The Crescent Spy

by Michael Wallace

  And then the gates of hell opened before them.

  The bummers of Porter’s mortar fleet opened up first. It was more of the same bombardment that had punished Fort Jackson for the past week, but now the firepower was directed at the water battery below. It lay uncovered, with no bombproofs, but boasted earthen breastworks and moats, and had six downward-facing guns that would have the first shot at the approaching fleet.

  Mortars exploded over the water battery or landed directly within to illuminate the works like lightning in a storm cloud. For several minutes, the water battery absorbed this punishment. Then the guns responded. Lights flashed at Cayuga and Pensacola in the van. The warships bellowed a response. In an instant, the entire formation of Union steamers lay illuminated in the river in a garish tableau.

  Within minutes, the head of the formation was beneath the guns of Fort Jackson, whose guns roared again and again. Upriver, St. Philip let loose with her own devastating, enfilading fire. Shells tore through the masts and rigging. The ships returned their own punishing fire, but it looked as though they would soon be overwhelmed.

  Smoke enveloped the van now, and Josephine could no longer see the forts or any of the other ships, only the continual flashes of light, behind, ahead, off port, and overhead. The boom and shake and fury of war was overwhelming. Between explosions, bells rang on the ship, warning of fire, ordering changes of course, giving directions to other ships in the fleet. How any man could think over the chaos was beyond her.

  A shell slammed into the mainmast. Josephine and Franklin covered their heads as splinters came raining down. The ship leaned to starboard, and she thought they must be taking on water, but it was only a hard turn toward the right bank.

  A flash of light burst over Hartford, together with a ripping explosion. Josephine was flat on her belly before she realized she was throwing herself down. Franklin was with her, asking if she was hurt. More explosions, as if the magazines had gone off. The ship felt like it was tearing itself to pieces beneath her, and she expected to feel the water sucking her down again. Belatedly, she realized these new roars were only Hartford’s guns answering fire.

  Josephine rose shakily, and she and Franklin went over to help Farragut to his feet. The older man seemed more defiant than shaken, and glared toward Fort Jackson from where the shot had come. But shortly after, they had passed mostly beyond Jackson and were taking fire from St. Philip instead. Fortunately, the second fort was poorly positioned to hit them, and most of the shots went flying harmlessly overhead.

  A fire raft came roaring down the channel, and the helmsman swung hard to starboard to get out of the way. But then the smoke cleared and they realized they were too close to the shore. Before the helmsman could correct, the keel drove into the mud, and the ship shuddered. They’d run aground trying to avoid the raft. Now right beneath St. Philip’s water battery, Josephine was close enough to hear the Confederates screaming orders through the smoke. Meanwhile, the fire raft, which had supposedly floated harmlessly downriver, began to cut upstream toward them. How was that possible?

  When the smoke cleared, Josephine saw with horror that a Confederate tug had hooked it and was bringing it in alongside Hartford. The men of Hartford fired with rifles and deck guns, but were unable to drive away the tug before it had pushed the fire raft alongside. Flames shot skyward, and a wave of heat rolled over the deck. Within moments, Hartford’s entire portside was a bonfire, engulfed to the mizzen tops.

  Men were crying for orders whether or not they should abandon ship, and Franklin grabbed Josephine as if to haul her to the opposite side, where they could leap into the muddy shallows and make their way to shore to surrender. The Confederate guns kept up a steady pounding. A blast of grapeshot crashed through the rigging overhead.

  But Farragut’s men held firm. Two lieutenants raced along the deck, organizing a bucket brigade, and sailors manned the pumps. A man climbed into the rigging with a hose. Farragut paced the deck, shouting encouragement. Josephine and Franklin joined the bucket brigade.

  But none of the effort would help if they couldn’t rid themselves of the fire raft. Three men raced up to the portside with twenty-pound shells, which they dropped overboard into the fire raft. The shells exploded as they hit the fire, one after another, and shortly the raft was sinking in the river.

