Designed to resemble a paddlewheel steamboat, this ferry is the only way to visit historic Fort Sumter from Charleston. I abstract the scene, including part of the circular paddlewheel casing and featuring the silhouettes of four passengers standing on the ferry’s covered upper deck. The first shots of the American Civil War were fired upon Fort Sumter at 4:30 am on April 12, 1861, as South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. Charleston residents, sitting on balconies and drinking salutes to the start of hostilities, watched the bombardment. The Confederate guns overwhelmed the Union soldiers in Fort Sumter, who offered only token resistance. Captain Abner Doubleday, who later was said to have “invented baseball,” was given the honor of firing the Union’s first shot. He missed.