On the spar deck Ulric Dahlgren was with the Marines manning one of those very guns—a 5.1-inch Dahlgren rifle. He had applauded the accuracy of the men with that piece and had been as admiring, albeit more ruefully, of the accuracy of the British Armstrong gunners on Black Prince’s own spar deck.40 Their guns stopped one by one, whether hit or not, and the Dahlgren muzzle-loading rifle continued firing. Ulric had unconsciously hobbled up to take the place of a crewman felled by a splinter. By then the men had no time to spare for the bizarre scene of a one-legged Army colonel feeding the guns just like a tar. The gold eagles on his shoulder straps were more than incongruous. They attracted the fire of Royal Marine riflemen. The deck splintered around him, and rounds pinged off the gun. Another man fell to writhe on the deck. All the Marines aboard, not manning guns, had been issued the Spencers Admiral Dahlgren had so presciently ordered. Their volume of fire quickly dropped the enemy’s Marines from the rigging and forced those on deck under cover.41
By now Captain Wainwright had brought Black Prince alongside New Ironsides again. Young Dahlgren saw an officer through the smoke shout through a megaphone, “Do you strike?”
Ulric hobbled to the side, his cap blown off and his blond hair streaked with powder. He cupped his hands and replied as the son of an admiral, “The Navy never strikes!” His Marines cheered. He looked back at them and winked, then turned to shout across the water again, “And neither does the U.S. Army!” Amazingly, the Marines cheered again, delighted with his pluck, Army or no Army. The gunner fired to punctuate their approval.42
Aboard Black Prince, the officer was blown off his feet, his clothes shredded and his megaphone sailing over the other side of the ship. He got up and staggered to report back to Seymour in his armored conning tower. The admiral looked at the man’s glassy eyes and singed and torn uniform, and asked, “Well?”
“They said the U.S. Army refuses to strike, sir.”
Seymour blinked and said, “What did you say?”
“They said the U.S. Army refuses to strike, sir.” Then he fell over.43
Before Seymour could try to make sense of this, his flag captain, Arthur Cochrane, interrupted with the damage report from Black Prince’s captain.44 It drained away much of his confidence. More than half his guns were silenced. The armored casemate was torn and rent the entire length of the ship. The men were fighting fires in a half dozen places. The upper decks had been swept with exploding shells until it was a shambles. The American sloops were steaming back forth, pounding the exposed side of the ship and forcing it to fight in two directions.
For Seymour, the whole battle had telescoped into the struggle between these two ships. Whoever triumphed would win the entire battle. It all rested on that. “Put her alongside, muzzle to muzzle, and we shall fight it out, Captain. Be prepared to board,” he told Wainwright. The cry went out to assemble boarding parties. Seymour did not flinch as the two ships lurched into each other with a grinding squeal of metal on metal that would have frightened hell. The gun crews had been so worked up to the fighting that they barely took note of the eerie noise that echoed through the gun decks.
The only thing that kept the guns in action was New Ironsides’s seventeen-degree outward slant of her hull. Otherwise, the opposing hull would have shut the gun ports and the guns would have been unable to be run out. Locked in death’s embrace, the two ships fired and fired—the British gunners now had open gun ports, small as they were, to sight through only yards away—gutting each other and smashing the opposing gun decks until only a handful of guns functioned on either side. For the British boarding parties waiting expectantly for the impact, the noise went straight through them, their hearts pounding in the few still seconds before the order to board was given. “Board!” They raced to the side and threw their grapples to snag the enemy. A few made it over the yawning gap made by the American hull’s slant, but the boarding parties were stopped at the sides, unable to leap across so wide a space. Massed on the side they made too good a target for the U.S. Marine sharpshooters. Concentrated fire into the tight groups of sailors and Marines dropped a score and drove the rest under cover.45
Inadvertently New Ironsides’s gunners solved the stalemate by shooting through Black Prince’s mizzenmast. It screamed as it splintered, then with a groan fell over the side and onto the Americans’ deck. Ulric instantly saw it as a bridge. He scrambled to the mast, pulled himself up by the strength of his arms and good leg, then forced his leg under him to rise to a standing position. He did not dash over the mast; rather, he hobbled almost crablike, dragging and swinging his cork leg after him. Yet the young man who had danced across the dance floors of Washington with such grace summoned every last bit of that coordination and control to pick his way across that rounded, splintered, and rope-twisted mast. If he had been able to pay attention he would not have been able to tell which group of men was more incredulous at the sight—the British manning the stern Armstrong pivot gun or his own Marine gun crew. Finally reaching the enemy’s side, he let himself down onto his good leg and sagged from the impact. He was on the deck of Black Prince. He barely had time to look up and see the gleam of a bayonet with a red coat behind it rushing toward him.
