home to a national wildlife refuge), so attempts to uncover the wreck will need to be taken with care, NOAA reported. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our other social media channels.
– After the American Civil War, a storied ship was wrecked off South Carolina. Now, experts believe they've found the remains of the Planter, a Confederate supply ship commandeered by its crew of slaves and turned over to the Union, LiveScience reports. The ship's wheelsman, in charge of steering, was one Robert Smalls, whose "knowledge became vital to the Confederates," an expert tells Discovery. The crew at first joked about commandeering the ship, Smalls later said, but eventually the slaves decided to take real action. When the crew's white men were partying offshore in 1862, Smalls and Co. made a daring break for it, picking up relatives as they escaped. They turned the Planter over to the Union, and Smalls continued to operate it as it fought the Confederates. He became the US military's first African-American captain, and eventually a US congressman. Years after the war, in 1876, the ship was damaged in a storm near Charleston and buried in sand. NOAA researchers have likely rediscovered it using a magnetometer to trace its iron. Now, South Carolina could excavate it—or install a tribute at the site. A plaque has already been made, Reuters reports. (Another shipwreck off South Carolina appears to house plenty of gold.)