But he allowed no inkling of this newfound passion to creep into his voice, or his demeanor. His attitude was perfect disinterest.
“Helmsman, steady as she goes,” he said and stepped behind the helmsman, behind Lieutenant Harwell, and peered out the side window on the starboard side. Just forward of the starboard beam he could make out Fortress Monroe. It was about two miles off-he had been giving it a wide berth-but even from that distance he could see that it was a busy place.
He frowned again, in earnest this time, and put his field glasses to his eyes. The magnification made the activity more obvious. He could see lights moving on the water, where small boats were pulling here and there, and more lights moving onshore. He could see lights along the top of the fort’s walls. Something was happening.
Bowater stepped back across the wheelhouse and out the side door, peering out into the night. It was cool. He was wearing his old U.S. Navy uniform, with the insignia removed, and the breeze made the tail of his blue frock coat flap and beat his legs. He grabbed the patent-leather visor of his cap and tugged it lower. Up in the wheelhouse, the roll and pitch of the little man-of-war was much more pronounced.
Samuel Bowater had not realized, during his long self-imposed exile in Charleston, how very much he missed this.
He felt the platform on which he stood shake and turned to see Hieronymus Taylor mounting the ladder. The chief reached the top, paused, gave something that could be construed as a salute, which Bowater returned.
Then, before the captain could speak, Taylor turned his back on him and stared out over the water, then peered through the wheelhouse windows north toward Fortress Monroe. He made Bowater wait for an audience, as if it had been Taylor who summoned the captain, and not the other way around.
When the chief was done looking around he fished a lucifer from the pocket of his frock coat, which was unbuttoned to reveal the sweat-stained cotton shirt beneath, scratched the match on the rail, and stoked his cigar to life. He coughed, spit over the side of the ship, and returned the cigar to his mouth.
All the while Samuel Bowater quietly regarded him, the unshaved face, the squinting eyes, the hands black with coal dust and oil. An occasional unfortunate turn of the breeze brought the smell of the engineer to Bowater’s nose. Samuel Bowater had never cared for engineering officers generally, as a class of men-dirty, artless mechanics-but so far Hieronymus M. Taylor was in the lead for most objectionable of the lot.
At last Taylor pulled the cigar from his mouth, looked out toward Sewall’s Point, just off the port bow. “They’s somethin happenin out there…” he said at last. “Somethin ain’t right…bad ju-ju…don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.” He turned, looked Bowater right in the eye for the first time. “You feel it?”
Bowater nodded and Taylor nodded, and for a moment they said nothing.
“Chief, we’ve been steaming for fifty hours now, so I imagine you have a good idea of the state of our engine and boilers. How are they?”
“Fine, fine. Ain’t a damned thing wrong with either.”
“And the coal? O’Malley seemed to think there was something wrong with it.”
Taylor grinned at the crude verbal trap. “We got that all straightened out, Captain.”
“So if we get into action tonight, I can rely on the engine?”
Taylor pulled the cigar from his mouth. “Action? What the hell we gonna do, throw biscuits at the Yankees?”
“Perhaps.”
Taylor replaced the cigar, nodded, and grinned. He had an eager, hungry look that Samuel did not find altogether disagreeable, not in the given circumstances. “Well, don’t you worry about the engine, Captain. Get you in and out of any damned thing you can dream up.”
“Good.”
The two men were quiet for a moment, looking out at the dark humps of land, the lights like fireflies on the water, wrapped in the weirdness of the night.
“Chief, if you do not mind a personal question…what does the ‘M’ in your name stand for?”
“Michael.”
“You were not, perchance, named for the fifteenth-century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch?” The question sounded idiotic, even as it left his lips.
Taylor took his cigar from his mouth so he could grin wider. “I don’t reckon, Cap’n. I don’t reckon my pappy’d know a Flemish painter if one come up, kicked him in the balls. He spent his whole life humpin freight in New Orleans. Don’t know where he come up with ‘Hieronymus.’”
He put his cigar back in his mouth, turned his head into the breeze. “That’s the damned thing about a name, ain’t it? The very thing that God and man knows ya by, and you ain’t got a thing to say in choosin it.”