Oblivious to the drama on the surface, the admiral’s two small submersibles had waited for just this moment for Black Prince to close. Their torpedoes bulged at the end of long spars. Finding the ship through the glass ports in the light filtering down from the cloudless sky, they made gentle contact with the iron hull with the strong magnet on the end of the torpedo. Once the torpedoes were locked onto the hull they backed off, unraveling the electric wires that connected with batteries inside the boats. Before the wires went completely taut, the circuits were closed.
Ulric had barely drawn himself up. The Royal Marine’s bayonet was plunging toward his chest when the deck heaved, throwing him onto one of the Armstrongs. The gun crew had been thrown off their feet as well and were just getting up when the deck heaved again. An awful groaning came from deep within the ship.
Installed low in Black Prince, her engines had survived the hard pounding as her gang stoked the forty furnaces feeding the ten boilers that generated the steam for its 5,210-horsepower engines. But the torpedoes had struck where the Dahlgrens could not reach, bending the shaft and rupturing some of the furnaces. Burning coal, white-hot ash, and clinker spewed out among the stokers, who screamed out their last moments in hell. Water rushed in through the torn hull, flooding the engine rooms as the guns above continued to fight. When the seawater reached the boilers, they began to explode.46
The ship’s death agony was not yet apparent to the men on deck getting to their feet. The tars were game and came for Ulric again. He had drawn his Navy Colt and dropped the first two men. A third struck him a numbing blow on the shoulder with a rammer; the pistol fell from his hand. The tar drew back to brain him, but he went down under the rush of men in blue coats. Ulric’s own Marines had followed him over the mast armed with cutlasses and pikes from the ready racks. He was pulled to his feet by strong arms.
On the bridge, Captain Wainwright was desperately trying to reach the engine room through the metal voice pipes and the mechanical telegraph connected to it. The shrieks at the end of the voice pipe told him the worst. Everyone in the conning tower had been frozen listening to the death below. The shudders that pulsed up through the deck from the exploding boilers jarred everyone back to life. Wainwright knew his ship was lost. He found Seymour had slumped into his chair. “Admiral, Black Prince is mortally wounded. She can do no more. I must save the men who are left.” Seymour’s jaw set in a vise as the ship groaned in its death throes; he could only nod.
Wainwright left the conning tower to personally haul down the colors, an act he would not delegate to a man of lower rank. He made his way through the shambles on the spar deck. He could feel the ship beginning to settle under him as it listed to larboard. The smoke from the guns and a dozen fires on the deck hid the stern in its wispy black arms. He made out
a group on the stern around the pivot gun and was about to order them to abandon ship, when the breeze quickened to part the smoke. They were not his men.
The officer among them was a young, fair man, leaning against the gun. A man raised a pistol to shoot, but the officer knocked it up to discharge in the air. The officer straightened up and touched the muzzle of his own pistol to his forehead in salute. “Colonel Dahlgren, United States Army, sir.”
Wainwright was a hard man to fluster, and even this scene could not break through the iron presence of a naval officer. He touched the brim of his cap, “Captain Wainwright, commanding Her Majesty’s Ship Black Prince, sir.”
