“Well, Robley, it is not you. It’s the war. All the available men are off with the army or the navy. Everyone is scrambling to find…”
“Here’s what I need. I don’t want to get men to fight the ship. Never find ’em. Need navy men. I see that. What I want now is an engineer to get the engines working, a pilot and crew to get the ship up to Yazoo City.”
Robley’s voice took on a plaintive tone, and he tried to fight it but he could not. He felt so lost there in New Orleans, surrounded by cowards and thieves. Yazoo City was becoming his personal El Dorado, a fabled city, his quest-to reach it. If he could get to Yazoo City, free from the corruption of New Orleans, then he could regroup and fight in earnest.
“That’s all I want. To get to Yazoo City. No fighting. Just help me get to Yazoo City, where folks know me, and I’ll get my men and fit my ship out there. I’ll pay in specie. Gold.”
Lessard leaned back and pressed his fingers together and his expression was very different. “Robley…that, I think, I can arrange.”
The engineer showed up at nine-thirty the next morning, and he was no Chief Brown. Clean and groomed, well-spoken, he had an air of competence and professionalism that made Robley furious. The good men were available to take gold for keeping out of harm’s way, it seemed. But Robley said nothing, because the goal was Yazoo City, and he did not wish to compromise that.
Two weeks and fifteen hundred dollars later the Yazoo River’s engines sounded better than Robley had thought they could sound.
Lessard sent deckhands, good Southern boys, competent, hardworking, not the foreign trash swept up along the docks. Lessard sent a pilot who did not stink of stale whiskey, a pilot who was courteous and professional and did as he was ordered and explained patiently when he was ordered to do something he could not.
And so, a week before the end of the year 1861, the year in which Robley Paine had witnessed the end of his life, and begun suffering the horrible torment of continuing to live nonetheless, the stern-wheeler privateer Yazoo River cast off from the docks of New Orleans and headed up three hundred winding miles of river to Yazoo City.
Victory or death. Victory and death. He would begin that journey there.
Eight hundred miles away, buffeted by the gales that shrieked in off the Atlantic, the CSS Cape Fear butted her plumb bow into the steep chop, sent spray flying up over the wheelhouse, where Samuel Bowater stood, one hand on the rail that ran around the bulkhead just below the windows, as a succession of seamen struggled with the wheel and cursed.
They watched the enemy at Fort Hatteras, brought supplies to the troops on Roanoke Island. They towed wrecks into Croatan Sound, the passage between Roanoke Island and the mainland, entryway to Albemarle Sound, and sank them. They struggled to drive pilings into the muddy channel bottom to stop the enemy’s passing. They watched sickness cut the crew down by a third, working in the freezing rain and the cutting wind. They waited for the Yankees.
Christmas came, and the Cape Fear was tied up dockside at Elizabeth City. Samuel Bowater gave Johnny St. Laurent money from his own pocket to buy a special dinner for the crew, and Hieronymus Taylor did as well, though neither knew the other had, and as a result Johnny had more money than he could spend in a Confederacy beginning to feel the pinch of the blockade.
He prepared a meal-mock turtle soup and fried whiting, Fowl a la Bechamel and Oyster Patties for an entree, with Stewed Rump of Beef a la Jardiniere as a second course and Charlotte aux Pommes and Apricot Tart made with dried fruit for dessert-that was not just the best that Samuel had ever enjoyed aboard a naval vessel, but among the half-dozen best he had ever eaten.
They ate in the forecastle, the single biggest space on board, which still would not have been big enough if a third of the Cape Fears had not been in hospital at Norfolk. The place was scrubbed out fastidiously, and both Negroes and officers were invited, and it was a fine time.
Bowater stayed after, lent his tenor to the songs that Taylor and Jones performed, the words of which he involuntarily knew by heart. Taylor gave him the opening movement of Mozart’s Quartet in C Major, which, at another time, Bowater would have perceived as an elbow in the ribs, but on that night seemed more a peace offering, and Bowater chose to take it as such. The men endured the classical interlude without complaint.
New Year’s followed, and Johnny had money enough left over to stage another grand feast, and once again the festivities were loud and companionable. This despite the howling wind, the spitting snow, the funereal weather. This despite the fact that the Yankees possessed Pamlico Sound and Port Royal, despite the launch of Yankee ironclads on the Ohio River and the buildup of McClellan’s troops in Washington and the apparent inactivity of Johnston.
Despite all of the setbacks that the Confederacy had experienced, there was still the fact that the main armies had met but once, and that once was a Confederate victory, and on that night of December 31, 1861, the men of the Cape Fear, like all men and women of the Confederate States, had every reason to hope and to believe that their glorious cause would be carried on to victory with the next campaigning season.
And so the Cape Fears ate and drank and toasted one another and went to bed and prepared to carry on their dreary patrol.
Which they did, at first light the next morning. And then, twelve days later, the Yankees came.
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Here is the great thoroughfare from Albemarle Sound and its tributaries, and if the enemy obtain lodgments, or succeed in passing here, he will cut off a very rich country from Norfolk market.
