“I signed on here to pilot a boat, I did not sign on to get my damn ass blown off. Didn’t say nothing about no goddamned battle with no Yankee fleet.”
“You signed aboard a river defense ship, I made no secret about it,” Paine said, never taking his eyes from the action downriver. It was the most cathartic thing he had experienced since the death of his boys. He could not wait to fling himself into the fight, to fly at the head of the serpent, guns blazing.
They called the serpent “Scott’s Anaconda.” The overarching plan of Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott-wrap a blockade of ships around the coastline of the Confederate States, drive down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from the United States to the Gulf, until the coils of the thing completely encircled the new Southern nation, and then squeeze.
They laughed at this “Anaconda Plan,” North and South. But Robley Paine was not so sure, and he was not laughing.
“River defense ain’t the same as attacking no damned men-of-war,” Kinney pointed out, though what he thought river defense was Robley could not guess.
Paine turned at last from the window, regarded the pilot in the dim light of the binnacle. Kinney’s jaw was working furiously at a plug of tobacco. The light glinted on a line of spittle on his beard. He met Paine’s eyes with defiance.
“Are you a coward, sir?” Paine asked. “Or merely a Union sympathizer?”
“I ain’t none of them, you son of a bitch, and don’t say it again. But I’m a civilian, hear? I ain’t no navy man, and neither are you.”
“I can’t disagree. You certainly are not ‘no navy man.’ But tonight you had best play the part. You have been well paid to do so.”
Paine turned back to watch the fight on the river, but Kinney troubled him. They all did, all the white trash he had collected aboard the Yazoo River. His initial concern was right, he was sure of it now. Any able-bodied Southern man worth a damn was already in the army or navy, or working at some job vital to the war effort. And everyone else was a shirker, a coward, a craven dog.
The serpent haunted him. It haunted his days, kept him thrashing in a cold sweat at night. He thought of little else. The money he doled out every day for food and coal and wages and maintenance made no impression on him. The letter from his attorney in Yazoo City, telling him in the gentlest terms of the death of his wife, Katherine, failed to move him beyond a certain sadness, and even a bit of envy, at the way her agony was over, while his continued on.
It would be his turn soon. The promise of eternity with his Katherine and his boys was the only point of hope left to him. He would die battling the serpent.
A rocket shot up into the sky, a long streak of red coming right up from the midst of the Union ships.
“There’s Manassas’s signal!” Robley said, with an excitement unmatched in the Yazoo River’s wheelhouse. Thirty yards away, right ahead of the Yazoo River’s bow, the nearest fire raft sputtered and flickered as the combustible material heaped on board was lit off. The flames took hold at last, creeping along the edge of the oil-soaked logs and bales of cotton, then climbed up the heap, engulfed the raft-a fifty-foot-long derelict river barge-throwing brilliant light out one hundred feet in every direction. Robley could see the light of the flames dancing on the Yazoo River’s bow and the bales of cotton stacked around her deck as armor.
There were three rafts, strung out across the river and attached to one another by a long chain. Controlling the string of rafts at one end was the towboat Tuscarora and at the other end the Watson.
“Them tugs ain’t never gonna keep them rafts under control,” Kinney said with a subtle, gloating tone. Paine did not reply.
“Slow ahead, Mr. Kinney. We’ll keep just behind the string of rafts.”
Kinney hesitated, just long enough to show he followed orders under duress, then reached up and rang the bell. A moment later the big paddle wheels stopped, then slowly started up again, forward this time, barely pushing the Yazoo River ahead, while Kinney let the current do the rest.
Paine could see the few lights onshore slipping by, could see the out-of-control Yankee ships lit up in the light of the fire raft, and he felt satisfied. It had all gone exactly to plan, and his only disappointment-and it was a small one-was that the Richmond was not now heeling over and sinking fast from the injury doled out by the ram.
“Rafts are out of control,” Kinney observed, then stuffed a wad of tobacco in his mouth, ripped off a chunk. The towboats had apparently cast the fire rafts off, and now the current had them, swirling them around, pushing them toward the bank.
