by Robin Lloyd
Townsend and the crew used the time in Mobile to rebuild the main cabin house with the help of a local carpenter. The tap-tapping of mallets and the sawing of wood blended in with the braying of donkeys on the wharves and the bawdy songs of screw gangs. All around them were acres and acres of cotton bales stacked on the waterfront waiting to be loaded on ships. There was everything from flat-bottomed Texas shoal draft schooners to wide-beamed Biloxi traders, to old river sidewheelers and light draft towboats that looked like they were barely seaworthy. From almost every mast, the Confederate Navy Jack and the Stars and Bars snapped and fluttered to the roll of drums and the rhythm of soldiers drilling.
When it came time to load the Gaviota, Red Beard found a good chantey singer and with four other men who made up the screw gang joining in the chorus, they pulled at the jackscrew handles, tightening and jamming the cotton into every corner of the ship’s cargo hold, inch by inch. With each turn of the big screws came another chorus of one of the cotton chanteys. The screw gang squeezed three bales into a space that would normally only hold two. It was a tedious, somewhat boring process to watch, and Townsend’s gaze wandered. He noticed a well-dressed man with a wide-brimmed slouch hat in white pants and a dark brown jacket, sitting on a barrel busily scribbling in a notebook. He was tall, looked to be in his late thirties, with black, curly hair, and a small beard covering his face and chin. Townsend watched him for a while. At the end of the day he decided to find out who he was. As he got closer, the stranger looked up and extended his hand.
“I take it you are Captain Townsend.”
“Yes,” Townsend responded cautiously. “And you are?”
“The name is Stringfellow, James Stringfellow, I am with Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.”
“I see. And what is it I can do for you? You’ve been sitting here spying on my schooner. I assume there’s something you want.”
“Lookin’ for passage to Havana, that’s all.”
Townsend pointed off to the south at the steamship docks where black clouds of smoke spiraled skyward from a blockade-running steamship.
“Why don’t you try one of those fast sidewheelers down the bay. The Alice is loading cotton now. They’ll get you to Havana much faster. Two to three days.”
“No, only a cotton schooner will do,” Stringfellow replied.
“I don’t see your point,” Townsend said suspiciously.
“My publication has a strong interest in blockade runners, particularly the cotton schooners. We did a story on Fort Jefferson just last year, and our readers are quite intrigued about the blockade here in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Townsend pointed to three other schooners tied up next to them.
“Why don’t you try the Elizabeth Moose or those two Confederate-flagged ships, tied up alongside us, the Clementina or the Magnolia.”
“The truth is, Captain Townsend, I would prefer to sail on your ship. I should explain. You see you have come highly recommended by Miss Emma Carpenter of Havana.”
“By Jupiter!” Townsend exclaimed. “She sent you? When? How?”
“I can see you are acquainted with the young lady. I am so glad I was not misinformed. She wrote she had met you and could vouch for your seamanship. She has done some illustrations of Havana harbor, and my publication is hoping to purchase the rights to use them. So I need to get to Havana, but I also need to write about running the blockade on board a cotton schooner. That’s why she suggested your name.”
“Hang it all!” Townsend ran his fingers through his uncombed hair.
“We only just received her letter. She wanted to come to Mobile herself, but that clearly would not have been wise for a young lady given the dangers of the blockade.”
“That certainly is good judgment,” responded Townsend.
“I will, of course, pay for the passage,” Stringfellow added. “Be assured, I don’t require commodious accommodations of any kind, and I can dispense with all need for ablutions.”
Townsend rubbed his stubbly chin. He looked down and scuffed his feet on the ground as he contemplated the man’s persistence. He found him to be somewhat affected, but the man’s connection with Emma made him put aside his reservations.
“Come along then, Mr. Stringfellow. Get your kit together and come on board. We have a small pipe berth in the galley. We leave as soon as the next blue norther comes in.”
“Blue norther?” Stringfellow inquired as he stepped on board with his small black trunk and carpet bag. “I am not familiar with that term.”
“You will be soon. Stormy weather from the north. High winds and bone chilling cold. We have a south wind now. The Spanish sailors in Cuba have a saying, Sur duro, Norte seguro. When the south wind blows strong, a norther will be ’ere ’fore long.”
With cotton loaded below decks, stacked and firmly lashed down above decks, they were soon ready to go. It had taken them three days to load 225 bales of cotton. Townsend had made sure the bowport openings were heavily braced and caulked so there was no chance of leakage. The cotton was piled so high on deck, it was hard for Higgins and Bertrand, who were the shortest in the crew, to see the ship’s bowsprit unless they stood on the quarterdeck. The sky had an ominous dull blue-black sheen as they left the docks. By the time the Gaviota neared Fort Morgan at the mouth of the bay around midnight, the weather had changed abruptly. They battened down the hatches and dogged the portholes, everything on deck thoroughly lashed. It wasn’t long before the heavy rain came lashing down. The blue norther had arrived with a vengeance, and the two Spaniards retreated to their cabin, but his new passenger, James Stringfellow, stayed close beside Townsend on the quarterdeck. He said he wanted to experience it just like a normal sailor.
