No one seemed to know. No one knew if anyone else knew, or if those decisions had even been made. The general feeling in the fleet was that they would not fight, that preserving the Confederacy’s last waterborne fighting force on the Mississippi was more important than trying to hold on to Memphis, which would be lost eventually, no matter what they did.
“So, there will be no fight?” Bowater asked. Dragging himself back from Shirley’s yard, exhausted, dispirited, he had met Tarbox up on the hurricane deck. The first mate was leaning on the rail, staring upriver.
“Reckon not. Feller on the Colonel Lovell, he told me we was gonna head downriver tonight. ’Course it don’t look like that’s gonna happen, so I don’t know what the hell now. Ain’t heard a thing from anyone who could actually make a damn decision, so I don’t know what to tell you, Cap’n.”
“I see.” Bowater considered sending Tarbox over to the flag boat, but decided against it. It would remind those in command that Sullivan was still out of commission, and that might make someone overly curious. Besides, it was even money that they did not know on the flag boat what they were going to do, anymore than anyone else did.
Just wait and see…. Lord, after all his years in the service, it was one thing Bowater knew how to do.
“Word is, them Yankees is laid on Paddy’s Hen and Chickens,” Tarbox added.
Bowater had no idea what he meant. He wondered if that was some kind of river man’s insult. “Paddy’s Hen and Chickens?”
“Right up there.” Tarbox gestured upriver with his chin. “Little cluster of islands, right at the bend of the river, ’bout a mile an a half above the city. Called ‘Paddy’s Hen and Chickens.’ Picket boat brung word, them ironclads is tied up there. If it was daylight, we could see ’em from here.”
Bowater nodded. Two fleets within sight of one another, and no one knew what would happen next. Something, anyway. Make a stand or skedaddle, whichever it was, something would happen tomorrow. “If we don’t hear from the flag boat before, let’s have all hands at quarters an hour before dawn, and a full head up steam,” Bowater said.
“Yessuh,” Tarbox said, and though he drawled the words, there was a note of approval there as well.
“And get some sleep, Mr. Tarbox. I certainly intend to.”
The best laid plans…, Bowater thought as he lay in his bunk, sleepless, staring at the shadows made by the moonlight on the overhead. How many twists and turns had his life taken in the past year? After fourteen years of near stagnation in the United States Navy, he had, in one year of warfare, more than made up for that monotony.
A little monotony would not be so bad, he thought. But he knew he would not get that anytime soon. Certainly not in the morning.
He thought of Wendy. Where was she? He had sent her several letters during the last week of April and the first week of May, telling her all about Memphis, the Tennessee, the River Defense Fleet, the Battle of Plum Point. The things he knew she would not really care about. And he also told her how much he loved her, missed her, wished he could hold her in his arms once again. The things she would want to hear.
He mailed them to her address in Portsmouth, the only one he had, and he never received a word in reply. He could only guess that she had returned to Culpepper and her mail was not being forwarded, or that his letters had not arrived at all. There were other possibilities, of course, but none that he cared to think about.
It was now June sixth, with midnight an hour past. Almost a month since the Yankees had taken Portsmouth and Norfolk and ended the hope of even a letter from Wendy. If she had not gotten out ahead of them, she was now behind enemy lines.
Where is she? What is she doing? he wondered. And as he did, he fell asleep.
After some time, someone shook him awake, and none too gently. His limbs were stiff and his eyes stung from too little sleep. His cabin was partially illuminated by a single lantern hung from a hook.
“Three in the morning. Hour to sunrise,” Tarbox’s voice sounded in the dark.
“Thank you, Mr. Tarbox.” Bowater swung his legs off the bunk, rubbed his eyes. He heard the click of the door as Tarbox left.
Samuel gave himself five minutes to collect his thoughts. He said a prayer, which he was not much in the habit of doing, and only by asking for help for everyone but himself was he able to avoid feeling like the world’s biggest hypocrite. Then he stood, strapped on his belt and holster with his engraved .36 Colt, pulled on his frock coat, set his cap on his head and stepped out into the predawn dark.