Damn… Paine thought, but Kinney was right. The unwieldy things were too much for the towboats to control, and the river current could not be relied upon to sweep them down on the fleet.
“Keep her going ahead, Mr. Kinney,” Paine said, watching the chaotic flight of the Union ships down South West Pass. They were still blazing away with their great guns, the shells whistling around, the fire rafts and the broadsides lighting the river and the dark night in a macabre, bellicose show.
“You want to steam into that?” Kinney asked.
“Keep her going ahead, Mr. Kinney,” Robley said again. He rested his hand on the butt of the.44 Starr. He would drive the Yazoo River into battle even if he had to fight his own people to do it.
28
I immediately commenced an investigation for the purpose of learning all the circumstances of the affair Pope’s retreat, and am sorry to be obliged to say that the more I hear and learn of the facts the more disgraceful does it appear.
– Flag Officer William W. McKean, Commanding Gulf Blockading Squadron, to Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy
The current was sweeping the USS Richmond sideways down the South West Pass, and there was nothing Captain John Pope could do.
They were in a world of warm, humid blackness. The only lights visible beyond the confines of the sloop were the taffrail lights of Vincennes and Preble, downriver from Richmond, and the three great fire rafts above, massive trunks of flame, sweeping down on her, no more than two hundred yards away. There was nothing Captain Pope could do but hope the Richmond drifted faster than the rafts.
He tapped his fingers on the cap rail for as long as he could stand it, then turned to the master, said, “Port your helm and come full ahead.”
“Port your helm!” the master shouted.
“Port your helm!” the helmsman replied and spun the wheel over. “Helm’s aport!”
The master rang the engine-room bell, and Pope could picture the engineer down among his pipes and boilers and shafts, cursing at the captain, who once again rang for steam he did not have. But there was only the jingle of the bell in reply, the low vibration underfoot as the throttle was opened and the propeller began to churn water.
They stood fixed in place on the quarterdeck, waiting to see what the big ship would do. The screw made a gurgling sound as it roiled the water under the counter, but it did no good. They did not have the steam to turn the ship’s bow upriver. The Father of Waters swept them along through the night.
Pope began to compose his report. The Vincennes and the Preble proceeded downriver, while I maintained a position broadside to the enemy in order to cover their retreat…
No, no, no…who in hell would believe that? They’ll ask the pilot for a report, he’ll say we could not get our head around…
“Captain?” The pilot, Wilcox, stepped up, one hand on the rail, looking out into the dark.
“Yes?” Pope said. His voice sounded guilty in his own ears.
“We’re getting mighty close to the right-hand shore. I’m afraid we’ll be aground directly.”
“I’ve tried to get her head around but it won’t answer.”
“Perhaps if we go astern on the engines we can work off?”
“Perhaps. Ring full astern.”
The bell was rung, the engine room jingled in response, and moments later came the jerky, screeching, clanging, hissing noise of two big steam engines turning in re
verse, engines that were anything but reliable, particularly in reversing.
The fire rafts, drifting fast downstream, threw the occasional cast of light over the shoreline, illuminating the scrubby trees and dense marsh grass. The engines protested. All eyes on the Richmond’s quarterdeck were fixed on the shore, what they could see of the shore, in the fire rafts’ light. The minutes ground by and the big ship swept downstream and the engines turned with the cacophony of something going terribly wrong, until, foot by foot, they succeeded in pulling the Richmond backward into midstream.
“Perhaps we have steam enough now to turn her head upstream?” Pope asked hopefully, but Wilcox shook his head.
“We don’t have room here to turn, sir,” he said. “We’ll have to wait until we are down by Pilot Town. Should be room enough there.”
For a moment Pope said nothing. Continue on like this? They were floating sideways down South West Pass, with fire rafts in pursuit and enemy gunboats behind them. There was an unsettled, nightmare quality to the whole thing. But what could he do?
“Very well, Mr. Wilcox, we’ll try again at Pilot Town.”
Robley Paine looked at his watch. Five twenty-three a.m. An hour and forty minutes after the initial attack. The ram and the fire rafts had scared hell out of the Yankee fleet, sent them skedaddling, but they did not seem to have done more than that.