As the deck began to cant even more, Dahlgren coolly asked, “Do you strike, sir?”
“Damnation, sir. I do.”
SOUTH AGER DOCK, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, 7:32 PM, OCTOBER 8, 1863
For more than two hours the crowds massed along the battery and the Charleston docks had been barely able to control their excitement. They could not actually see the battle six miles away beyond Fort Sumter and Morris Island, but they could hear the continuous rumble of the guns and see the pall of smoke. It was more than just gunpowder smoke. The funeral pyres of great wooden ships go straight up into the heavens. Signals from Fort Sumter added little.
That changed as the signal officer at Beauregard’s side read the waving flags from his telescope. His voice shaking he said, “Sumter reports a huge British warship is sailing into the harbor.” That could only mean that the British had won the naval battle. The arrival of the ship was the act in international law that would declare the hated blockade broken. Those on the crowded balcony spontaneously shouted in triumph. Word was shouted down to the street and spread with electric speed. The crowds erupted in near hysterical cheering, with rebel yells keening over the water. Beauregard announced that he would personally welcome the ship at the Ager Dock, and he bounded down the stairs, his staff running after. He shouted an order to have the Army Band meet him there.
Charleston’s cheering crowds were the last thing on the mind of the captain of the Resistance. With most of his guns out action, a third of his crew dead or wounded, and his hull filling with water from the ruptured waterline armor, Chamberlain knew he had three bad choices. He could continue to fight his few guns and go under, he could try to make it to Bermuda and go down in less than ten miles, or he could break off action and take his ship into Charleston and probably go under before he reached a pier. If he was lucky, he could run it aground or dock it where it could be saved. Seeing Black Prince strike instantly decided his mind. His engines were still game; the water had not reached them yet. There was a good chance he could make the five miles to the city. The Housatonic pursued but sheered off when she came under the fire of the Confederate harbor forts.
As he approached Fort Sumter, he could see the cheering garrison lining its rubbled walls, and a tug emerged from around the masked side of the island and chugged toward the Resistance, blowing frantically on its whistle. Thank God, Chamberlain thought. The Resistance would need all the help it could get. She was slowing down; the water filling the hull was a drag on the engines. The tug kept blowing its whistle, and Chamberlain could see figures on the deck waving their arms frantically.
Resistance was finally within hailing distance of the tug when she hit the mine. The ship shuddered. Chamberlain could hear the scream of twisting and snapping hull plates from within the depths of the ship. Still the engines thundered to keep Resistance moving. He shouted into the speaking tube to the chief engineer who reported that the engine compartment was secure but that the water was quickly rising to the level of the boilers. He could not guarantee how much longer he would dare leave the black gang in the stokehold. “Give me everything you have got, then get the men out.” He turned to one of his officers. “Start getting the wounded up on deck. I don’t want them down there if we founder and sink.”
The tug carefully made its way alongside. Its master paled at the buckled and gouged armor plate and the shredded upper deck. He read the ship’s name and shouted up, “God bless you, Resistance! Can I be of assistance? You must beware of the mines. Let me guide you in.”
Chamberlain bit his lip at the warning that had come only minutes too late. He yelled over the side, “Yes, thank you, sir. I have severe damage below the water line and am taking water fast. We will throw you a line.” The little tug’s engine exceeded its safety limits as the line went taut, trying to help pull the six thousand–ton warship. Thick black smoke gushed from its funnel.
On South Ager Dock, Ingraham’s telescope had been to his eye for ten minutes. He said to Beauregard, “There’s something wrong, General. Very wrong. I think the ship is in great distress. It entered our minefield and then stopped and has now taken a line from our tug. I fear it has struck one of our mines.”
