“Sir! Sir!” Quillin was kneeling beside him.
“What the hell…?”
“It’s the bolts, sir! The bolts holding the iron plate! The impact of the enemy’s shells sends the nuts flying!”
Dear God… The nut would have killed him if Rawson’s body had not slowed it down. He struggled to sit up, with Quillin’s help, put his hand down in a pool of Rawson’s warm, slick blood. He struggled to his feet. The men were working like madmen in the gloom, apparently oblivious to the threat from their own vessel. They had their fighting blood up-Bowater recognized it-they would not be frightened by the proximity of death.
“Get some hands to clean this up! Try to keep the blood off the decks! Get the wounded out of the way!”
“Aye, sir!” The hammer blows fell against the Yazoo River’s side; the ship staggered under the impact. Iron screamed across the casement, slammed into the wooden framework, but Bowater’s fighting blood was up too, and he took no notice as he climbed back up to the pilothouse.
Pensacola was nearly past them now, pushing upriver, working her way across the stream as if she had lost her bearings. “She’s too fast, sir, I couldn’t keep on her!” Risley shouted, and Bowater nodded. His shoulder hurt like hell but he did not think it was broken. He stared out the slot at the night and the smoke and fires.
Behind Pensacola came another of the big ships. A side-wheeler. Mississippi, Bowater had no doubt. Not too many like her in the navy anymore, her big paddle wheels so exposed and vulnerable. She was twenty years old, Commodore Perry’s flagship when he opened Japan; now she was an anachronism in the age of the screw propeller and the ironclad.
“Here is Mississippi!” Bowater shouted, pointing to the bull of a ship charging upstream. “Right for her! We’ll ram her if we can!”
“Aye, sir!” shouted Risley, with the first hint of hesitation. But ramming was their only hope. Their pathetic battery could do little against the frigate’s thick sides.
Bowater looked at the telegraph. Risley had ordered slow astern to keep the Yazoo River where she was. He grabbed the handles, rang the engine room, shoved the indicator to full ahead. Ramming, like the ancient galleys, but with two condensing horizontal side-lever engines to take the place of the poor bastards chained to the benches, working the oars.
Bowater felt the speed build, felt the deck tremble, the Mississippi looming ahead. Her paddle wheels dug into the river and her broadside lashed out at the night, but her shot went high. Bowater fixed his eyes on the place abaft her paddle wheels where he would hit.
“Captain!” Risley shouted. “Look at that sumbitch!”
Bowater looked though the slot on the port side. A low hump in the water, the wake washing over her bow, the flash of gunfire glinting off her round, wet sides. The ironclad Manassas was steaming for the Mississippi, her throttles wide, smoke rolling from her stack.
“Come right! Come right!” Bowater shouted to the helmsman. They were on a collision course, Yazoo River and Manassas, would hit one another before either hit the Yankee.
The Yazoo River sheered off, her bow turning from her intended target, her chance to ram the side-wheeler gone. Bowater watched with some irritation as Manassas raced forward. The Mississippi was firing wildly, blasting away, like a man frantically slapping at bees, but her guns could not be depressed enough to hit either ironclad.
Hit them, hit them, hit them… Bowater thought as he watched the whale-shaped former tug charging the big side-wheeler. He could see it all, in shades of orange and black, the man-of-war pushing hard upstream, the half-submerged ram racing for her side.
And then the Manassas struck. The Mississippi rolled hard to starboard with the impact, her paddle wheel thrashing as it lifted out of the water. The current swept Manassas past; Bowater could see the gaping hole the ironclad had ripped in the big ship’s side. The Mississippi rolled back on an even keel, a great bear baited by dogs, and as she did she fired her broadside, the flash of her eight-inch guns dancing off Manassas’s wet sides.
Bowater felt the deck jerk underfoot as a shell entered one of the Yazoo River’s gunports and exploded. The dark gundeck below the pilothouse was filled with brilliant light for just a fraction of a second, the already noisy place filled with the blast of exploding powder, the shriek of flying metal.
Jonathan Paine watched Theodore Wilson as Theodore Wilson watched the battle through the wheelhouse window. The Abigail Wilson was making turns for slow astern, holding her place in the river, half a mile upstream from Fort St. Philip.
