They were a quarter full now. That meant that for most of the vessel’s side, there was only a single layer of inch-and-a-half white oak planks over live oak frames standing between rifled ordnance fired at point-blank range and the ship’s boiler.
Don’t think about that, can’t think about that…
The Cape Fear heeled into a turn. Taylor staggered, his hand reached out, automatically fell on a nonhot surface to steady himself. Burgess dumped coal on the deck plates. Moses shoveled, flung it in the fire. Jefferson dead, Tommy laid up, they were short-handed.
A voice called down the fidley. Taylor looked up. Merrow standing in the door. He had not even noticed the door opening, so much of the sides, bulkheads, and roof were gone.
“Chief Taylor! Chief Taylor! Captain says open the throttle up and then all hands out of the engine room! Arm yourselves with pistols and cutlasses!”
Pistols and cutlasses? It sounded like a pirate melodrama. He wondered if such an order had been heard on those waters since Maynard came after his hero, Blackbeard.
“You heard him!” Taylor shouted. “Everyone out! Cap’n wants to play rough!” The throttle was already wide open, no need to touch it.
Moses and Burgess looked at him, reluctant. Leaving their engine room for the last time.
“Come on, you damned weepy, sentimental old ladies, get the hell out of here!”
A shell hit the deckhouse, crashed through, took out the after bulkhead, exploded on exit, ripping apart the frames, the knees. With a wrenching, cracking sound half the boat deck sagged down into the fidley, and what was keeping it from collapsing into the engine room Taylor could not tell.
The destruction energized Burgess and Jones. They flung shovels and slice bars aside, leaped for the ladder, scurried up.
Burgess reached the top, paused, looked back, Moses one step below, Taylor a step below him. One last look at their fiefdom, and as they looked the starboard coal bunker exploded in a spray of planking and frames and anthracite coal. The engine room rang with the sound of metal striking metal, of red-hot ballistic shards of steel shell slamming into the boiler.
“Son of a…!” Taylor managed to get out. Burgess leaped through the door and Moses leaped after him. Taylor took the steps, flew up the steps, leaped headlong out of the engine-room door as if diving in the water, hit the deck, rolled, scrambled.
Behind him, the door blew clean out of its frame, flew twenty feet outboard, pushed by a great white cloud of condensed steam that blasted the window out of the sides of the engine room and shot like a geyser through the gaping hole in the boat deck.
Metal clanged on metal, the air was consumed with a great whooshing sound, the muffled sound of an explosion below as the boiler blew apart. Taylor tried to make himself as small as he could, lying prone on the deck, pressed against the deckhouse, arms over his head. He waited until the whooshing and the clanging were gone and then he looked up.
There was an odd quiet now. The Cape Fear did not vibrate, the engine did not thump. Dead in the water. Probably filling fast.
He scrambled to his feet. “Burgess, Jones, y’all still alive?”
They nodded, so Taylor reckoned they were. “All right, git yerselves some weapons. Cutlass, whatever y’all want. I’ll go see the cap’n.”
He staggered forward, rounded the remains of the deckhouse. A Yankee steamer was bearing down, fifty yards away, the son of a bitch that put a shell in their boiler, no doubt.
Taylor grabbed on to the ladder, pulled himself up. The angle was not right, the Cape Fear was listing. Must have blown a hole in the bottom. He came out on the boat deck. Bowater was there, sword in one hand, his engraved.36 Navy Colt in the other. He looked surprised.
“Chief! You’re alive!”
“If you care to call it that.”
“I saw that cloud of steam, I thought y’all were done for.”
“Almost. Next time, I reckon. Shell right in the boiler. I think we are sinkin.”
“We are no doubt sinking. And soon we’ll be fighting these bastards here.” He nodded to the Yankee gunboat, coming on fast.
“Might you have a weapon of some sort handy?” Taylor asked. Tanner stepped out of the wheelhouse, the useless wheel abandoned. He held out a cutlass and a rough sea service pistol. “Here, Chief,” he said. Taylor took the weapons. He glanced at Bowater and Tanner, the easy way they held their weapons, as familiar as a wrench was in Taylor’s hands. He felt awkward, like an amateur. He had not spent the past decades in the naval service, handling such things.
