Where? There's actually nothing in the OR about the Nashville/Harriet Lane matter, except Fox's report that the Nashville and other merchant ships were laying off the bar "awaiting the results o fthe bombardment."
What I do find in the OR is a letter from Commander Harstene saying that "I have just made out the vessels off. They are the Pawnee, Harriet Lane, Nashville, Atlantic (Baltic), and a merchant schooner. They cannot enter in their vessels. With a good lookout (for a lookout stationed here, and a boat in the channel, together with their fire hulks, which are still floating in a line around Fort Sumter) I think you have no fear of an entrance here."
Sounds to me like it's the rebels who are insuring that the ships are unable to proceed.
Then, of course, there's the gale blowing the whole time, and the heavy seas, and the tricky channel entrance into Charleston, and the fact that there's a major artillery barrage going on. But none of those things have anything to do with the ships waiting off the bar. It's because the Harriet Lane fired a shot across the bow of the Nashville. Fine. Believe what you want. Believe that it makes no difference that the ice schooner was seized before or after the firing on Sumter began. Believe that the rebels firing on the Star of the West months earlier doesn't count as the "first shot of the war." Or the firing on the Rhoda H. Shannon. And speaking of the Rhoda H. Shannon, here's an interesting bit, " When the Shannon was fired upon, the vessel's master raised the American flag thinking he was being asked to show his colors! Continuing into the harbor, more shots were fired, the ship was struck, and it turned back to sea." Hmm. Shots fired, the ships raises its colors and proceeds. Where have I seen that before? Of course, unlike the Harriet Lane, the rebels continued to fire on the ice schooner.
Now, if you want to talk seizures, let's talk about the confederate seizure of the US ships Isabella, Henry Dodge, Washington and others, all long before any expedition to relieve Sumter.
The Vessel fired into at CharlestonFrom 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.
Perhaps you are forgetting about the US soldiers who on December 26, 1860, fought the captain of a schooner transporting women and supplies to Fort Johnson in Charleston Harbor, overcame him, and took his ship to Fort Sumter.