Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo

by The Sea Hunters II

  We began surveying the river thirteen miles below Port Hudson and ran north past Profit Island, which has changed very little over the past hundred years, to within six miles of where Mississippi grounded and began her drift. I had been told that the Army Corps of Engineers had surveyed part of the river where Mississippi had grounded and had recorded several large anomalies on the riverbed, but we found it as barren as the Mojave Desert. Nothing remotely resembling a wreck was discovered, and no targets worth investigating. There was one wreck depicted on an old 1880s chart against the east bank, but we found no trace of it. Not surprising, since the records show that it was likely dredged out of existence many years ago.

  The southern tropical heat, shaken and stirred with 100 percent humidity, nearly did in Craig. With no wind to cool the sweat surging from our pores, the atmosphere was agonizingly oppressive. Many people think it is cooler on the water when the weather is hot—not necessarily so. You have little shade on a small boat, and the steaming water can easily raise humidity off the scale when there is no hint of rain from a cloudless sky.

  The Solitude Point swamp is not only huge, it’s impassable. You couldn’t walk, wade, or swim through it, much less penetrate it with a jet ski. Interestingly, the 1836 chart fails to indicate it because it had yet to make its presence known. Oil drilling has since taken place inside the swamp, and pipelines stretch outward like legs on a spider, three of them traveling up the river to the north.

  Unable to conduct a mag survey from the surface, I turned to Joe Phillips of World Geoscience, Inc., in Houston, Texas, and arranged for a helicopter geophysical aeromagnetic survey. Using a Bell 206 Ranger equipped with a SCINTREX vapor magnetometer sensor, a Picodaas digital acquisition system, and a GPS navigational system, they launched the survey in August of 1999.

  Flying tight ninety-foot lines at an altitude of less than a hundred feet, they found the oil field west of the point without any trouble. Paying special attention to the 1864 course of the river, they easily picked up the magnetic anomalies from the two riverboats aground below the point. Then, almost precisely at the ten-mile drift projection of Mississippi, a large anomaly appeared on the magnetometer recording. It was almost directly in the middle of the old river passage. The target was three quarters of a mile inside the swamp from the river’s west bank. They also determined that it was very close to the long-gone Springfield Landing pier mentioned by the Civil War artist Waud. Another encouraging indication was the computerized profile of Mississippi, showing a large iron mass that would have included guns, shot, anchors, and many tons of ship’s hardware.

  Was it Mississippi? Until we could actually touch a piece of it, there would be no uncorking the champagne.

  That was about as far as we could go in our search. We reeled in the sensors, packed the equipment, and headed for a Cajun restaurant. We had done our best and would leave it to future archaeologists, historians, and shipwreck hunters to probe the depths of that loathsome swamp.

  Mississippi would be a fascinating wreck to excavate since she hadn’t been salvaged, and even despite the damage from the explosion, she had to be relatively intact. Unfortunately, any excavation more than eighty feet deep in the middle of a bog would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

  It seems that Mississippi will remain under Point Solitude for a long time to come, perhaps for eternity. You never know if it’s best that way.

  PART FIVE

  The Siege of Charleston: Keokuk, Weehawken, and Patapsco

  I

  Cradle of Secession 1863—1865

  REAR ADMIRAL SAMUEL F. DUPONT STARED INTO THE distance. The bow of his command, New Ironsides, a heavily armed frigate, was pointed in the direction of Charleston. To starboard lay Sullivan’s Island, to port Morris Island and Cummings Point.

  Dead ahead was DuPont’s objective, Fort Sumter.

  Fort Sumter, a massive brick-and-concrete fortress rising forty feet above the water, was located on a small island off Charleston. Sumter was one of the first Federal installations to be taken by the Confederates. It was also the most visible reminder to the citizens of the United States of the South’s defiance. The first shots of the War Between the States had been fired on Sumter.

  DuPont swiveled his head and glanced at his assembled fleet.

  From west to east they stretched across the water. Keokuk, Nahant, Nantucket, Catskill, his own New lronsides, then Patapsco, Montauk, Passaic, and Weehawken. The flotilla was an impressive armada tasked with a difficult mission.