Men moved like shadows around him, men stumbling to quarters, taking the places they would occupy if the General Page went into battle. The moon had set and it was quite dark, but still Bowater could see the shapes hunkered around the ten-pound Parrot rifle in the bow and loading small arms behind the wood and compressed cotton bulwarks.
He climbed up onto the hurricane deck. The morning was cool and damp and still. He could hear frogs and the call of wading birds, the buzz and chirp of insects around the levee. Lovely. He breathed deep, understood how a person could fall in love with that river.
Someone appeared at the head of the ladder, climbing up. He saluted. Bowater did not recognize him. “Chief Taylor says steam’s at service gauge, Cap’n,” he said. One of the coal passers. Bowater did not know his name.
“Very well. Tell Chief Taylor”—Bowater almost said, “Tell Chief Taylor to listen for my bells” but he stopped himself. “Tell Chief Taylor thank you. And Godspeed.”
“Godspeed,” the coal passer repeated, as if he would have trouble remembering. “Yes, sir.”
They waited. Bowater, Tarbox, Amos Baxter, the helmsman. Doc arrived with coffee and hardtack smeared with something that might be construed as butter, and they ate and drank and waited some more.
The sky grew lighter, the dark pulled away to reveal the river, the town climbing up the hill, the levee, the ships of the River Defense Fleet, black smoke rolling from their chimneys.
“Look there,” Tarbox grunted, gesturing upriver. A great cloud of black smoke hung over the trees, a mile and a half away.
“Hope them damned Yankees done set their damn selves on fire,” Baxter offered, but Bowater knew it would not be that easy. The smoke was the collective output of the ironclad fleet’s furnaces. They were getting up steam. Next stop: Memphis.
Bowater looked to the flag boat, the Little Rebel, wondered what decisions had been made. It was light enough now that he could see a figure at the base of the forwardmost flagpole. Bowater picked up the signal book just as the string of three flags ran up the pole. Numbers one, two, and four. Bowater ran his finger down the list. Prepare for battle.
“We stay,” he announced to the wheelhouse. “We stay and fight.”
One by one the ships of the River Defense Fleet cast off and backed into the stream. The General M. Jeff Thompson, the Sumter, the General Beauregard, the General Joseph Page, the Colonel Lovell, and the Little Rebel. The General Earl Van Dorn, the General Sterling Price and the General Bragg, paddle wheels turning, kicking up the river white, their men hunkered down behind makeshift barricades of railroad iron and compressed cotton and pine planks, or clustered around the odd assortment of guns at bow and stern. The River Defense Fleet, the forlorn hope, steamed into the morning.
By the time Bowater could turn his concentration from conning the ship, getting her into the line of boats, like knights of old, ready to charge, the sky had gone from gray to the lightest blue. He could see people on the waterfront and gathering on the levee, the citizens of Memphis come out to watch the battle for their town, helpless spectators to their own fate.
Bowater gave the engine room a jingle. Dead slow ahead, enough to stem the current, keep them in place. He could see the Federal gunboats now, moving out into the river, forming a line from one shore to the other, much as the River Defense Fleet had done, a string of iron gunboats sweeping down on them. But it was still quiet, save for the working of the paddle wheels and the walking beam.
Bowater remembered Sullivan, down below.
“Mr. Tarbox, I have to go below for a moment. Hold the boat here, watch the Little Rebel for orders, send for me if you need me.”
“Awright. Where ya gonna be?”
“I’m going to confer with Captain Sullivan.”
He rushed forward as fast as he could go and still maintain his dignity, down to the boiler deck and aft to Sullivan’s cabin. He paused at the door and knocked, hoping there would be no answer, but instead he heard Sullivan’s voice, “Come!”
Bowater opened the door, stepped inside. Sullivan was sitting in his big chair, the one Bowater always pictured him in, the place he sat during their writing sessions. He was dressed in worn denim pants and a river-driver shirt and slouch hat. He had his gun belt with two pistols strapped around his waist. He was pale and sweating profusely, and his breath was labored, as if he had just run a mile or so, though he did not look as if he had the strength to stand.