“I suppose that’s so. You were not in the old navy?” Bowater asked next.
“Navy? No, that ain’t for me, all that ‘yassa no suh’ horseshit.”
“Until now.”
“Well, suh, now’s different, ain’t it? Now we gots a chance to kill us some Yankees. Besides, if I didn’t join up with the navy, some dumb ass like to put me in the army, now ain’t they? Don’t reckon you’d care to suffer that fate anymore’n me.”
Samuel ignored the comment, which hewed pretty close to insubordination, and decided instead to wring more of Taylor’s past from him. He had no personal interest in the man’s history, but knowing the chief’s background would help Bowater size up his reliability. The fact that he was not a navy man had already lowered him considerably in Bowater’s estimation. “So you learned your trade in the merchant service?”
“Might say that. Bangin around riverboats and such. Thing of it is, Captain, I got me a natural inclination toward anything mechanical. Something a man’s born with, like music or painting or such. If it’s driven by steam, I know how to make it work. In my gut. Ain’t no other way to explain it.”
“I see.” Taylor apparently equated his proficiency with a wrench and screwdriver with Beethoven’s genius for music or Rembrandt’s mastery of the brush and palette. It was amusing, and charming, in a rough sort of way.
“Very well, Chief,” Bowater said, by way of dismissal. “Why don’t you lay below and conduct your orchestra of crankshafts and valves. And I promise I will let you know if we are going to get into any action tonight.”
Lieutenant Henry Wise of the United States Ship Pawnee sat in the stern sheets of the launch and held the boat’s tiller as the twenty bluejackets pulled slow and steady at the oars. Off the starboard side, across the river, some in shadows, some not, he could make out crowds of men, restless, ready for violence. He could feel their eyes on him. He could see the gleam of rifle barrels. Virginians, now secesh. They were waiting.
Thirty-five yards away to port, the granite seawall of the Norfolk naval shipyard made a sharp black line in the starlight. Beyond that, the yard receded into darkness, a darkness which swallowed up the brick wall on the perimeter and left what might be lurking beyond it to Wise’s imagination.
He pictured a growing army of militia, armed, drilled, waiting for the moment to attack. All night long they had been hearing trains pulling into the station in town, carrying, it was said, thousands of troops. Rumors were swirling around the yard, and they all pointed to an overwhelming attack, ready to break at any second. The lieutenant could practically smell the panic in the air.
Wise looked to his right again, over the dark stretch of the Elizabeth River to the lights of Norfolk. There were boats all over the water, lights moving onshore, a general noise of activity, like the growing buzz of a restless crowd waiting on some grand event.
It was all over for the naval yard; there was nothing more they could do. The Pawnee, under the command of Commodore Paulding, had steamed to Portsmouth to save what ships they could from the massing Rebels. They were too late. McCauley had ordered them all scuttled two hours before.
Wise had hit the dock, raced to Merrimack, his particular charge, and found the water already over the orlop deck. It was over.
Someone shouted, out
in the night, something made a clattering noise, then the report of a rifle and the water spit up, ten feet astern of the boat.
“Son of a bitch!” Wise shouted. “Lean into it, you men,” he called, but the bluejackets needed no command, and like the experienced sailors they were they picked up the speed of their stroke without missing a beat.
Another rifle went off, and another, little shoots of water coming up around the boat. A ball thudded into the bows and then the boat moved into the shadow of the sloop-of-war Plymouth and was lost from sight of the mob.
The USS Plymouth, which had been perfectly serviceable that morning, was down by the stern and sinking slowly into the mud.
“Hold your oars,” Wise ordered, and the men stopped rowing, let the blades drag in the water, and the boat slowed until it was nearly stopped. From out of the night he could hear the clank of Pawnee’s anchor chain coming on board, the chugging of the steam tug Yankee, come to take the Cumberland in tow. She was all that they could save.
“Not long now, boys…” Wise said.
“Till what, sir? Till the secesh come over the wall?” one of the men asked, and got a chuckle from the others.
“No, till we blow this place to hell and the secesh with it,” Wise said. “Give way, all.”
