supposedly reformed blockade runners what coves they used to hide cargo and how exactly to burn cotton soaked in turpentine in the boilers for a quick burst of speed. Captain Holloway may have disliked his crew, but he needed them to teach his officers the art of running the blockade.
What’s more, it seemed the captain needed a crew that looked like blockade runners. It was easy to tell the navy men from the lifelong sailors. Most of the navy men were boys, really, pale skinned green hands nursing blisters and chattering away in New England accents. Holloway’s third mate had a girl’s rosy cheeks.
Arthur’s skin had long ago tanned to the color of mahogany. His hands wore calluses thick as burls. He’d left County Cork at fourteen, and the history of his years at sea was inked onto his flesh. On his left arm, tattooed bracelets held the initials of girls he’d known. On his right, an image of King Neptune showed he’d crossed the equator. He had one swallow on his chest for every five thousand miles he’d travelled, and the crucifix on his back was supposed to protect him from floggings, although scars marred the skin. Inked charms didn’t always work.
The navy could paint a sloop’s hull white and disguise her as a blockade runner, but disguising a sailor wasn’t so easy. A sailor’s skin told a tale any other sailor could read, and if Captain Holloway tried to pass his pretty-cheeked milkmaids off as hardened mercenaries, they’d get beaten up or buggered.
But Arthur still didn’t know why the navy wanted to run its own blockade until late that night. Holloway kept them on full watch—with the boiler stoked—past four bells. When a signal lamp flashed from the shore, Kestrel flashed back. A skiff poled its way out to them. The man who came aboard wore a suit and had a face pocked by some long ago fever. Under the dim lights, his eyes flitted around the ship like blue bottle flies.
Captain grasped the man’s hand. “Dr. Phillips? Captain Edwin Holloway. I trust everything is going according to plan?” Before the pock-marked doctor could answer, the captain started barking orders. With the same block and tackle they’d used to haul the tuns of brandy aboard, the crew hoisted something larger than a man from the bow of the skiff. An oilcloth covered it like a shroud, and when it dropped to the deck, it made a cast iron clung that made Arthur think it a boiler. When a sailor went to lift the cloth, Captain Holloway stopped him. “Not until we’re out of port. Quick now, cast off lines.”
“Aye, aye, captain.” Lines securing Kestrel to the pier were untied, and the sloop-of-war beat across the obsidian waters, heading southeast. Once they were underway, Captain Holloway called officers and crew to the quarterdeck. Dr. Phillips stood at his left side, hands clasped behind his back. Under a swaying lantern, Captain Holloway held a photograph of a low-slung ship plying the water like a crocodile. Arthur had only seen one ship like it before, but he recognized it right away: an ironclad.
“Men, this is CSS Tennessee, flagship of Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan,” Holloway said, passing the around. “Our orders are to capture or disable Tennessee in preparation for an attack on Fort Mobile. It won’t be easy. Her decks and upper hull are covered in overlapping steel plate like an armadillo. Two seven-inch cannon, four six-inch cannon. And see these?” He pointed to some gray lines on the photograph. “These’re water pipes connected to the boiler. They spray scalding water if anybody tries to board. She’s a rammer who’s scuttled three ships already. One, the Fawn, sank before she could fire a shot.”
Captain returned the photograph to a leather-bound portfolio. Men murmured and glanced around. Arthur suspected more than a few wished they’d stayed in prison. Captain told his second mate to remove the oilcloth from Dr. Phillips’ cargo, then went on. “Tennessee has one weakness: its armor plating doesn’t extend below the waterline. Dr. Lodner Phillips here has found a way to exploit that weakness. Mr. Crow, if you would.”
The oilcloth was unwound, revealing the shape of a man, or maybe an ourang-outang fashioned from a great iron barrel. The stubby legs and arms ended in crayfish pinchers. Four glass-and-brass portholes made a mockery of a face.
“This is the sub-marine armor. Dr. Philips assures us that a man wearing this suit can walk across the bottom of the ocean as easily as he might gambol through a meadow.”
Wear it? Arthur saw that the top was a hinged hatch. He peered through one of the portholes. There just enough space inside for a man, cozy as a coffin.
Captain Holloway continued talking. “We will enter Mobile Bay posing as blockade runners ferrying brandy through Nassau. Then Arthur Kerry will cross the bay floor in the sub-marine armor and attach a bomb to Tennessee’s exposed keel, breaking her back.”