  Even as the fight against the fire continued, Hartford reversed her engines and broke free of the bank. The water battery continued to attack, but now Hartford was able to respond with a broadside, and shortly they were past it and continuing upriver. They fired more broadsides at St. Philip as they passed, and then they were into the open river above, where they emerged into another fight.

  More fire rafts drifted downstream. Union ships were turned about, some having been confused by the darkness, the smoke, and the bends in the river. The enemy steamers were lined up against them, blasting away.

  Louisiana still lurked on the opposite side of the river, and let loose a barrage as one of the Union sloops passed. It returned fire, but the shells bounced harmlessly off its plating. Unfortunately for Louisiana, she couldn’t seem to hit anything in turn.

  “Those guns,” Franklin muttered. “I knew they would be useless.”

  But seeing the monster lurking there on the riverbank, she could only imagine what damage it could have done steaming up and down the river with full power and well-mounted guns. And if Louisiana had been joined by her sister ship Mississippi, still presumably under construction in New Orleans, the Union expedition would have been doomed.

  “The ram!” someone screamed.

  It was Manassas, the low-slung turtle with its huffing stack, bearing down on them. Now that Josephine was on the receiving end, the ram didn’t look so harmless. Not like a cucumber at all, but a black metal spear point. For several seconds the impact looked inevitable, a slow-motion blow backed by thousands of pounds of force and momentum that would cut Hartford in two. But Manassas’s poor maneuverability was the decider, and Hartford slipped by unscathed. She fired a broadside at the ram in passing. A few shells bounced off Manassass’s back, and the rest plopped harmlessly into the water.

  Hartford now found itself in the middle of a ferocious battle between Farragut’s sloops and the mosquito fleet upriver, which was mounting a spirited and desperate struggle to keep the Union forces bottled up in range of the forts. If kept from breaking free, the wooden warships would inevitably be sunk or driven off by the guns at their rear.

  Two more fire rafts came floating down the river. Hartford maneuvered between them and continued upstream to join Pensacola, which was blasting away at two Confederate ships. Hartford swung wide and released her own broadside. For several minutes, the four ships fired back and forth, with another of Farragut’s sloops joining. The smaller, weaker Confederate ships couldn’t sustain the fight and were soon fleeing the battle upstream, pursued by a federal gunboat.

  Meanwhile, so many Union ships were piling up in the river that they were struggling to keep from shooting at each other. A burning Confederate ship drifted downstream, while other crippled ships of the mosquito fleet had run against the bank to be scuttled.

  Dawn had arrived at last. Downriver, the gunfire from the last division of Farragut’s fleet and the two Confederate forts continued unabated. Within twenty minutes the last few Union stragglers arrived. The bulk of the fleet was safely above the forts, and the enemy had been destroyed or driven from the river.

  While the fleet organized itself for emergency repairs and to tend the wounded, Farragut called up the band, who came onto the charred, blood-streaked deck of Hartford and played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A great cheer came up from the exhausted, powder-stained crew, which quickly spread from boat to boat.

  Josephine fell asleep on deck in the shadow of Hartford’s side-wheel. Exhausted men slept all around her. She woke when the sun cut through her shady spot, and found Franklin squatting nearby, holding her satchel. He handed it over.

  “There are carpent
ers working in your room. I thought I’d retrieve your possessions.”

  “Thank you,” she said. A quick glance inside showed everything in place, including the Colonel’s Oriental box. “What time is it?”

  “Afternoon. We’ll be heading upstream shortly. Word has it there’s fighting at Quarantine. Farragut will want to seize its battery before we continue on to New Orleans.”

  She rubbed at her temples to ease the headache settling in. By now, New Orleans would know that the fleet had passed the forts. She imagined that General Lovell would be organizing the militia, but apart from that, she couldn’t decide if the people would be defiant or panicked.

  “There’s one other thing,” Franklin began hesitantly. “A prisoner. He heard you were on board and wants to speak with you.”

  “Is it Fein?” she asked, feeling suddenly nervous.