Beauregard felt his elation wilt under the implications of that statement. He could only watch over the next painful half hour as the great black ship slowly approached the dock, plainly getting lower and lower in the water. Its battle damage was easily apparent even to the crowds on the dock. A pained silence hung over them. As the ship inched closer, someone in authority had the presence of mind to order room for the dockhands to secure the lines that would be thrown down to them. Soldiers pushed through the press to form an honor guard. More came to line up behind Beauregard and Ingraham and to make a way for the dozen black dockhands.
At last she edged up to the dock, a great wounded beast, her naval ensign still whipping in the breeze. Everyone saw the marks of her struggle. Her magnificent figurehead, a neoclassical carving of a savage warrior with busy dark head and beard, was gouged and splintered. The silence of the crowd melted away in a rising mutter. Then the band struck up “God Save the Queen,” the honor guard came to attention and presented arms, and the people started to cheer their long-prayed-for and gallant ally. The lines were thrown from Resistance.
Chamberlain missed the honors. He was below, personally ensuring that no wounded man had been left behind and that the engine spaces and stokehold had been emptied of his crew. The water was coming up around him as he stood on the ladder above the stokehold.
His engineer grabbed him by the collar and heaved him up. “There’s no one else, sir. She’s dying, and you don’t need to die with her.”
Chamberlain gave one last look as the water bubbled and swirled up the ladder around his feet before leaving. They had barely emerged on deck when the ship gave its death cry, a deep groan swallowed by the sucking noise of rushing water. The crowd went deathly silent again at the ship’s death rattle. Then, in the sight of God and Charleston, the Resistance went down.47
To be continued…
APPENDIX A
Order of Battle of the Armies
at the First Battle of Portland
September 30, 1863
PORTLAND FIELD FORCE (BRITISH)
Commander: Maj. Gen. Sir Charles Ashe Windham
Headquarters and Staff: 75
1st Division (8,100)
1st Quebec Brigade
1/62nd Foot
50th Huntington Rangers
51st Hemmingford Rangers
52nd Bedford Battalion (Bn)
A Battery, 8th Brigade (Field)
2nd Sherbrooke Brigade
1/17th Foot
53rd Sherbrooke Bn
54th Richmond Bn
55th Megantic Bn
1st Battery, 10th Brigade
3rd Niagara Brigade
1/63rd Foot
56th Prescott Bn
57th Peterborough Bn
58th Compton Bn
6th Battery, 10th Brigade
Artillery Reserve (500)
4th and 5th, Batteries, 10th Brigade
2 batteries, Canadian artillery
Engineer Battalion (350)
18th Co., Royal Engineers
Co. Canadian Vol. Militia Engineers
Military Train (1,065)
3rd Battalion, Military Tra
in (315)
Canadian Military Train (500)
Canadian Train Guards (250)
5 companies Canadian Militia Infantry
Royal Navy Landing Force
Royal Marine Light Infantry Bn (350)
1/16 Foot (850)
Total:
11,290
Guns:
42
THE MAINE DIVISION (AMERICAN)
Commander: Brig. Gen. Neal Dow
Staff: 7
1st Brigade (Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain) (1,360)
Staff: 5
10th Maine
16th Maine
17th Maine
19th Maine
20th Maine
Maine Light 2nd Battery
2nd Brigade (Col. Ephraim Harper) (1,423)
Staff: 7
3rd Maine
4th Maine
5th Maine
6th Maine
7th Maine
Maine Light 5th Battery
1st Maine Cavalry (370)
Maine Light 6th Battery (81)
Division Train (350)1
Portland City Militia (2,500)
Harbor Fort Home Guard Garrisons (600)
Fort Gorges (400)
Fort Preble (200)
Maine Division Total:
6,6912
Field Guns:
18
APPENDIX B
Order of Battle of the Fleets
at the Third Battle of Charleston
October 8, 1863
BRITISH ROYAL NAVY’S CHARLESTON SQUADRON (ADMIRAL SEYMOUR)
First Division
1. IF Black Prince
2. SL Sans Pareil
3. Fr Phaeton
4. Fr Mersey
Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History Page 30