“Sullivan, what in hell are you doing out of bed?” Bowater demanded.
“Doc told me…” Sullivan tried for a smile, but could not quite make it happen. “Said we’re gonna fight them Yankees. Can’t sleep through that.”
Bowater was suddenly afraid that Sullivan meant to take back command of the ship. What could he say? It was Sullivan’s ship to command. He tried to think of some argument that would not sound purely selfish.
“Don’t you fret, Cap’n,” Sullivan continued, as if he had read Bowater’s mind. “You’re still in command of this bucket. Hell, I don’t know if I can walk, never mind take charge. But I got to be on deck. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Bowater nodded.
“After all,” Sullivan said, “I’m the hardest drivin, hardest drinkin…” He broke off in a fit of coughing.
“Yes, most dangerous son of a whore riverboat man on the Western Waters,” Bowater supplied.
From somewhere beyond the cabin, but not so far, a gun fired, a single cannon shot. Sullivan stopped coughing. The two men looked up, looked at nothing, focused their hearing. Another shot, and another. The River Defense Fleet, opening the ball.
“Come on, Captain Sullivan.” Bowater stepped over to the chair, offered Mississippi Mike a hand. Sullivan took it, and with a grunt, an involuntary sound ripped from his guts, he stood.
Sullivan draped his right arm over Bowater’s shoulder and put his weight on it, and Bowater braced himself to hold the big man up. Together they stepped from the cabin, from their literary salon, right into the Battle of Memphis.
THIRTY
The people in tens of thousands crowded the high bluffs overlooking the river, some of them apparently as gay and cheerful as a bright May morning, and others watching with silent awe the impending struggle.
COMMANDER HENRY WALKE,
USS CARONDELET
There was going to be a battle. A fight on the river. It was what everyone in Memphis was saying. It loomed like the Second Coming in people’s minds, and it made Wendy Atkins so anxious she could scream.
Getting upriver from Yazoo City to Memphis had been no easy task. Even with money to pay her passage—and it was running low—it had been a job just finding a boat making the run. Wendy heard various takes on the same theme—Boat to Memphis? Hell, there ain’t no boats no more. Should a seen it before, hell, you could walk to Memphis on the damned boats. Now? With the damn Yankees, an Jeff Davis? You’d have better luck swimmin—until she was ready to tear her hair out.
But she made it. Through perseverance, monetary disbursement, and shameless flirting she had managed to get upriver to Memphis, stepping ashore on the afternoon of June fifth with absolutely no notion of what she would do next, where she would go, how she would find Samuel.
She secured lodging first—it seemed practical—and then began to ask around. There were two things that she kept hearing. There was no naval presence in Memphis, no naval officers or men. And there was going to be a battle on the river.
Those two facts seemed to contradict one another. How could there be a battle on the river with no navy? she wondered. Finally she found a haughty assistant provost named van Reid, who explained to her that the Confederate squadron, a thing called the River Defense Fleet, was not under the command of the navy, but under army control, to the extent that it was under any control at all.
“I see…” Wendy said.
“And now, it is hardly safe for you to be abroad, ma’am. Might I escort you to your lodging?” the suddenly solicitous van Reid asked.
“I think I am safer escorting myself, thank you,” she said curtly and walked off. It was dark. She was very tired. She walked uphill to her hotel.
She was just stepping through the door of her room when another line of questioning came to her. The Tennessee, she thought. No one in Memphis knew where a naval officer might be found, but surely someone would know where this Tennessee was being built. With a refreshed sense of optimism, she went to bed and slept, deep and dreamlessly.
She was awake before dawn, dressed, and was out the door. She woke the clerk at the desk, who was asleep on a tall stool and seemed in danger of toppling off.
“Tennessee? Certainly, ma’am. Tennessee’s building down to Shirley’s yard. Along with the Arkansas, which they towed off. I can get you a carriage, if you want.” He glanced dubiously at the front windows, which looked like black marble with the night sky behind them. “Don’t know if anyone will be there. Besides, there’s supposed to be a battle with the Yankees today.”