Wilson said he wanted to think about his strategy. Wilson was afraid, Jonathan Paine knew it.
Wilson did not know that he had less than sixty seconds to either steam ahead or die. Less than sixty seconds to grab on to the bell rope for the engine room and ring up full speed ahead before Jonathan would pull his pistol-a.44 Adams and Deane he had retrieved from Paine Plantation-and shoot him in the head.
Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five…
Wilson had been all bluff talk steaming downriver, but his bravado had begun to waver when the sounds of the gunfire mounted, the flash of the ordnance became visible over the low-lying marsh. Now he toyed with the bell rope, twisted it in his fingers, stared downstream.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty…
It was a mesmerizing sight, the big ships moving through the clouds of smoke, half hidden, lit up orange with the flash of guns, the smaller Confederate vessels thrashing around in a disorganized attack. Jonathan understood the effect that such a scene could have. He recalled looking down the slope of Henry House Hill, watching the chaos of battle, wondering how he could ever plunge into it himself.
But he had done so, and the fear of it was gone, and though he understood Wilson’s trepidation, he had little time for it. He did not doubt that his father was there, somewhere in that maelstrom. Nothing would prevent Jonathan’s finding him. There was no time to waste. Less than thirty seconds, in fact.
Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three…
“The thing of it is, I’m not quite sure what we should do…” Wilson broke the uncomfortable silence. “I had hoped to get here in time to meet with the commanding officer, get orders from him. Now…?”
“Time for orders is gone, I reckon,” Jonathan said. He did not much care what Wilson decided to do. He figured he would have to shoot him at some point, and hold the pilot and helmsman at gunpoint, in order to use the Abigail Wilson to locate Robley Paine. “Looks to me like it’s every man for himself, those boats getting in where they can hit the hardest.”
Wilson nodded, considered the strategic situation.
Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five…
“All right, damn it!” Wilson said with finality. “Let’s go!” He rang the bell, three bells, full ahead. He grinned with the relief of having made a decision. Jonathan took his hand from the butt of the.44.
With turns ahead and the swift-moving current, the Abigail Wilson surged forward, steaming from the anonymity of the dark river into the fire and the light. A quarter mile from that stretch of river where Forts St. Philip and Jackson covered the water with their withering crossfire, where the big Yankee ships were struggling through the smoke, blind, firing away, where the Confederates swarmed like feral dogs, biting, dodging, biting again.
Wilson stepped out of the wheelhouse and Jonathan followed behind. Down below on the foredeck, the men were gathered around the old six-pounder smoothbore.
My gun… Jonathan thought with some amusement. Wilson had been careful to tell him that, to ask permission to put it aboard the tug. As if Jonathan Paine could care about such a thing, as if he could ever wish to own, or even see, a cannon.
“Here we go, boys!” Wilson shouted to the gun crew, his voice a little too loud, a little too exuberant.
Bobby was standing back some from the bow, leaning on the rail, keeping out of the way, ready to jump in and help, the way he always was. The flash of gunfire lit his dark skin. Like the others, his face was tu
rned to Wilson, but his eyes shifted, met Jonathan’s. Jonathan gave him a little wave and Bobby gave a half-smile and waved back.
The men at the six-pounder cheered, waved their hats. Jonathan knew where they were at, in their heads, knew the blood lust and the apparent insanity that made men willing, even desire, to charge into such a fight. He did not feel it himself. Nor did he feel fear, or anger, or hatred of the Yankees, or much of anything at all, beyond a profound need to look into his father’s living eyes, at least one more time.
Then they were there, like steaming into a hurricane, right in the middle of the gunfire. The shells screamed over their low deck and wheelhouse, the smoke embraced them so that everything beyond the Abigail Wilson’s bow became dull and indistinct. The fires and the muzzle flashes lit the smoke from within. The guns were deafening.
Dead ahead of them loomed one of the big Yankee ships, a ghost ship in the smoke, and the Wilson’s gun crew fired at its dull outline. The six-pounder sounded puny against the backdrop of serious artillery. There was no way to know if they had hit the Yankee, or if they did, whether their shot had done any damage.
