 but he was able to talk his way out of a whipping and got off with just a stern warning, though his master later sent him off to be hired in Charleston, where he was allowed to keep a small amount of his wages. Robert Smalls was ethnically Gullah Geechee, a society of African descendants along the coast and sea islands of the Carolinas, Georgia, and North Florida, and his familiarity with the sea would become key to his freedom via a ship called the planter.