  The Union ships were clad in armor—a recent development for the antiquated Union navy—and the fleet was powered by steam, not sail. Still, for all their new technology, their task was as old as sea warfare itself: to bring a concentrated fire of heavy guns to bear, to project force on a distant target.

  To achieve this goal, DuPont led the most powerful squadron ever assembled.

  Commander A. C. Rhind stared through the forward porthole of his command, Keokuk. His ship was farthest to the west and last in the long line of warships. Keokuk was an experimental craft commissioned to the Union navy on February 24, 1863.

  Her design was different from that of the seven other Passaic-class ironclads. Unlike the razor-edged styling of the monitors, Keokuk featured a rounded, whale-like upper deck. A pair of armored, half-conical towers perched on each end of the vessel, separated by a stubby smokestack. Amidships, alongside the slightly taller smokestack, was a davited wooden shore boat. On the stern deck was a wooden staff, where the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the breeze.

  The ship looked like a cigar topped by thimbles.

  Keokuk was 159 feet 6 inches in length, with a beam of 36 feet and a draft of 8 feet 6 inches. She was propelled by twin screws powered by steam, which gave her greater speed and maneuverability over the monitors. Her armament consisted of a pair of massive 11-inch Dahlgren guns. The guns were designed to pivot to fire through a trio of gun ports. Unlike the monitors, the towers did not rotate to give her a greater field of fire. Her armor was too light for the guns of Sumter, but Rhind did not know this yet. Keokuk carried a crew of ninety-two.

  Ship engineer N. W. Wheeler approached Rhind. “All is in order,” he reported quietly.

  “Follow them in,” Rhind said to the pilot.

  “WE’RE ALMOST IN range,” Captain John Rodgers shouted. “We’ll be hearing from the rebels soon.”

  Rodgers commanded Weehawken, the lead vessel in the line approaching Fort Sumter. While Rodgers was proud of his vessel and crew, he couldn’t help but feel anxious. At that moment, he saw a puff of smoke from Sumter, and a shot struck the water twenty feet ahead. The battle was starting.

  Weehawken was some 200 feet in length, with a beam of 46 feet. The vessel featured twin gun turrets that packed a wallop. One gun was a standard 11-inch smoothbore; the second, a 42,000-pound, 15-inch Dahlgren, could hurl a 400-pound shell a mile. On her bow she pushed a torpedo raft to detonate the Confederate mines.

  FROM INSIDE THE pentagonal-shaped Fort Sumter, the approaching line of warships looked like a corridor of floating death. The commanding officer of Fort Sumter, Major Stephen Elliott Jr., had faith in his ability to ward off the attack. Still, the sight was enough to give pause. Built on an artificial island three and three-eighths miles distant from Charleston, Sumter was a fortress. The fort’s base was constructed of chunks of stone from northern quarries. Her walls were solid brick, and concrete masonry stretched sixty feet high. At their thickest point, the walls were twelve feet in width; at the narrowest, a full eight. Guns were arranged on casemates on a pair of decks; the upper deck was open, and the lower deck guns were firing through reinforced ports.

  ON BOARD PATAPSCO, the fourth Union ship in line, the view ahead was already becoming clouded with smoke. To an untrained eye, Patapsco and Weehawken looked similar, except for color. Weehawken was lead gray and Patapsco basic black, but Patapsco carried a surprise. She had the massive 15-inch Dahlgren, but her 11-inch smoothbore had been replaced by a 50-pou
nd rifled Parrot gun that had the ability to lob a round over a mile with accuracy.

  Slowly, like an old man turning his head, the turret on Patapsco rotated. And then the Parrot sang.

  MAJOR ELLIOTT WAS standing on the upper gun deck of Fort Sumter when he heard the high-pitched whine of a rifled round. It slammed into the base of the fort, showering brick dust high into the air. Elliott felt a sting on his cheeks like the bites of many tiny ants. Wiping the lens of his spyglass clean, he ordered the fire returned.

  IT WAS 2:41 P.M., some ten minutes after the first shot had been fired from Fort Sumter, and aboard New Ironsides, DuPont was seeing his carefully crafted plans unraveling. The line of Union warships was straying out of formation. As he peered through the smoke ahead, it looked as if Weehawken was slowing.