The rafts had grounded on the western bank and were now burning themselves out. The ram had limped off after her initial attack. Lieutenant Warley, who had command of her, was no coward, Robley knew that, so Robley had to imagine that she was disabled in some way. The engines, he knew, were hardly reliable.
But that was fine. They had done their work, the Manassas and the fire rafts. Now was the moment for the gunboats to plunge ahead, to blast holes in the fleeing Yankees, to make sure the Anaconda understood it was not the only dangerous beast in those waters.
“First light,” Paine observed. In the east, a band of gray was glowing dull near the horizon. Robley could see the bow of the Yazoo River and the bulwark of cotton bales bathed in the dull, blue-gray dawn. Beyond that, the Confederate fleet and the Mississippi River were still lost in gloom.
Kinney grunted, said nothing.
They had been waiting. In the dark, it was hard to know what was happening downriver. The fire rafts cast their wide circles of light, which reflected on the black hulls of the panicked Yankee ships. The mosquito fleet was able to follow behind the rafts, keep an eye on the enemy, until at last the fire rafts grounded out and the Yankees were swallowed up by the darkness down South West Pass.
The head of South West Pass loomed like a cave, and they dared not enter, because there was no way to know what was in there. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the Yankees had fled clear to the Gulf. Or perhaps the Confederates would meet up with three heavy men-of-war, anchored, spring lines rigged, heavy broadsides waiting for the gunboats.
That possibility gave Robley Paine no pause. He would have gladly steamed ahead, attacked whatever he found, thrown himself and his ship at the Yankees, offered all up to the memory of his sons.
But Hollins was not so inclined, and Hollins was in command, so they waited. Paine stepped out of the wheelhouse, paced the hurricane deck, glanced up now and again. It was growing light fast. He could see the shapes of the other vessels of the squadron, to the east and west of him, shadowy vessels with plumes of dark smoke coming from their stacks. He could see the far banks of the river now, dark against the lighter sky.
He could not see the Yankee fleet. They were gone, driven from the Head of the Passes.
The sight of that empty water, where just two hours before a powerful enemy squadron had anchored, spread joy through Robley Paine like the light of the rising sun.
And then, hard on the heels of that good feeling, fear.
Hollins would never give up the fight as won? he thought.
He looked up at the Calhoun, Hollins’s flagship, wondering how he might determine the flag officer’s intentions. He saw a belch of black smoke pour from her stack, saw the water churn white as her side wheels began to turn and the five-hundred-ton steamer began to inch ahead, the eighteen-pounder rifle on her bow pointing the way, like the nose of a hunting dog on its quarry’s scent.
Paine stepped eagerly back into the wheelhouse. “Half ahead, Mr. Kinney,” he said. He had been puttering about the river long enough that he was beginning to feel comfortable in his role of captain. “Keep pace with the flagship.”
Kinney grunted. “Flagship…” he muttered in a derisive tone, and it did sound a bit foolish, said that way, but Robley did not care. They were plunging ahead, down South West Pass, chasing after the fleeing enemy, and that was all he needed to know.
Kinney rang the requisite bells, and down in the engine room Mr. Brown jingled back. The Yazoo River seemed to come awake. The big stern wheels began to turn and the bobbing, erratic motion of a ship stopped in the stream-underway but not making way, in the parlance of the mariners-changed into the steady rhythm of a ship steaming ahead.
Paine looked east and west. The others, the McRae, the Ivy, the Tuscarora, the Calhoun, and the Jackson, they were all gathering way, heading downriver in line abreast. Here was the bold advance, the waterborne cavalry charge. The fleet looked to Robley like a line of mounted knights, rolling forward.
And on this charge cried “God for Henry, England, and St. George!” Robley Paine was not happy-happiness was a thing from his past-but he was at least satisfied.
They eased their throttles open, Commodore Hollins’s squadron, and churned the brown water white and under parallel trails of black smoke steamed the fifteen miles down the South West Pass to the sea.