Townsend had gone over the charts with Red Beard and the others before they left the docks. Instead of going out the Swash Channel to the east, the way they came, they were going to sail right into the Middle Channel, directly through the gauntlet of blockading ships that formed part of Admiral Farragut’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron. The night was dark. With the heavy rain there would be no visibility, and the howling of the wind would muffle any noise they might make. He knew what they were facing. There were as many as six gunships anchored in a semicircle about three miles from Fort Morgan, well out of reach of the Confederate guns. They all kept steam pressure in the boilers so they could quickly give chase. No doubt there would be a warship stationed at both the westward and eastward entrances to the harbor, and at least one twelve-oared launch on picket duty, deployed for reconnaissance work. Two other vessels were patrolling somewhere offshore.
According to the intelligence he had gathered before leaving Mobile, one of the steamships anchored in the main channel was the 158-foot USS Kennebec, a Unadilla class schooner warship built for the Navy at the outbreak of the war. Townsend had studied these ships when he was at the Academy, so he knew they would be facing a gauntlet of deck guns, everything from Parrott rifles and Dahlgren smoothbores to twelve- and twenty-four-pound howitzers. The senior naval officer for the blockading squadron was a relative newcomer, Captain John Goldsborough. He was on board the three-masted steam screw frigate, the USS Colorado.
Just before one o’clock as they were about to sail out of Mobile Bay into the Gulf, Townsend suddenly turned the wheel and luffed the ship up into the wind, pulling into a small protected cove in Bon Secours Bay.
Red Beard looked at him with a puzzled frown. “What in tarnation you doin’, Cap’n?”
With the schooner’s bow now rising and falling to meet the waves, the spars banging back and forth in complaint, Townsend quickly explained his plan to Red Beard and the others. Before leaving Mobile, he had bought six dark blue Navy uniforms and anchor caps from a Confederate captain who had captured and commandeered a Navy sidewheeler tugboat called the Fox. The captured Yankee crewmen had defected to the Southern cause, and they were selling their old Navy uniforms. Townse
nd bought all of their clothes—blue caps, trousers, and coats, along with some pyrotechnic flare sticks and the Navy’s signal flare code book, all thrown into the sale for just two dollars.
“They were practically giving them away,” Townsend said as he pulled out the uniforms. “How do all of you feel about the color blue? Navy blue.”
The rain pelted the decks and the blackness of the night prevented Townsend from seeing any of their faces. In the cabin house, there was much joking, mischievous smiles, and good-natured commentary as the sailors stripped down. In the relative comfort of the dimly lit cabin, the weather-beaten Gaviota sailors set aside their heavy cotton trousers and shirts and were soon all dressed in snappy blue uniforms. Red Beard, who had worn Confederate gray, looked like he’d just been forced to put on a woman’s petticoats. Olsen and Bertrand could barely squeeze their stomachs into the pants. Higgins and Hendricks were the only ones who looked remotely comfortable in uniform. Townsend couldn’t stop laughing at the sight of all this discomfort.
But his smile quickly turned to a frown when it came time for him to put on his own uniform. He looked at the lieutenant’s rank insignia on the jacket, and he suddenly felt a huge weight descend on him, pulling him into despair. At that moment, he felt like two people stuck in the same body but with different faces. He kept buttoning and unbuttoning the coat and adjusting the hat to try to square it properly on his head. He looked at himself in the cabin’s small mirror, but in the dim light all he could see was a dark shadowy figure. Townsend swallowed hard as he left his cabin and turned to face the men huddled together in the galley.
“Remember, our story is we are Navy sailors off the Leopard and we were thrown off course by the storm. The Gaviota is our captured prize. We thought Mobile Bay was New Orleans. We are now headed to New Orleans to turn the schooner over to the adjudication courts. Understood?”
There were no questions. Back on deck, with the cold rain now stinging their faces, the sailors gathered in the darkness of the quarterdeck. The night sky was an ominous black. Gusty winds whistled through the rigging, making the luff of the sails snap and vibrate. He couldn’t see the men, but he could feel the tension in the air. He sensed rather than saw their doubts and fears.
“Reefs out,” Townsend cried.
The men all understood the urgency of that command. They would need full sail to get through the blockade. Townsend watched as white-knuckled hands shook out the reef lines of the mainsail and foresail even as others grabbed the inch-thick lines of the throat and peak halyards to haul the big sails higher up the mast. The schooner was soon off before the wind, the sheets on the mainsail and the foresail squealing through the blocks with a huge sudden force. A wild gust of wind came upon them suddenly as they cleared Fort Morgan and entered the choppy waters in the Gulf, causing the heavily laden schooner to dive and heave into the waves. With their cargo of some fifty tons of cotton, the schooner’s hull was now riding lower in the water by a foot or more. It would be a wet ride. Townsend looked over at the iron rod for the centerboard that was to the left of the small stairway down to the main cabin. Hendricks had already read his mind.
“Centerboard all de way down, Cap’n.”