Damned navy, stupid damned navy…
The Yankee was twenty yards away, throttling down, marines and sailors on her bow, ready to board. “Let’s go meet our guests,” Bowater said and led them down the ladder to the foredeck, where Harwell had his men assembled, ready to repel.
Ten yards and the Yankees opened up with small arms, rifles and pistols, and the Rebels huddled behind the bulwark and the silent Parrott and fired back. The gunnel of the Yankee gunboat was ten feet or more above the Cape Fear; it was like firing up at the top of a castle wall.
The Yankee came dead in the water, bumped against the Cape Fear, and suddenly there were shouting, cursing blue-clad men leaping down from the deck above, landing on the Cape Fear’s foredeck, men climbing down the Yankee’s side, finding footholds in hawse pipe and wale, falling on the Cape Fear, wielding swords and pistols.
Wild! Taylor lifted his pistol, held in his left hand, shot a U.S. marine, five feet away. A bullet grazed his arm. A sailor was aiming a pistol at him, so close he could touch him. Their eyes met. Taylor swung his cutlass, knocked the gun aside just as it discharged and blasted its.38-caliber round into the deck. The sailor tried to raise the gun again but Taylor stepped into him, slammed him in the face with the hand guard of the cutlass, and he dropped.
The chief looked around. The fighting was hand-to-hand all over the deck. There was Bowater, firing, parrying, lunging, right in the thick of it. Taylor felt that weird fighting energy he knew so well, not from combat, but from more waterfront tavern brawls then he could ever recall.
He saw a gun aimed at Bowater, ten feet away, saw the finger squeeze the trigger, the trigger deflect, and he raised his cutlass and chopped down. He felt the blade hit bone, the gun go off, the man scream.
He felt a punch in the shoulder, as if someone had hit him hard, but there was no one there. It spun him half around. He clapped a hand over the spot; it came away red.
Taylor staggered, almost fell. Just my shoulder… he thought, did not know why that should affect his balance. And then he realized-it was the Cape Fear. She had lurched, rolled. She was going down.
Lieutenant Thadeous Harwell, for the first time in his charmed life, led his men forward into the face of a boarding enemy. Such heroics were supposed to have gone out with John Paul Jones, with Decatur and Collingwood. They were not part of modern naval warfare. But now he was given the chance to do it-ancient, noble warfare in modern times.
They were marines, but Harwell was not afraid. He shouted as he ran, waved his sword to urge the men on, though it was only twenty feet. He came sword to sword with a graybeard, an old salt, felt bad for the old man. A lifetime at sea, and Harwell, young, strong, quick, turned his blade aside, thrust, ran the sword into the man’s belly.
He pulled it free, did not watch the man fall. A marine aimed his pistol, fired. The ball burned a trail through his side, but Harwell raised his pistol, shot left-handed, knocked the man down.
Bowater was there, heroic Bowater. Harwell wished he could achieve the captain’s quiet stoicism, that lofty air. Sometimes he felt like Bowater’s puppy, wondered if Bowater felt the same.
Another cutlass-wielding sailor, climbing over the Parrott. Harwell met him, blade to blade. He tried to raise the pistol but the sailor did not give him the opening to do so. Their weapons rang against one another, and Harwell felt the shivers down his arm. This one was good.
Harwell pressed the attack, tried to throw
him off. The sailor took a step back, came up against the Parrott. Trapped, fending off Harwell’s blade. The opening would come. One stroke, two strokes.
Harwell was flung forward. He thought he had been shoved. He fell, off balance, past the surprised sailor with whom he had been fighting, down to the deck. He hit the hard yellow pine planks, came to a stop. Tried to move but could not.
He opened his eyes. He was looking at the front wheel of the Parrott’s gun carriage. He was jammed up there in the bow and he could not seem to move. He could feel nothing but dull warmth from his waist down, and he was confused.