  New Ironsides was eight hundred yards from Fort Sumter and was inside the curtain of fire from both Fort Moultrie to the north and Sumter dead ahead. A volley of Confederate shot rang out. DuPont was flung to the deck, as New Ironsides took the fourth of the ninety-three hits she would suffer in the next three hours.

  Rising from the deck, DuPont trained his spyglass on Weehawken.

  Captain Rodgers had felt what he thought was a sea mine exploding beneath his hull. The line of sea mines, known as torpedoes, brought more fear to the crews of the Union gunboats than did the guns of Sumter and Moultrie. The forts and their guns could be seen; the torpedoes were hidden assassins lying in wait for the unwary.

  “Full astern,” Rodgers shouted through the speaking tube to the engine room.

  Passaic, second in line, slowed. The Union formation began to deteriorate.

  On Sullivan’s Island, Confederate gunners at Battery Bee and Battery Beauregard added to the fire coming from the parapets of Fort Moultrie. Across the water, the Sumter gunners were hurling several shells a minute in a relentlessly orchestrated symphony of loading and firing. A curtain of smoke blew from the gun decks and was carried by the breezes past the Union fleet. A rain of lead fell from the sky.

  “Sir,” the pilot of New Ironsides said to DuPont, “we are having control problems.”

  DuPont knew his command was unwieldy. The vessel had been designed and built in a frenzy by a Union navy anxious to meet the threat from Confederate ironclads. Unlike the monitors, she had been designed on the old tried-and-true hull of sail and steamships, and her hybrid design of steam, sails, and armor had never truly worked efficiently.

  “We’ve been struck forty times,” DuPont noted. “I don’t doubt there are problems.”

  “I fear we might run down one of the monitors,” the pilot noted.

  DuPont turned to the signalman. “Make the signal to disregard motions of commander-in-chief.” The man scampered away. Next DuPont turned to the pilot.

  “Take us out,” he said quietly. “I’ll be damned if I’ll sink one of my own.”

  From last in line to first. As the formation broke apart, Keokuk bravely steamed to the front of the line. For her brave actions, she would pay a stern price.

  “Sir,” Keokuk’s signalman reported, “New lronsides asks we disregard her movement.”

  Commander Rhind nodded absently. He had more important things to contend with. In the last thirty minutes, Keokuk had taken eighty-seven hits. The ironclad was holed in nineteen places above and below the waterline. Her gun towers and smokestack were riddled with holes through which one could see the fading daylight, and his aft gun had been disabled before it could ever fire a round.

  The forward gun had gotten off five shots—then it, too, was disabled. Rhind was in command of a vessel that was now completely defenseless. Then the engines stopped.

  Weehawken had been struck nearly fifty times by the Confederate guns. One cannonball had jammed the turret, making the gun unusable. The pilot backed away, then turned to starboard to retreat. The ship’s engineers ran to the turret. After great effort, they managed to get it to rotate. Weehawken withdrew from the battle with the dangerous torpedo raft, which was left to drift ashore.

  Patapsco was taking a drubbing. The guns of Fort Moultrie were pounding her starboard side. The pilot was doing his best to position his ironclad so the guns could not find their range, but he could barely see through the smoke, and Union ships were everywhere. With the line of attack in deterioration and fully half the Union ironclads in retreat, only the chaos of an action gone wrong was visible out of the viewing port.

  Smoke rolled across the water. Plumes of water shot into the air like just-spouted fountains, as missed shots plunged into the water. The few Union ironclads still engaged were trying to return fire to the forts, but that merely added to the noise and confusion. Along with the scream of shells flying seaward and back to the forts was the din of steam engines, boilers, and chains. There was no quiet on an ironclad. The metal hulls reverberated with the smallest sound and echoed like the tolling gates of hell. When the hull or deck armor was struck by Confederate shot, the sound for the crew was akin to having their head inside a church bell being rung.

  Along with constant noise was constant heat. Even though the temperature outside was mild, in battle all ports were closed and battened down. With no breeze coming inside, the air became superheated.