“That’s good,” he replied. “We will need it with this heavy load of cotton. We’re riding low.”
Townsend clutched the wheel tightly with both hands as he felt the whole body of the ship groan. Somehow the storm set him free—an illusion, he knew, but it strangely relaxed him, allowing him to forget momentarily the dangers that lay immediately ahead of them.
17
Cold and shivering, Townsend breathed in the stormy air. He knew this was madness. The hard reality of what they were doing suddenly descended on him. The schooner was barreling toward a staggered line of blockading gunships anchored off the harbor. One shell from a Parrott gun would blow them out of the water. Nothing could be seen in the blackness, just a faint gleam of curling white water on the leeward rail, and the beady drops of icy rain on the binnacle. He told himself that the violence of the storm might cause the Navy to assume no ship would try to escape in this weather.
Townsend could barely make out the shadowy form of Red Beard, clutching the stays with both hands on the lee side of the forward cabin house. He’d sent the Texan and Olsen up to the bow to keep their eyes peeled. Hendricks stayed back in the quarterdeck along with Stringfellow, who was writing in his notebook in the darkness. Bertrand and Higgins were amidships. They were at least one mile off shore and would soon sail into the anchored gauntlet of Navy ships. He knew that despite the storm the Navy would still be waiting and looking, cannons ready to fire. Townsend braced himself.
He heard a muffled cry. He gripped the wheel tightly as he swiveled his head from one side of the boat to the other. His immediate thought was that a Union gunboat was bearing down on them.
It was Bertrand. The sailor staggered back to the quarterdeck, clutching the stays for support.
“C’est moi, Capitaine. We need to go back.”
“What? Have you gone off your chump, man? You’re daft!”
The New Orleans sailor cupped his hands and shouted into Townsend’s ear that they had a black cat on board. It was perched near the hen coop under the launch boat amidships.
“I tried to catch it, but it disappeared and hid behind the cotton bales. Que faire, Capitaine?” Bertrand wanted to know what to do. Townsend shook his head in amazement, and told Bertrand to forget the cat and get back to his station.
Townsend signaled Red Beard to set off the flare signals. Two white and a green. That meant “enemy headed to the right.” Townsend hoped that this false signal would divert some ships away from them. He held his breath as he looked out into the darkness. Out at sea, he spotted a splotch of red, then white and red. The senior officer’s ship had received the fake communication. No doubt they would send one of the blockading ships to investigate.
Moments later, Olsen spotted the first Navy ship. He gestured off the port bow. Less than a hundred yards away, Townsend could see the dark blue-gray wall looming over them. There were no lights to be seen. He recognized the familiar profile of the schooner-rigged steamship with the single funnel and two masts. It looked like the USS Kennebec. They were so close that even with the sound of the wind and the rain, he could hear the clanking of her engines and the squealing complaints of the anchor chain as the warship pitched and heaved in the waves. The faint shouts of the man on watch penetrated the night. Townsend couldn’t hear what he said.
Within seconds they passed that ship and spotted another right behind it, this one a large three-masted frigate also with steam up. He could hear the intermittent thumping of her engines. Suddenly a blood-curdling howl tore through the night, followed by Bertrand cursing and screaming.
“What in Satan’s hell is that!” Townsend cried out.
“Merde!” yelled Bertrand. “The cat, Capitaine. I step on the cat! Je suis desolé. I am sorry.”
“Quiet,” he hissed.
But they’d been spotted. A white explosive flare went off to the starboard that lit up everything around them like a bolt of lightning. In that instant, Townsend caught a glimpse of a Navy picket launch off to the starboard side with a boatload of surprised sailors in oilskins peering up at him through the rain. The Navy men were clearly astonished by this ghost ship that had appeared out of nowhere. In the rain and the dark, they had not seen the schooner bearing down on them.
The signalist on the picket boat pointed his flare gun upwards and fired off another explosive that lit up the cotton-laden decks with an even brighter flash of light. Townsend took quick measure of the launch boat. It was about thirty feet long, four oars on each side. Two men with pistols. They were clearly rowing back to their ship because of the stormy weather. It was too dangerous in the storm for them to remain on picket duty. The junior officer on board began yelling orders to Townsend with his ship trumpet.
Townsend looked at all the blue uniforms on the Gaviota through the wall of rain and for a brief moment allowed himself to think he was a US Navy lieutenant. He wasn’t sure what had come over him, but suddenly he wanted to confront that junior officer. After all, with his lieutenant’s uniform he outranked the man. With great difficulty he wrestled with the wheel and luffed up the schooner near the picket boat, almost capsizing it. He pointed to the blue uniforms of the Gaviota’s sailors, yelling out to the men in the picket boat to stand down and holster their pistols. Before the stunned Navy sailors could react to the unexpected sight of blue uniforms on a cotton-laden schooner, Townsend transformed himself into their superior, bullying the junior officer.
“How dare you threaten me,” he shouted brusquely through his sea trumpet. “You are speaking with Lieutenant Everett Townsend. I am reporting in as required. This is a captured prize, and we are bound for New Orleans. We were blown off course.”