Kinney fidgeted, chewed hard, spit on the deck and the sides of the spittoon. “Don’t know what in hell y’all think you’ll do, if you come on them Yankees…” he muttered, and Paine was not sure if he was looking for an answer, but he gave it to him anyway.
“We will go to battle with them, Mr. Kinney. We will fire on them and endeavor to do as much damage as we can.”
“‘Fire on them…’” Kinney muttered. Paine did not answer again.
The fleet was capable of eight knots over the ground, with the boost they got from the current, and the marshy shore seemed to fly past. The sun broke the horizon and turned the sky a light, hazy blue. Two columns of smoke rose from stacks somewhere down the South West Pass, and the Confederate fleet was closing fast.
“Come left, you stupid son of a bitch,” Kinney growled at the helmsman, who turned the big wheel a few spokes. The pilot was becoming visibly more nervous with each mile made good and turning his fear into abuse.
“Steady, Mr. Kinney,” Robley said, hand resting on the butt of the Starr. “Don’t lose your nerve yet. The iron has not yet begun to fly.”
“‘Iron fly…’ Ain’t what I goddamned signed on for! How many time I got to tell you? You never said nothing about fighting no Yankees.”
“Mr. Kinney…” Robley pulled the Starr from his holster, spun the cylinder to see that each chamber was loaded. “Please be assured that you have much more to fear from me than you do from the Yankees.”
Kinney looked from the pistol to Robley’s face. He turned, stared out the window at the water under the bow. “‘More to fear from me…’ Crazy son of a bitch…” he said, lower this time, low enough so as not to invite response, which Robley did not provide.
South West Pass was all but straight, a boulevard of water through the delta, and soon the Yankees were in sight, clustered around the bar, one ship on the Gulf side and two still inland of the muddy shallows. The largest of them, the steamer, was pouring smoke, which made a sharp angle as it roiled from her stack and blew away to the south. The ships were motionless, as far as Robley could tell, the steamer broadside to the river, the smaller one with her stern pointed right at the Confederate fleet.
Robley picked up his field glasses, swept the ships on the bar. “They are aground,” he said. “I do believe t
hey are aground.” It was too much to hope for. The enemy stranded in the mud, right under his bow gun.
He stepped from the wheelhouse and forward, to the edge of the hurricane deck. Below him, the gun crew sat on the deck, leaning against the cotton wall, or stood gazing forward at the distant Yankee ships.
“Gun crew!” Paine called, and the men looked up. “The Yankees are aground! Load and run out!”
The men went through the drill, silent and fast, just as they had done so many times dockside in New Orleans.
“Fire!” Paine shouted out, much louder than necessary. The gunner pulled the lanyard and the ten-inch Dahlgren fired with its great throaty roar, flung itself back against the breeching. Paine could see the shell make a black streak in the light blue sky as it sailed toward the Yankees, shrieked through the rigging, and plunged into the water beyond the bar.
“Lower! Lower! You’re firing right over their damned heads!”
On either side of the Yazoo River the other gunboats were opening up, firing their heterogeneous collection of artillery, an eighteen-pounder Dahlgren, an eight-inch rifle, an eight-inch Columbiad; they all fired as fast as they could, pouring shot and shells into the stranded Yankees, hitting back in a way that the Confederate Navy had yet to do, after seven months of war.
The Yazoo River’s bow gun fired again, but Robley could not see where the shot fell.
And then the Yankees replied, the big steamer, firing her broadside guns at the mosquito fleet. The muzzle flashes looked dull and insignificant in the sunlight. A series of water spouts shot up from the river, two hundred yards short.
“Kinney,” Paine called, stamping back into the wheelhouse. “Slow ahead. We’ll creep up to point-blank range.”
“Son of a bitch! We ain’t in range of them Yankees here. We should stay here.”
“If we ‘ain’t’ in range, then we should get closer. But see here, I don’t need you just to ring a bell. I can ring the bell myself, and that will save me the cost of paying you your wages.” Robley reached for the bell cord, but Kinney was there, moving across the wheelhouse with two quick steps, snatching the cord practically from Robley’s hand.
Glory In The Name Page 29