A tug emerged from the smoke astern, passed close, the Confederate flag snapping at the ensign staff, a raft of some sort made off to the bow. One hundred feet beyond the Wilson and the raft burst into flames, lighting up the tug and the big Yankee for which she was steaming.
Fire raft! Jonathan thought. He had heard of such things. The idea went back to Sir Francis Drake, and further. He watched, fascinated. The tug looked for all the world as if she was on fire, with the mounting flames of the raft sweeping back toward her, and Jonathan figured if she was not, she soon would be.
The Yankee was turning, trying to avoid the threat, but the big ship could not outmaneuver the smaller tug. The flames on the raft cut through the smoke, illuminated the tug and her target.
The fire raft slammed into the Yankee, the impact making the flames leap high, catching the Yankee ship’s rigging, sweeping along her painted sides. She was engulfed. Jonathan could not see how she could avoid burning to the waterline.
The tug backed off, leaving the raft against the Union ship’s side, turned hard, making her escape. But the flames had not distracted the Yankee gunners. From the ship’s side, ten guns opened up, point-blank range, ripping the tug to pieces. The wheelhouse and deckhouse were shattered, the boat slewed around as the helmsman was killed, the steering gear wrecked. She turned a half circle and began to settle fast, water pouring in through some unseen rent aft. She listed to starboard, her bow lifted from the river.
“Helmsman!” Wilson shouted. “Make for the tug there!” He was pointing at the sinking vessel. “We’ll see if any of those poor bastards are still alive!”
The Abigail Wilson turned north, turned toward the blazing Yankee ship and the thundering fort beyond. The Confederate gunners in the forts had seen the Yankee man-of-war’s distress, were concentrating their fire on her, while she was hitting back as hard as she could. Jonathan could see men swarming around the flames, heard the hiss of steam as hoses played on the fire. On her stern he could read the name Hartford.
They came up with the sinking tug. Wilson stepped over to the rail, oblivious of the shells whistling past, the occasional minie ball hitting the deck.
“No one alive there,” Wilson said and turned his back on the sinking tug. Jonathan looked for himself. The vessel was a wreck, torn apart, sinking fast. There was no sign of life aboard, no one yelling for help. With one broadside the Yankee ship had reduced it to a complete wreck, as if a furious storm had been pounding the hull against a reef for two days.
“That son of a bitch is done for! Let’s get downriver!” Wilson shouted. It was not clear to whom he was speaking or to whom he was referring, but the helmsman put the helm over to port and the tug turned, plunging into the fight, the men at the bow firing at anything too big to be a Confederate vessel.
Jonathan Paine could not have imagined a scene such as the one around him. The Battle of Manassas seemed a well-organized, leisurely affair compared to this. It was madness, the dark night lit up only by cannon fire and burning ships, the war elephants of the Yankee fleet pushing upriver. Confederate vessels everywhere, ripping around the water, looking for their chance, or listing from shots below the waterline, or in some cases fleeing upstream. There were Rebel boats surrounded on all sides, blasting away at every point on the compass, Union ships hounded by gunfire on every quarter.
Into that madness the Abigail Wilson steamed, engine full ahead, her bow gun barking out as fast as the men could load and fire. Bobby was hauling on one of the train tackles now; three men lay dead or wounded against the bulwark. Minie balls were splintering the wood, a shell took off part of the boat deck as it screamed past.
Jonathan looked up. A big side-wheeler was passing them, firing into the night as it went. Most of the shot was high-perhaps the gunners were concentrating on the forts, perhaps it was the accidental shell that had hit the Abigail Wilson. It would take only one well-placed accident to end them.
“There!” Wilson shouted, slapping Jonathan’s arm, pointing.
Jonathan followed his arm. There was a boxy-looking ironclad, two hundred yards downstream, just visible through the smoke. She looked to be in some difficulty, did not look as if she was fully under control.
“What?”
“That’s her! That’s the Yazoo River! Your father’s ship!”