Get back…in…the fight… The words ran though his head, but somehow he knew he would not be able to do so. He felt a warm, sticking something on his cheek.
Dear God…I have been hit! He tried to cry out but he could not make a sound. He had had dreams like that, where he was trying to shout but could not. This was the same thing. Was it a dream?
Then the pain came, a wave of agony shooting out along legs, arms, head, and he knew it was not a dream. He did not know what was wrong, but he knew that this was it. He was going to die. Frightening and comforting all at once. The pain was so very great, he saw death as a warm blanket pulled over him.
There was terrific excitement on the deck. Men were shouting, guns going off, but not as many. He thought that the deck was at an odd angle, but he was not sure. The Parrott lurched a bit, slid toward him. The pain swelled, eased off, swelled again. He felt cold.
Suddenly he was moving. The gun-carriage wheel disappeared and the world seemed to whirl around. He looked up. Gray sky, smoke. He did not know what was happening.
A face blotted out the sky. Captain Samuel Bowater. The captain had lifted him up, was cradling him. Harwell tried to smile, was not sure if he had managed it.
“We fought them off, Lieutenant!” Bowater said, loud. “Thanks to you, we fought them off!”
Then Harwell remembered. The words! The final words! And here, of all men on earth he would wish to say them to, here was Captain Samuel Bowater, whom he loved so dearly.
Harwell made to speak, and then a panic rushed over him. He could not recall! All that practice, and now the moment, and he could not recall. He wanted to weep.
The edges of his vision were growing dull, and he felt a lightness to his body, and then suddenly in a great rush they were there, the words he had labored over. Joy spread over him like the heat in front of a blazing fire, and he spoke and he could hear his voice was clear and loud and strong.
“Happy am I to lay down my life for this, my beloved Confederacy, and only regret that I shall not live to fight on…”
Bowater was nodding. He had heard the words, understood the sentiment. Of course, such a noble spirit would understand. The world seemed to be growing brighter. Brilliant light seemed to be streaming from around the captain, and soon the captain was lost in the light and then it was all light and then nothing.
Samuel Bowater held the dead lieutenant in his arms and he felt tears roll down his cheeks, surprising and bitter. The poor bastard had been shot right in the back, spine severed, lungs torn up, artery blown apart.
He had lied to Harwell, but he did not feel bad about that. They had not beaten the Yankees back. They had fought to a standstill, fought until the Cape Fear lurched hard, began a death roll, and the Yankees fled from the sinking tug, climbed back aboard their gunboat. Some of the Cape Fears had followed them, preferring prison to death in the river. The rest remained, grabbed on to things that would float.
He had told Harwell they had won because that was what the lieutenant, with his wild, romantic notion of war-a notion that was not dimmed by real and bloody combat-would have wanted in his dying ears.
Harwell had smiled. He had tried to say something, it was unintelligible, a mumble of half-formed words, and then he died. He died with the smile on his lips. Bowater could not take his eyes from the smile.
The Cape Fear rolled again, and Bowater nearly fell over. He looked back. The after end, right up to the middle of the deckhouse, was underwater; debris and dead men were swirling around in the stream.
A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up. Taylor was there, bleeding from three places, cigar in his teeth, violin case under his arm. “We got to go, Cap’n,” he said.
“Go where?”
“Dunno. Find some damned thing will float.”
“I’m taking Harwell.”
“All right. I’ll help.”
Taylor grabbed Harwell’s feet, Bowater grabbed his shoulders, and they lifted and Taylor grunted and cursed and Bowater guessed that the wounds hurt more than he would let on.
Tanner was there, helping with the weight. They half-walked, half-slid down the deck to the water. No one spoke, no one had any idea of what they would do when the boat sank under them.
Then around the shattered deckhouse, moving fast, churning the water, came the CSS Appomattox. Lieutenant Simms in the wheelhouse pointed, reached up, and rang the engine-room bell. The Appomattox slowed, settled into her wake, stopped beside the sinking Cape Fear. Men on her fantail, anxious faces, grabbed hold of the Cape Fears, pulled them over the tug’s low bulwark. Men on the Cape Fear handed wounded over, scrambled over after them.