Once again the sailors leaned into the oars and the boat gathered way. They glided down the long black side of the Plymouth and came out under her bows. He could see the mob again, in the shadows and the pools of light. They moved and swayed like a wheat field, and their shouts punctuated the night.
“Pick up the stroke,” Wise said, and the bluejackets leaned into it again and the boat shot forward just as the first rifle fired at them. Here and there muzzle flashes pricked the darkness and the balls whizzed around them, but they would be no more than a dark shadow on the water and it would be a lucky shot indeed that did any damage.
Now the once mighty Merrimack loomed up over them, and with one pull they were behind her protective wooden walls. She reeked of the turpentine with which Wise and his men had doused her decks hours before.
“Hold your oars.”
Over the noise of the Pawnee’s anchor chain he heard a voice, clear and loud, call, “Up and down!” Pawnee was nearly underway.
Wise shifted in his seat, turned to look in Pawnee’s direction, and as he did a rocket lifted off from her deck and streaked up into the sky. The yellow tail made a slash of light against the backdrop of the stars, and then the rocket exploded in a burst, its fragments trailing fire down to the water and hissing out.
“That’s the signal, boys. Toss oars. Bowman, ease us along to the powder train.”
The oars came up in two straight rows, and the man in the bow hooked onto the sagging Merrimack with his boat hook and pulled the boat along her black side. Ten feet above their heads the white band along her gundeck made a ghostly trail the full 275 feet of her massive hull. At regular intervals along the white band, the empty gunports gaped open, like mouths trying in vain to protest. One of the Wabash class, the most powerful, most valuable men-of-war in the United States Navy. She seemed too substantial to be destroyed.
“Here, sir.” The bowman had reached the gunport to which they had earlier run the train of combustible material-rope, ladders, grating, hawsers-which they had laid in the form of a big letter V forward of the mainmast and then doused with turpentine.
The bowman gave a final pull of the boat hook and then checked the motion as Wise came up level with the gunport. Cotton waste and frayed rope hung out of the square hole in an unsightly fashion. Wise sighed, looked around one last time, tried to put off doing that terrible thing, but there was no delaying it.
He pulled an oilskin pouch from his pocket, fished out a match, and struck the match on the gunnel of the boat. It sputtered and flared and caught, and Wise held it to the cotton waste. The flame jumped onto the spirit-soaked cotton, consumed it, moved inboard along the flammable trail.
“All right…shove off, give way, all.” The bowman pushed the boat off from Merrimack’s side and the oars came down and the boat pulled away. Wise pushed the tiller over and turned to look back at his own handiwork. His foot kicked a binnacle lantern lying in the bottom of the boat. He had saved it out of Merrimack earlier-why, he did not know. Because he had to save something, perhaps.
The oarsmen dipped their blades and pulled, dipped and pulled. They were twenty feet from the steam frigate when Wise turned back again to see if the flames had taken, and as he did the decks and gunports, the masts and rails seemed to explode in flame.
The shock of light and heat slammed into the boat, and Wise threw his arm up over his eyes.
He heard one of the men curse, and the confusion of an oar crabbing, oars banging on oars. Flames burst from each of the Merrimack’s gunports. Fire mounted up the lower masts, like the stakes in an old-time witch-burning. From over the high bulwarks they could see the flames run fore and aft along the deck, they could hear the low roar of the inferno, and now from the shoreline they could hear shouts of outrage, the sounds of the mob spurred to action, but it was too late for them.
“Well hell, sir,” the bowman called. “Reckon she’s afire now.”
“Reckon. Very well, let’s get a move on. We got more to do like her.” Wise turned his back on the burning Merrimack. He was blind now in the dark, after staring into those wicked flames. He pushed the tiller over and headed for where he knew the Germantown to be.
Paulding had ordered him to see about firing the Merrimack and he had done it, done it damned well, and now that honorable ship, the pride of the United States Navy, was engulfed in flames. In his stomach he felt physically sick. It was the most shameful duty he had ever been ordered to perform.