  She hadn’t seen him since they’d been rescued from the wreckage of the rowboat. By now he’d no doubt heard of her perfidy, and she was afraid to face him. He had always treated her fairly, yet she had lied to him repeatedly, had taken advantage of his trust to smuggle Franklin out of New Orleans.

  “No. It’s an officer from Fort Jackson, captured when he led a group of men attempting to free one of the enemy boats that had run aground. An old friend of yours. Major Dunbar.”

  Josephine chewed on her lip. Her first inclination was to refuse. What could Dunbar do, other than accuse her of treachery? To spit in her face and promise that she would forever be seen as a villain and symbol of Northern aggression?

  But that was the coward’s way. Even angry, he might still give up information about the condition of the forts, the attitude of the remaining defenders. Would they surrender? Fight on until food and powder ran out?

  “I know it’s a lot to ask,” Franklin said. “I told Flag Officer Farragut, and he said—”

  “No,” she interrupted, “you don’t need to say anything more. I’ll go see the major.”

  They had lodged Dunbar in a small cabin not far from the flag officer’s own berth. There was only a single guard posted, who inclined his head when Josephine entered. She shut the door behind her to keep the guard on the outside.

  The major was lying on his bed, his hands behind his head, staring up at the wood beams of the ceiling. His face was heavily stubbled, his hair a wild mop, and his shirt was splattered with mud, but somehow he maintained his dignified appearance.

  Dunbar looked up with a dejected expression, but as soon as he met her gaze, he sprang to his feet. “Miss Breaux!” He hastily fastened the top two buttons of his shirt and grabbed for his gray jacket.

  “Please don’t trouble yourself,” she said. “Look at me—I’m worse.”

  “You’re as beautiful as ever.”

  “You’re a bad liar, Major. I’ve been into the river and through two battles. My clothes are torn and my hair is an egret’s nest.” She rubbed her hands together nervously. “Have they been treating you well?”

  “Well enough. They separated me from my men and confiscated my pistol and sword, but I have not been abused in any way. How about yourself?”

  “I’ve been treated well,” she said. “But I’m not a prisoner.”

  “That’s a mercy. Given your reputation, I’d worried that you’d be hard put upon, lady or no.”

  He seemed genuinely relieved, and she flinched from her duty. He didn’t understand; he still thought she was a Confederate patriot. It would be an easy task to make him talk. All she had to do was sit next to him on his bed, lay her hand over his, and ask direct questions. He’d tell her everything about the fort and what he’d heard about defenses upriver at Quarantine and New Orleans. She couldn’t do it.

  “Well, I suppose I should leave. I wish you the best, Major.”

  “Wait! If you’re not a prisoner, does that mean you’re free to come and go?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “This is a lucky stroke. That they would leave us alone . . . What a bit of fortune at our darkest hour! I need you to pass a message to General Lovell.”

  “Major . . .”

  “You won’t be in any danger. If you’re caught, blame me, say I pressed until you couldn’t say no. Farragut is a gentleman. He was born in Tennessee and his wife is from Virginia. He knows we aren’t monsters. He’s only doing his duty, and his duty doesn’t include hanging a young lady caught with compromising military intelligence.” Dunbar reached into the pocket of his jacket and removed a folded piece of paper. “I have critical information about Butler’s troops. I wrote it down this morning, scarcely daring to hope that it would find its way to General Lovell.”

  “Major Dunbar, please don’t tell me any more.” She held out her hands as he pushed the note at her. “No, I won’t take it.”

  She knew she should take Dunbar’s letter and hand it over to either Franklin or Farragut, but what difference would it make at this late hour? General Butler had fifteen thousand troops downriver, ready to assault the forts if they couldn’t be made to surrender without further violence. And once the forts fell, what then? Lovell might have a few thousand militia in New Orleans, but that included such units of dubious worth as the riverboat gamblers of the Blackleg Cavalry. And as she had so carefully described in her dispatches, the federal fleet could easily puncture the levee and flood the city, rendering helpless any defense.

  Her work done, Josephine desperately wanted to avoid this final betrayal.

