Iron Ships, Iron Men

by Christopher Nicole

  Rod hesitated but a moment, then took the offered fingers. ‘And I shall be proud to serve under you, Captain Buchanan.’

  ‘That’s splendid,’ Mallory said. ‘Now, gentlemen, there is but one detail remaining to be settled. A name for our ironclad. I am sure you will agree that we cannot take her to sea as theMerrimack.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Buchanan said. ‘Well, as she is our first genuine warship, and she will be primarily defending the state of Virginia, which is the centre of the defence of our new country, let me suggest that we rename her,Virginia.’

  ‘Capital,’ Mallory cried. He opened his desk drawer and took out a bottle of brandy, filled three glasses. ‘I give you, the Confederate States ShipVirginia, and all who sail in her. May their fame never grow less.’

  Chapter Eight: Hampton Roads — 1862

  ‘I AM quite astounded,’ wrote Jerry McGann, ‘to read of Rod Bascom’s so-called “exploits” as reported in the popular press, and I imagine you have been also. It just goes to show how inadequately one can ever know another person, whatever one’s relationship. Rod has always pretended to be decidedly against slavery, yet here he is fighting for that vile cause. This would be disconcerting enough — but in such a manner as commerce destroying! At best, privateering is legalised piracy, and when it is conducted by a rebel vessel against the government of the United States, then it is not even legal. I am sorry to say that Rod and his compatriots could well find themselves dangling at the end of a rope when they are captured, as they are bound to be, by one of our cruisers — and I must admit that I cannot but hope that fortune will enable me to be on board the vessel that ultimately rids the seas of these vermin. I know you will be distressed to hear me turn so against one I once called friend to the best of my ability, but believe me, I am far more distressed by his renegade point of view than by his actions, or his inevitable and well deserved fate. That such a man should be my own brother-in-law!’ Marguerite put down the letter to gaze out of the window. She would never have expected Jerry to write in words of such condemnation. Such anger, indeed. But that was the mood which was sweeping over the entire North since the catastrophe of Bull Run had demonstrated that there was no chance of this struggle being decided as a police action, in which Federal troops would merely move into Richmond, place Jefferson Davis and his cabinet under arrest, disband his army, and restore the Union to its proper glory. The people of the North had become alarmed by the size of the quarrel they had got themselves into, and by their, so far, total lack of success, and that alarm had turned to an even more bitter hatred of those arrogant Southern gentlemen, who not only lived from the proceeds of slavery, and lived better than almost anyone in the North could aspire to, but had now also proved that they were prepared to defend their way of life, and could do so with every prospect of success. The North’s anger had overflowed in the most virulent attacks upon the Southern leaders, the most intemperate propaganda concerning their domestic vices and the brutalities they practised on their slaves, and had now gone even further than words, in the action of a Northern navy captain in removing at the point of a gun two Confederate commissioners, Messrs Slidell and Mason, from the deck of a British ship carrying them to Europe. Even the cabinet in Washington had had to disavow this breach of international etiquette, and by all accounts the British were very nearly ready to go to war at the insult to their flag — which was something the Federal Government simply could not risk.

  So on that point no doubt they would apologise, and the matter would be settled by diplomacy. The hatred here in America was only going to be settled by force of arms. But for people like her, Marguerite thought, people caught on the wrong side of the fence, life was rapidly becoming intolerable. The McGanns determinedly treated her as one of them, but few of the people outside the family with whom she came into contact would even speak to her nowadays — she was too clearly, in speech and manner, one of those ‘southern belles’ whom the Northerners affected to hold in the most utter contempt, and abused in the vilest terms.