  Then the smells. Gunpowder, fuses, metal, and grease. Paint and cotton batting. Food from the galley, odors from the head compartment, unwashed sailors. Fear. It was a cacophony of sights and sounds, a sensory overload for the captain and crew.

  Disabled and battered, the pilot steered Patapsco from the line.

  On the deck of New Ironsides, Rear Admiral DuPont could see that it was hopeless. The battle was three hours old, and the Union fleet had not managed to accomplish much. Keokuk was battered and barely moving.

  Weehawken and Patapsco had been hit many times.

  The Union monitors Nahant, Nantucket, Montauk, Passaic, and Catskill had all taken numerous blows. DuPont’s flotilla was in disarray and deteriorating minute by minute.

  DuPont gave the order to withdraw.

  The Union fleet retreated the way they arrived, south down the ship channel past Morris Island. But it was a different picture from when they had steamed north to engage the rebels. The monitors showed spots where the paint had been jarred loose, and their armor was dented like a tin can hit by a golf club. Uneven streams of smoke trailed from their stacks as engineers struggled to keep the battered boilers operating. Two of the seven monitors were leaking. For now, the flow of the water into the hulls was being dissipated overboard by the pumps. Still, the weight of the water before it was discharged was causing both to list slightly. The armada came crawling back past Morris Island resembling a boxer after a losing match. Later, it would be learned that the fleet had suffered a total of 493 hits.

  The powerful Union force had been beaten like a borrowed mule. Keokuk had gone from last in line to first and back to last again.

  Commander Rhind climbed through the hatch into one of the towers. He could use only one arm—the other was peppered with wooden shards that went inches into his flesh.

  Keokuk’s experimental armor had proved a failure. Designed with alternating horizontal rows of wood interspersed with metal strips, the mishmash failed to provide adequate protection. The truth was that the design of the armor was as practical as making a bulletproof vest without sides. When a cannonball struck the iron straps on the hull, it was repelled. But what of the wood hull inches away? That usually exploded in a hail of splinters and wood chips. Rhind’s arm was proof of that.

  Staring fore and aft, Rhind assessed Keokuk’s damage.

  The forward tower was pounded to pulp—it looked as if a giant had beaten it with a sledgehammer. The crew inside the forward tower were all wounded. The aft tower, where Rhind was standing, was not much better. The gun had been disabled after only five shots, but the crew had fared better. Only a little more than half had been wounded.

  Between the two towers stood the remains of Keokuk’s smokestack.

  The stack was riddled with
so many holes, it looked like a tin shed hit by a shotgun blast. Smoke rose along the outline of the pipe until reaching a hole. Then it puffed out of the holes in rings, like those from the lips of an accomplished smoker.

  While Rhind watched, Keokuk rolled over a wave. Just then, part of the ornamental top of the stack broke loose. It struck the deck before being washed overboard.

  Rhind’s ship was coming apart.

  Nineteen shells had penetrated Keokuk’s armor. Several of those were below the waterline. Rhind knew that the engineering crew was hard at work just keeping the vessel afloat. Thirty-two of his crew were wounded, but thankfully no one had died.

  Rhind opened the hatch and climbed back to the main deck. Keokuk was out of range of the Confederate guns; his crew was now concentrating on keeping afloat.

  Thirty-two wounded, but no dead. Soon there would be a death, but it would be the death of Keokuk As the sun set in the west, the cigar-shaped craft limped toward her anchorage off Morris Island. Commander Rhind had no illusions about the battle. He and the rest of the Union fleet had been savagely pummeled, and his ship had suffered the worst. Climbing down into the hold, he shouted to Engineer Wheeler, who was near the bow supervising the plugging of a leak.

  “How bad is it?” Rhind asked.

  Wheeler was covered in grease and sopping wet. Wiping his hands on a grimy rag, he walked closer. “It’s not good, Commander,” Wheeler said. “I count nineteen holes in the hull, and more than half are below waterline. The pumps are keeping up, but just barely. The engines keep cutting out, and the forward turret is useless. To make matters worse, half my engine-room crew is wounded, so we are having trouble keeping up with all of the problems that are cropping up.”