  “Please remember,” she said gently in response to his befuddled frown. “I have experience passing behind enemy lines. I don’t only work for the newspaper, I work for the government. What information I collect, I pass along to my superiors. Think about that for a moment.”

  “Like you did in Virginia,” he stumbled on. “At Manassas. If you’d do that for General Beauregard, why can’t you do it for me? All I’m asking is that you carry this information to Lovell. If you can get this to him before the Yankees arrive . . . Can’t you do that for me? Josephine, for the love of God.”

  “You still don’t understand,” she said sadly. “I can’t do that for you because I’m not your ally. I never have been. I don’t want you to win.”

  His face fell slack. She could see his final, desperate hope draining away. “What?”

  “Major, I’m sorry. I work for the other side.”

  Fighting continued on the river as the fleet steamed toward New Orleans. There was a brief skirmish at Quarantine before Farragut sent marines ashore to seize the guns. Then, when they approached the city on the morning of the twenty-fifth, they had to dodge more fire rafts sent downstream in a desperate attempt to drive them off. A few small batteries at the city fired a handful of volleys before they were silenced by the big guns of the fleet.

  Josephine and Franklin stood on the deck of Hartford as they pulled up to the levee. Rain poured from the sky, as if the city were weeping, but it didn’t cut the fires roaring along the wharfs. A mob was burning and looting the warehouses, tossing flaming bales of cotton into the river. They smashed barrels of rum and molasses and threw them in. Boats of all kinds—barges, launches, tugs, flatboats—burned, either sinking or joining the vast quantity of debris floating down the river. Anything that could potentially aid the Union forces was dumped into the Mississippi.

  From upriver floated a huge, flaming object that she couldn’t identify at first, so much smoke was roiling from it into the sky. She supposed it was another fire raft. But as it drew nearer, she saw that it was the burning hulk of a massive ironclad vessel.

  “Mississippi,” Franklin said. “I suppose they never did finish her.”

  A note of melancholy had entered his voice. Franklin had worked for months at the yards building the two boats that had been meant to change the course of the war. He must have been curious to know how Louisiana and Mississippi would fare had they been completed and properly armed. But perhaps it was more, a sense of betrayal to those he’d worked beside, not unlike how Josephine felt about Solomon Fein and Major Du
nbar.

  By early afternoon, most of Farragut’s fleet lay anchored in the river facing New Orleans. Word came that Lovell had fled New Orleans with the militia, and there would be no opposition. With this news, Farragut sent a small company of men ashore under flag of truce.

  Cleaned up and ready to report on the capture of the city, Josephine went ashore with them, together with Franklin. A mob was gathering, some of them singing Confederate hymns or waving rebel battle flags, while others jeered and hurled bottles and other rubbish at the men in blue. For a moment it seemed as though there would be violence, but then the band on one of the ships struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The crowd fell silent. A few handkerchiefs came out. The song was an anthem for all Americans, the North and South alike.

  Josephine was scanning the crowd with a newspaper reporter’s eye when her gaze fell on a woman with wet, dripping hair and streaked makeup. The woman stared back with a morose expression. That expression was unlike the anger and sorrow in most of the crowd, deeper somehow, more intense.

  A jolt of recognition. The woman was Francesca Díaz.

  Josephine hadn’t recognized her at first glance because of the haggard expression, the reddish hair made dull and sodden by the rain, with an inch of gray showing at the roots. And the utter defeat in Francesca’s expression. It was as if she were battered down, had personally suffered great ruin.

  You did it. You ruined her.

  It was an accusation born of the self-pitying note Francesca had sent in February, the one that had left Josephine baffled. And it was hardly fair. Francesca had threatened her with exposure and destruction, not the other way around.

  Francesca leaned against a cane. Not the elegant, ivory-topped cane from that day in Congo Square, when she’d walked in the company of the Colonel, but a hickory walking stick, scuffed and splitting at the end. Not an affectation, then, but to help support her weight, the more elegant stick apparently having been sold in response to her reduced situation. That limp Josephine had first spotted at the Cajun fisherman’s shack must be a real and permanent injury, not a twisted ankle, not gout.