The Yankee gunboat fired, too high, the shell screamed past. Taylor and Bowater handed the body of Lieutenant Harwell over. “Go on, Chief,” Bowater said, and Taylor scrambled onto the tug.
Bowater turned to Tanner. “Go…” he said and stopped. This had played out before-him, Tanner, enemy guns, the last men to leave. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“You remember.”
Bowater shook his head. It was too much. Think on it later. “Go on, Tanner, I won’t argue this time.”
Tanner nodded, climbed over the bulwark. Bowater took one last look around. The breeching on the Parrott gave way and the big gun slid down the deck, slammed into the front of the deckhouse. Bowater wanted to weep. He turned, climbed on board the Appomattox, felt the deck shake as Simms ordered up all the steam they had.
Bowater stood on the fantail, watched the Cape Fear, his first command, slip away. She went down fast, the river lapping over her, her deckhouse, her foredeck, her boat deck. Last of all he saw the wheelhouse, his wheelhouse, a place that he had come to love as much as any place he had known, go under with a roil of bubbles, and then she was gone.
He stared at the spot, but it was soon far astern, with the Appomattox running upriver to the Dismal Swamp Canal. Bowater surveyed the scene of the battle. Steamers everywhere, Union ships weaving in and out, but the fight was over. Sea Bird was all but sunk. Ellis was in Yankee hands, Black Warrior on fire, Fanny run aground and blown up, the Forrest set on fire on the ways.
Bowater forced himself to climb up to the wheelhouse, where Lieutenant Simms was looking upriver, giving helm commands.
“Lieutenant,” Bowater said, “on behalf of myself and my men I thank you for your brave and timely arrival.”
Simms smiled, nodded. “Wish I could have been there before you took that damned Yankee shell. My bow gun got knocked out, only had the howitzer, which was of little value.”
Bowater looked back. The steamers were receding in the distance, the fight left astern. “Nothing you could have done…” he said at last. “Nothing to be done.”
They continued on upriver in silence, and soon the locks of the Great Dismal Swamp Canal were ahead, gaping open like welcoming arms. Bowater glanced down at the deck of the Appomattox.
“You’ve taken this boat though the locks before?” he asked.
“No. Reckoned this was as good a time as any to give it a try.”
Bowater nodded. “You think she’ll fit in the lock?”
Simms frowned, shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The river narrowed, the lock gates lay open. Simms rang the engine room. Half ahead. He rang again. Slow ahead. They approached the locks going two knots at most. Simms scanned the opening, looked at the Appomattox. Bowater did the same. Twenty fee
t away. Bowater had opened his mouth to say he did not think they would make it when Simms said, “It’ll be tight, but I think we’ll fit.”
The helmsman gave the wheel a subtle turn. The bow eased into the lock gates, the granite sides of the lock slid past. The Appomattox lurched to a stop, the men in the wheelhouse stumbled to keep their footing. Bowater looked down the side. The tug was jammed halfway into the lock, stuck fast.
Book Four
THE FIGHT ON WESTERN WATER
36
New York Daily Tribune,
Thursday, February 13, 1862:
BURNSIDE’S EXPEDITION
ITS FIRST TERRIBLE BLOW
CAPTURE OF ROANOKE
DIRECT NEWS FROM THE ENEMY
Rebel Fleet Completely Destroyed
THE PANIC AMONG THE PEOPLE
ELIZABETH CITY ABANDONED
THE TOWN DESTROYED BY FIRE
GOV. WISE NOT IN THE FIGHT
Only 50 Rebels Escaped from the Island
2,500 TROOPS TAKEN PRISONERS
O. JENNINGS WISE WOUNDED
A Major and 300 Privates Killed
OVER ONE THOUSAND WOUNDED
WILD STORIES OF UNION LOSSES
REPORTED LOSS ON OUR SIDE
Fortress Monroe, Feb. 11, via Baltimore, Feb. 12.
By a flag of truce today we learn the complete success of the Burnside Expedition at Roanoke Island.
Glory In The Name Page 38