Together, as if they were puppets on one string, the heads of Samuel Bowater, Thadeous Harwell, and Hieronymus Taylor all moved right to left as they traced the line of the rocket streaking up, almost directly overhead.
“Well, now, that’s got to mean some damned thing…” Taylor observed.
Bowater pulled his eyes from the sky just as the rocket burst into flaming fragments. The three of them were standing on the roof of the deckhouse, where they could get an unobstructed view all around.
He looked to port and the town of Norfolk, and to starboard at the Gosport naval yard, two hundred yards away. If something was acting, Bowater had guessed it would be at the naval yard, and it seemed he had guessed right.
He could hear a ship winning her anchor, he could see boats moving, men on shore, their rifles gleaming. The occasional smattering of gunfire. There was a powder-keg atmosphere, ready to blow, and Bowater was not sure where to put his ship to keep her clear of the blast.
“Look here, sir,” said Harwell, and Bowater looked where he was pointing. A line of flame, a ship on fire, perhaps, it was hard to tell.
“Now, what in hell…” Taylor began and then suddenly the line of flame exploded into a great sheet of fire, illuminating the ship fore and aft, spilling out of the long line of gunports, climbing up the lower masts.
“Ho-ly…” Taylor muttered.
“That’s one of the Wabash-class frigates,” Bowater said. He could see her perfectly in the flames of her own destruction.
“I think she’s Merrimack, sir,” Harwell offered. “They’ve fired Merrimack.”
For a brief instant Bowater considered coming alongside her, wondered if the Cape Fear’s pumps were equal to the task of saving the burning ship. He opened his mouth to speak, and then the whole world seemed to explode into flames.
10
The flag of Virginia floats over the yard.
– George T. Sinclair to Stephen R. Mallory
Beyond the pyre that was the frigate Merrimack , first one, then another, then another of the massive A-framed ship houses burst into flame, the base of each building engulfed, the fire licking its way up the curved sides. At the other end of the yard, where Samuel knew the ropewalk and sail loft and rigging loft to be, now suddenly there was onl
y fire. In a flash the dark night was turned into a brilliant inferno.
Across the river came shouts of rage, impotent gunfire.
“They’re firing the yard!” Samuel said, and even he could not keep from shouting that time.
“Who, sir?” asked Harwell.
“Got to be the damned Yankees,” Taylor said. “Got to be them damned Yankees running away and burnin the yard behind ’em.”
A bell rang and Bowater turned and out of the dark thrashed the steam frigate Pawnee, with her high sides and straight sheer and ugly, foreshortened masts. Samuel Bowater knew her well.
Black smoke poured from her funnel and the water creamed white around her bows as she gathered way. The burning ships and yard washed her in yellow light and weird dancing shadows. Samuel could see men lining her rails and imagined they were marines, ready for whatever else the night would bring.
From her after chocks, a hawser ran straight back, like a leash, and made off to the end was the USS Cumberland, which Pawnee had in tow. Unlike the squat Pawnee, Cumberland had the lofty spars, longer bowsprit, and jib boom and more elegant sheer of a pure sailing vessel. But without steam, she was helpless in the light air.
“Ahoy, the tug!” A voice came from Pawnee’s quarterdeck.
“Ahoy!” Bowater shouted back.
“Come up on Cumberland ’s starboard side and make fast! Go on, get a move on!”
“Aye, aye!” he shouted, then turned to his officers. “We have to go ashore, see what we can do. Mr. Harwell, assemble a landing party. Tell off five steady hands.”
“Aye, aye, sir. And sir, may I lead the party?”
“No, Luff. I’ll go. I need you here.”
“Aye, sir,” Harwell said, and Bowater could see the genuine disappointment. But he could not send Harwell. He did not know himself what he would do once he was ashore.
“Mind if I tag along, Cap’n?” Taylor asked. He had his hands in his pockets and was leaning back some, as if loitering by the woodstove at the general store.
Bowater considered the request. He didn’t like Taylor, but the engineer’s perceptions that night had impressed him. Besides, Taylor had a wolflike, all but feral look in his eyes that his casual stance could not disguise. Bowater suspected the man would be good in a fight. “Very well. Arm yourself as you will.”
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