Wendy asked for the carriage. She could not wait another moment. She would rather pace back and forth in a dark, empty shipyard then sit in the hotel lobby, doing nothing.
The sky was lightening when they left the hotel, though the sun had not risen and the town was still lost in the gloom. Wendy sat in the carriage, swaying back and forth, stomach knotted. The old man driving the coach did not seem in much of a hurry, and Wendy wanted to lean out the window and tell him to get a damned move on, but she held her tongue.
Finally the carriage came to a stop, nearly tumbling Wendy headfirst. She felt it rock as the driver climbed down, opened the door. “Shirley’s yard, ma’am. Don’t know as anyone’s here.”
Wendy stepped out into the cool air under the now light blue sky. The air was thick with the odor of charred wood, an acrid smell that reminded her of the Gosport Naval Shipyard, which she had twice seen burned.
“This is fine, thank you.”
The carriage rattled away and Wendy stepped over the bare ground into what she guessed was a shipyard. There were makeshift buildings and piles of wood in sawn boards and uncut logs. And in the middle of the yard, a great pile of charred wood, a heap at least one hundred and fifty feet long and ten feet high of black charcoal and white ash. As she approached it, she could feel it was still warm, still smoldering. It could not have been burned very long ago. What was it? she wondered. Could this have been the Tennessee?
She heard footsteps and her hand reached down for the hem of her skirt, ready to pull it aside, yank the gun from the holster, a move she had practiced in the privacy of her room. She could see a man hurrying toward her, head down, moving fast. A small man, he did not seem to notice her.
“Excuse me,” she said when she saw he was going to walk right past her.
“Oh!” The man jumped in surprise. He stopped in his tracks, looked over at her. “Yes? May I help you?”
“Hello, my name is Wendy Atkins.” She stepped toward the man.
“Pleased to meet you. I am John Shirley. I am the owner of the yard here.”
“Honored, sir. Perhaps you can help me. Do you, perchance, know a Lieutenant Samuel Bowater.”
“Bowater? Certainly I know Lieutenant Bowater. Right behind you, that pile of ash, that was his command. Burned it last night. Before the Yankees got it.” There was more than a little bitterness in his voice.
“Oh, dear. Will Lieutenant Bowater be here today?”
“Today? No, I shouldn’
t think so. No reason for him to come here now. Besides, there’s going to be a battle, or so they say.”
So they say, Wendy thought. If there was going to be a battle on the river, she suspected that Samuel would be part of it, army command or no.
“Bowater was friendly with one of the captains of the River Defense Fleet,” Shirley continued. “Don’t recall his name. Big fella. Had the boat General Joseph Page. I imagine Bowater is probably with him today.”
“Yes…” Wendy said. Oh, God, this was terrible! She had finally found him, or near enough, and now he would be off to battle, perhaps without even knowing she was there.
“Do you know where this General Joseph Page is anchored? Or tied up?”
“The fleet was tied to the levee last night. Not very far from here. I could take you, if you like.”
“I would like that very much,” Wendy said.
From somewhere north of them, up the river, hidden by the cluster of waterfront buildings, a gun went off, the loud report of heavy ordnance. Shirley looked up quickly. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Reckon we better hurry.”
Samuel Bowater made his way down the side deck, bearing half of Mississippi Mike Sullivan’s weight on his shoulders. By the time they reached the ladder to the hurricane deck, the firing had escalated from a single gun here and there to an all-out barrage, a solid noise of gunfire, a murderous cannonade.
Sullivan seemed to gain strength with each step, putting less and less weight on Bowater’s shoulders, for which Bowater was grateful.
They came to the forward end of the boiler deck and stopped. The Federal ironclads were opening up all along their line. The ships themselves were beginning to look blurry and indistinct as they were lost from sight behind the wall of their own gun smoke. The gunfire was like the rumble of thunder, and cutting through that low sound came the terrifying whine of shells screaming past.
Thieves of Mercy Page 37