What about the cannon fire from the rebel batteries directed at the Rhoda A. Shannon the week before? Don't those count? Never mind the fire directed at the Star of the West in January. Wouldn't those have been among the first shots fired?
I ran across an old article on the incident. From the Memphis Daily Appeal of April 9, 1861:
The Vessel fired into at Charleston
From the Savannah Republican, April 5
Since copying the article from the Charleston Courier, the vessel fired into from the forts at Morris Island has arrived in our port, and we are enabled to give full particulars of the affair.
The schooner is the H. R. Shannon, Capt. Ments, of Boston, and she was bound for this city with a cargo of ice, consigned to A. Haywood. On Wednesday she was shrouded for many hours in a dense fog, during which she drifted through mistake over the Charleston bar. Soon after the fog lifted, the captain, not knowing his whereabouts, found himself nearly abreast of the fort on Morris island, and while cogitating over his latitude and longitude, he was greeted with a salute from the fort. He immediately ran up his colors -- the stars and stripes -- but that demonstration seemed an unsatisfactory answer to their summons. Several shots (thirty-two's) were fired into her rigging, one passed through his mainsail and another through his topsail. In the midst of this dilemma, not knowing where he was or the object of this hostile demonstration, a boat from Fort Sumter came to his relief, and being made acquainted with the facts, he lost no time in putting to sea.
The schooner suffered no material damage from the shots, though one of them came uncomfortably near the head of one of the crew. Capt. Ments thinks there is no mistake about the Morris island boys being excellent marksmen.
A cargo of ice? I thought people of the times were kidding when they made the point that the summer crop of Massachusetts was granite and the winter crop was ice. Guess not.