Jonathan sucked in his breath. After all this long journey, the proximity to his father seemed unreal, and suddenly he was afraid. He looked again at the ironclad. Smoke was coming from her stack, and from the many holes in her stack, and from her gunports it seemed. Jonathan could see the smoke in the bright light that seemed to pour out of her, and stupidly he wondered why they had her lit so bright below, how many lanterns it would take to do that.
The Abigail Wilson closed with her, and the shock of coming up with his father’s boat passed and with it the dull stupidity that had numbed Jonathan’s mind. Of course they were not lighting up the interior of the boat with lanterns. The ironclad’s gundeck was on fire.
46
A few moments after the attack commenced, and the enemy succeeded in passing with foreseen ships…the battle of New Orleans, as against ships of war, was over.
– Report of Major General Lovell, C.S. Army,
Commanding Defenses of New Orleans
Robley Paine opened his eyes to brilliant light and heat, and he thought for one confused moment that he had fallen asleep in the summer sun, on the bank of the Yazoo River, at Paine Plantation.
That thought passed quick, washed away by a wave of pain in his leg, an ache that seemed to encompass his entire left side. He pushed himself off the hard surface on which he was lying, moved by instinct, compelled to get out of the way.
It came into focus-the gun deck of the Yazoo River. His ship. It was on fire.
He grabbed on to the wheel of one of the broadside guns, pulled himself to his feet as if climbing a steep cliff. He turned, leaned against the gun. He could no longer ignore the pain in his left side. He made himself look.
He was burned, all along his side, his frock coat and shirt, his trousers charred and in some places burned away, revealing ugly, cooked flesh, black and red and raw, through the holes. He sucked in his breath as the pain came again, worse, somehow, now that he had witnessed the damage.
He had been serving as gun captain, he recalled, of the second gun aft on the port side, in the place of a man who had been decapitated by a flying bit of metal. He remembered reaching down for a cartridge, and nothing else.
Robley turned his attention from his wounds to his ship. The whole forward bulkhead, the two guns pointing forward, and the forwardmost starboard broadside gun were all engulfed in flames. The fire seemed to fill the gundeck, blazing and spreading, lighting up that dark place with a brilliance it had never seen. The white paint was curling, bubbling, dripping from the sides. He could see the dark shapes of bodies
, motionless, resting in their crematorium. The casement was filling with smoke and the smell of burning paint and the sweet sickish smell of cooking flesh.
Robley looked around for an officer, a petty officer, someone to take charge. He found Quillin on the starboard side-his head and his shoulders, one arm, and a part of his torso. Where the rest of him was he did not know.
Ruffin Tanner was bleeding from his forehead but keeping his gun crews at their work, seemingly oblivious to the fire. Babcock, the boatswain, came running aft, carrying a bucket, leading a line of men carrying buckets, and they flung the water and sand at the fire, a useless gesture, as far as Robley Paine could see.
Midshipman Worley came racing down the deck, stopped, began to back away.
“Mr. Worley! Mr. Worley!” Robley Paine pushed himself off the gun, limped across the deck, grabbed the young man’s arm. Worley flinched, looked up at Paine, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.
“Worley, is the captain alive?” Paine shouted. The midshipman shook his head, but from the look of unreasoning panic in his eyes, Paine could not tell if the gesture meant the captain was dead or that Worley thought it incomprehensible that someone should ask such a thing at such a time.
“Is the captain alive, damn you?” Paine shouted again, shook the midshipman, who offered no resistance.
“We’re played out…we must strike…” Worley managed at last.
“Strike? We’ll not strike.”
Worley seemed to come to his senses, or whatever senses were available to his terrified mind. He jerked his arm from Paine’s grip. “We must strike!” he shouted.
Paine grabbed his arm again, leaned close. “Listen to me, Mr. Worley,” he said, and spoke as gently as he could and still be heard. “We will fight, and we will die if we must, but we will not strike!”
Worley shook his head again, and Paine could see the boy thought him mad. He twisted free again, turned, and raced aft. Paine could see him in the light that the fire was throwing clear down the length of the deck. He could see him race past the pilothouse deck, even as Captain Bowater was coming down, could see him continue aft, and he had no doubt as to where the boy was headed.
Glory In The Name Page 48