Arthur turned around at the sound of his name. He looked back at the armor, then back at Holloway. The whole crew stared at him. “Cap. . . captain, beg your pardon. I don’t know how to use that. . . thing.”
“You’ll learn. Mr. Boone assured me that you were the finest sailor he ever met—a sailor to your bones. Soon, you’ll have a chance to prove it.”
The next morning, Arthur ate his breakfast on top of the forecastle. Like always, he poured a bit of his grog over the side for Davy Jones. He tried to relax, singing dirty songs with some other crewmen. But the sub-marine armor stood tied to the mainmast like a statue of Odysseus, and Arthur couldn’t stop staring at it. Finally, someone asked, “You really going down in that thing?”
“Don’t have much choice do I? It’s either that or prison.”
The man snorted. “I’d pick prison. Better the devil you know.”
Arthur said nothing. But he did dump his entire grog ration into the waters.
Two hours later, Dr. Philips began teaching Arthur how to work the armor. There was a heavy chain atop the armor that would lower Arthur into the ocean and, hopefully, hoist him back out. A long tube of vulcanized rubber was attached to a hand pump on Kestrel. It would supply Arthur with fresh air.
Arthur stripped to his tattoos and put on a leather harness. Climbing down through the top of the armor, Arthur slithered into its chest. Its arms and legs were metal tubes with flexible rubber joints. Inside the arms Arthur discovered levers he could squeeze to open and close the claws.
“Mr. Kerry? Can you hear me?” Dr Phillips’ voice came through a small brass trumpet. Arthur nodded. “Yea, sir.”
“Excellent. This speaking trumpet is connected to the air tube, so we can communicate even when you’re submerged. How well can you see through the portholes?”
Three portholes allowed Arthur to see dead ahead and to either side. The porthole lower down in the armor’s chest held a lantern. Dr. Philips instructed Arthur how to attach the leather harness to hooks inside the armor. That shifted most of the armor’s weight to hang from his shoulders, allowing him to walk upright. The doctor also explained the rubber bladders that filled with air from metal bottles. They’d allow Arthur to rise up from the ocean floor to attach the bomb. The doctor added, “If the chain breaks for some reason, the bladders will carry you to the surface.”
“Can’t I just swim out the hatch?”
“No. The weight of the water above you keeps the hatch from opening while submerged.”
Suddenly, Arthur felt how cramped the armor was. “S-so if these bladders don’t work, I’ll be trapped below?”
“Highly unlikely. The bladders are a failsafe if the chain were to break. Don’t worry, Mr. Kerry. Now, there are two ways to deflate the bladders once you’ve attached the bomb….”
Arthur spent three days in the oven-hot armor learning to turn levers and open valves. With his macassar-oiled hair whipped into a bird’s nest by the wind, Dr. Philips trained some of the crew how to work the air pump and play out the armor’s chain.
“Good, good. Don’t let the air hose get kinked, good. —Now, Mr. Kerry, inflate the bladders. No, no! Slower! You’re going to cause them to burst!” He banged on the armor’s porthole. “Slow! Slow! How many times must I say?”
Dr. Philips was Canadian and cared about the American’s civil war about as much a
s Arthur did. But he had offered his sub-marine armor to the British navy, then salvage firms. All of them had rejected it as madness. Working with the Americans was Dr. Philip’s chance to make his mark. His moods turned as random as dice. He would be calm, then fly into purple-faced screaming, then become calm and jovial again. If Arthur had been a free man, he would have laid the doctor flat, maybe shook him until teeth rattled. But he was a navy man now and had to bear Philips’ abuse like a pack mule.
On the third day of sailing, they caught a fine wind and cut the engines. Resting half-in-half-out of the armor, enjoying the breeze, Arthur watched crewmen unfurl the sails. Boone came over with some mugs of brandy from the tuns belowdecks. Passing one up to Arthur, he asked, “How goes it?”
“It goes.” Arthur gulped the cool liquor.
“We’ll arrive in Cuba soon. Then we can test out this beast underwater.” Boone rapped his knuckles against the armor’s side.
Arthur nodded, watching the crewmen over the top of the mug. Wiping his mouth, he said, “What do they say about me?”
“Who?”
“Everybody. Rest of the crew keeps away from me now, haven’t you noticed? Keep away from the boys working the pumps too. And that doctor especially.” Arthur noticed that Captain Holloway was glad to have another aboard. He
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