  In this sea of anger and outrage, only the memory of the good-humoured sanity of her husband had held any promise for the future. But now, to have Jerry in effect promising to hang Rod when next they met ... and Rod, fighting for the Southern cause where she had supposed he had certainly fled to the North. She was actually as surprised as her husband at the news. But Rod was a man of the strangest contrasts, the strangest motivations. It was the thought that part of the motivation could be herself that left her faintly breathless. She had never doubted in her heart that she was the one he had always really loved, but he had been too much of a gentleman, and too unsure of himself, to resist the advances of Claudine — and until it was too late she had been too determined not to repeat the mistake of her mother in marrying beneath her. She knew Rod had never liked her father, and she had had sufficient evidence to indicate that he heartily disapproved of slavery. Yet here he was, in effect, fighting for his wife and home as if he had been born and bred in New Orleans. She had to believe that he was actually fighting for them. But if he was not, then he had to be fighting for the memory of her, and that was even more strange, as she was another man’s wife, and was buried away in that very North he was opposing.

  But how very romantic of him. She wondered if she would ever see him again, or if he would indeed be hanged, as Jerry seemed to think was inevitable.

  She sighed, and picked up the letter again ... and her heart slowly seemed to constrict as she read on.

  ‘On a happier note,’ Jerry wrote, ‘you will be pleased to learn that our masters in Washington have at last determined to promote this war in a positive manner. If the Southern leaders indeed wish to be hammered into the ground, then hammered they will be. I need hardly tell you that what I am about to say is in the strictest confidence, but I can tell you that a vast army is being prepared to land on the James Peninsula within Hampton Roads and thence march on Richmond. It is unlikely that the Confederate forces will be able to stop them, as appointed to the command is George McClellan, whose military talents are well known, and who has, in fact, been likened to the great Bonaparte. Of that I cannot possibly judge, as I am not a soldier. But as it is recognised that even the occupation of Richmond may not immediately end the war, supposing the rebel leaders retreat into their heartland, it has also been determined that the Confederacy should be invaded from the other end as well, and this, concerning as it does, your own New Orleans, will be principally a Navy matter. Oh, there will be an army, commanded by General Butler, but the chief command will rest with Commodore Farragut, who has been provided with a fleet of specially shallow draft gunboats in order to enable him to proceed up the river and to the city itself. The expedition will be mounted as soon as possible in the New Year, which alas means there is little prospect of a Christmas furlough, but anything which serves to bring this war to a rapid conclusion has to be for the good.

  ‘From this you may gather that I shall be personally involved. To my great joy I have been posted as executive officer on Farragut’s own ship, and so will at last be in the thick of things instead of sailing up and down an empty sea looking for blockade runners.

  ‘Now, my dear girl, there is absolutely nothing for you to concern yourself about, on my behalf. There will be absolutely no risk in this venture, to me, or any of our people, so far as can be seen. That we shall be completely successful needs no explaining. The South have only a small militia force in New Orleans, the defending forts are manned by amateurs, and we shall have the great advantage of total surprise, as they know nothing of our plans. Imagine what Wilbur and Claudine and your mother will say when I arrive on their doorstep with a file of marines at my back! I can at least promise that they will be protected and well cared for, my dearest darling, although I imagine there will have to be various inconveniences. However, you may leave their safety securely in my hands, and you may be certain that I shall do my very best to prevent any serious damage to Martine’s although I am afraid that it may be some time be
fore it produces any more sugar.

  ‘And now, my dearest, dearest girl ...’

  Marguerite put down the letter once more; she was not in the mood to read the loving expressions with which he always ended a letter to her. Her throat was quite dry. A Federal fleet was going to invade New Orleans, and thus seal up the Mississippi, the very backbone of the Confederacy. Of course he was right about the absence of risk; taken by surprise as the militia would be, it would hardly be a contest. For the Yankees. But for those ashore ... Mama and Claudine could well be in New Orleans when it was bombarded. Or worse, when the Federal troops were landed. She had seen something of the Federal troops in New York. Hastily enlisted, filled with the hate propaganda which depicted every Southern gentlewoman as a whore who habitually whipped her slaves for pleasure, they truly were, in her opinion, the scum of the earth.

  And then, Rod might even be home on furlough — no one seemed to know where theSumternow was, and if he had been reported as having brought theBoston Queen safely into Savannah, he would hardly have remained there — and be seized and hanged as a pirate.

  She forced herself to read the remainder of the letter, the expressions of affection, and love for little Joe. Then once again she stared into space. She was aware of so many emotions, almost every one conflicting, that she could scarcely think straight. Had she married Jerry for love, or out of spite for having lost Rod? She would have to admit the latter, at the time. That Jerry had turned out to be a most loving and lovable man had altered the situation, but when she had abandoned Martine’s to be with him she had again acted mostly out of pride — and an unshakeable faith in the future. She had never doubted that she and her family would be reconciled, and that indeed it would happen when she gave her mother a grandson. She had not understood how the apparently safest of plans could be torn up and cast to the winds by the anger of men.

  Had the war begun before her marriage, as it would have done had she, sensibly, waited until after Jerry had had his foreign posting and returned to America, she knew she would never have gone through with it. If she had felt she could love him, the pull of Martine’s and of everything she had been brought up to, would have been stronger. But that too had been the whim of fortune, and even more, it had been fortune’s decision to have the war start when they had been separated by several thousand miles. She had not seen him since, had no real idea what her husband thought about it all, had pinned her faith in her brief acquaintance with his nature, dismissed his early letters as the naturally jingoist reaction of a fighting man by tradition and training, at last called upon to fight — even against his own people. But now he had become contaminated by the hate virus which was sweeping the nation. Even worse, he seemed to assume that she would entirely share his point of view, had entirely foresworn her forebears and her home to become a sea-going farmer’s wife, and adopt a sea-going farmer’s attitudes — even against her own people. Thus he could speak casually to her of Martine’s being damaged as if that didn’t matter, when he no doubt really meant overrun by hating Federal soldiers, clearly had every intention of treating Mother and Father as enemies, if with politeness ... and also had every intention of hanging her brother-in-law.

  Always back to that final point. But why continue to be hypocritical? Her heart was in Louisiana. It could never be here. If she had hoped it might be wherever Jerry was, that hope too was now destroyed, because the Jerry she had loved on her wedding night would never be anywhere again — he no longer existed.

  But to do something about it ... would mean a betrayal of her marriage, and of his confidence, to strike a blow for the Confederacy. But it might even be worse than that, a betrayal of her own sister. For a man who believed in what she believed in, and who she could not forget, no matter how hard she tried.

  It would also mean robbing her husband of the son he had never seen. Were she to do all those things, and ever again come face to face with him ... her imagination could not cope with his possible reaction. Because, apart from all else, he would have no doubt she had fled to Rod.

  ‘Meggy,’ came the call from downstairs, the voice of the other Meg. ‘There’s the cider to be prepared. You’ll give me a hand, please.’

  Marguerite raised her head and sighed, and looked at the baby again, then down at her hands, which were already beginning to reveal the effects of her daily grind of physical hard labour.

  How could she possibly stay?

  *

  If New York rightfully regarded itself as the centre of American business, Rod thought that Chesapeake Bay could equally rightfully be regarded as the centre of American history. It was off Chesapeake, as he and Jerry McGann had recalled when he had first come to this country, three years before, that the naval battle had taken place in 1781, between the fleets of Great Britain and France, in which the failure of Admirals Graves and Hood to defeat the Comte d’Estaing had sealed the fate of the British defenders of Yorktown, and thus ensured the victory of the American colonists in their struggle for independence. Within the bay itself, history dripped from every direction. If one proceeded straight north up the huge waterway, one eventually arrived at the famous Head ofElk, from where Washington and Rochambeau had embarked their troops to surprise Cornwallis at Yorktown, while only a little distance to the west was the great seaport of Baltimore. Two-thirds of the way up the bay, the broad waters of the Potomac River debouched, and the Potomac led directly to Washington, the nation’s capital. In 1814, again as he and Jerry had recalled, the British had ascended this waterway, defeated an American force at Bladensburg, and burned the Capitol. A little further south and one came to the Rappahannock River, which was now regarded as the boundary line between the Unionist and Confederate states. Then, at the bottom end of the bay, the James and York Rivers led away from the great anchorage of Hampton Roads. Enclosed by the two was the York Peninsula, the most famous place in America. Here the first successful colony had been planted in the early seventeenth century, and only a few miles up the York River was Yorktown itself. The James River to the south led to Richmond, the capital of the Confederate States of America, and the Union goal.

  On the southern shore of the bay, within the headland of Cape Henry, lay the great navy yard of Norfolk, taken by the Confederates in the early part of the war, and held by them ever since. But the rest of the waterway was denied to them by the presence of a powerful Union squadron, which had steamed boldly through the Narrows to take up its position in the very heart of the Confederacy, confident that the ‘rebels’ had nothing with which to oppose it. Lying their in there superb strength, easily visible from the shore, the Union ships maintained a permanent blockade of the Confederate capital, preventing the use of the bay by Confederate shipping, and would enable the Federal generals to move as large an army as they chose down to the peninsula to begin that direct assault upon the Confederate capital so dear to the hearts of the Northern strategists. From the reports of Confederate spies, that was precisely the campaign the Federal commander-in-chief, General McClellan, the Young Napoleon as he was called, intended to carry out. And there was nothing the Confederates could do to stop him, so long as the Union fleet dominated the water.

  Leading south from Norfolk was a small river known as the Elizabeth, which took its water from the more forebodingly named Dismal Swamp. It was up this river, safe from any Federal raiding party, that Rod had his first glimpse of the United States ShipMerrimack. His heart nearly sank, and more so when he went on board. A big vessel, two hundred and seventy-five feet long, fifty-one feet wide, and, most disturbingly, drawing twenty-four feet, she displaced four and a half thousand tons, and was altogether far too large for work in shoal waters. She was also a wreck. As Buchanan had said, the Federal attempt to burn her had been a hasty and botched affair, but she was still in a state of total disrepair. While her engine was a mass of rust, and had apparently been faulty before that.

  But there was no time for despair. No one could doubt that McClellan would launch his assault with the coming o
f spring. If they were going to succeed in their self-appointed task of driving away the Federal fleet before them, it was a matter of working round the clock, under the supervision of Captain Buchanan and his officers, with the aid of engineers and artificers secured from all over the Confederacy. The primitive shipyard was like a prison, for no man, once allowed in, was allowed out, for fear of the work being leaked to Federal spies; Christmas was very much a single toast affair, as they worked on into the bitter January weather.

  The first task was to cut away the topsides of the vessel, right down to the waterline. This was of course against the instincts and training of every seaman involved, but it was a necessary part of the revolutionary concept which was being put into effect. This cut-away hull was then replaced with iron railway line, as suggested by Rod, bolted horizontal to vertical, to make an ugly but immensely strong structure, which, inclining inwards from the sides as well as from bow and stern, looked like the roof of a large barn. Indeed, the finished ship looked exactly like a floating barn, save for its smokestack and its small control platform forward. Of creature comforts there were virtually none; she had been designed to do a specific job, not to be lived on.

  The iron structure complete, her guns could be restored. She carried no less than forty, and if twenty-eight of these were so small as to count for nothing in a ship to ship fight, the other twelve were great nine-inch Dahlgrens — so called from the engineer who had designed them — nicknamed the ginger-beer bottles from their remarkable shape, which ballooned from the narrow, nine-inch muzzle to a huge round chamber, supposed to give their shot the maximum propulsion. They were smoothbore, but if they could get close enough would certainly be a formidable proposition for any wooden ship to face. Far more formidable, however — supposing it could ever be put to use — was the iron ram which was built on to the bow of the ship, to provide her with a deadly lance could she get up against any enemy. This last seemed unlikely, unfortunately, as the engine continued to give a great deal of trouble, and it soon became apparent that they could hope for little more than four knots speed at best, which would allow any warship ample time to avoid her.