– Flag Officer William F. Lynch to Stephen R. Mallory
Roanoke Island: the tollgate between Pamlico Sound, now in Yankee hands, and the Confederate waters of Albemarle Sound.
Eight big rivers emptied into Albemarle Sound, the North, West, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Little, Chowan, Roanoke, and Alligator, as well as four canals. Two railways had their terminus there. Albemarle Sound was the back door to Norfolk, and with the Yankees guarding the front door, it was the only way in. Possession of Roanoke Island meant, ultimately, possession of Norfolk, Portsmouth, the naval yard, and virtually all the commerce coming into North Carolina.
Roanoke Island was important, and the Yankees knew it, so they sent over one hundred ships, armed vessels and transports, carrying seventeen thousand men, to take it back.
The Confederates knew it too, but they allowed only one thousand men, two hundred of whom were sick, and the seven vessels of Lynch’s mosquito fleet to oppose them.
January 20, 1862. The wind was singing around the wheelhouse and Samuel Bowater could feel the Cape Fear jerk at her anchor chain as Jacob woke him. He looked out the window. The sky was dull, lead-colored, the waves whipped into a froth. The weather had not been agreeable in some time. It promised to get worse.
Bowater dressed quickly, stepped out into the wheelhouse. Jacob brought coffee. Harwell was there.
“Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“Morning, sir.”
“Engine room?”
“Steam’s up, ready to get underway.”
“Coal?”
“Starboard bunker half full, port bunker three-quarters. Fresh water topped off. Chief Taylor reports the problem with the web bearings is fixed. He says the grates are clean as of now, but said…the…ahh…poor-quality anthracite coal produces a lot of clinker.”
Bowater nodded. He could just imagine the way the chief had really phrased it. Taylor took a special pleasure in shocking Harwell because Harwell was so very shockable.
The wheelhouse door opened, and the blast of wet air filled the wheelhouse with noise and cold. Tanner stepped through, shut the door. He was wearing a greatcoat, wrapped tight around him, a tarpaulin hat. “Sea Bird’s signaling ‘Get underway,’ sir.”
“Very good. Mr. Harwell, let us get the anchor up.”
Harwell saluted, disappeared, and Bowater stepped up beside the wheel and looked out the window. Most of the mosquito fleet was visible to him, riding at their ancho
rs. They were in Croatan Sound, the passage between Roanoke Island and the North Carolina shore, roughly three and a half miles wide. The fleet was clustered off Pork Point on Roanoke Island.
Bowater’s eyes moved to the Sea Bird, flagship of Commodore Lynch. She was a side-wheel steamer, a former passenger boat, now mounting a thirty-two-pounder smoothbore and a thirty-pounder Parrott. Black smoke peeked out of her funnel, only to be whipped away in the wind. The signal flag, “Get underway,” stood out straight and flat in the wind, as if it was painted on a board.
Raleigh had steam up as well. She was a tug, like Cape Fear, but smaller, built for canal work. She sported a thirty-two-pounder forward.
The other vessels in the fleet did not have steam up. Bowater could see CSS Curlew, 260 tons, an iron side-wheel steamer, the most substantial vessel of the fleet. There were also the Ellis, Appomattox, and Beaufort. Each was a tug. Each mounted a single thirty-two-pounder.
Anchored astern of Cape Fear was Fanny, the iron-hulled screw steamer taken from the Yankees a few months earlier, and the former tug, now CSN gunboat Forrest. That was it. The mosquito fleet. The ships that stood between the Yankees and Albemarle Sound.
From forward came the clank of chain coming in, and Seth Williams came in from the wind and blowing spray, took the beckets off the wheel, stood ready.
Clang…clang…clang… Bowater looked out the window. Harwell, bundled up in oilskins and sou’wester, waved his arm in a chopping motion. Up and down, the anchor right under the bow. Bowater rang slow ahead. The Cape Fear began to drift, her anchor free, windborne. The prop caught the water, drove her ahead, Williams met her with the wheel. Underway. To starboard, Sea Bird was butting the chop, steaming ahead, and Raleigh as well.
Those two, Seabird and Raleigh, had gone down sound the day before, scouted out the Yankees. Their report was not encouraging. Dozens, literally dozens, of ships coming in over the bar to Pamlico Sound. Gunboats, troop transports, supply ships. They were struggling with the breakers over the bar, but one by one they were managing to get their vessels over.
No one of the mosquito fleet doubted they would, because the officers of the mosquito fleet were all former officers of the United States Navy, and deep in their divided hearts they believed their old service capable of anything.
So the Confederate Navy would be the Spartans, and Croaton Sound their Thermopylae.
Bowater stepped out of the wheelhouse, out of the envelope of steam heat, into the brunt of the wind. It pulled at his sou’wester, tugged at his oilskins, found every tiny imperfection in the covering.
The Cape Fear rolled with the uncomfortable corkscrew of a following sea, but Bowater hardly noticed. He stared ahead, watched his beloved bow parting the seas, thought about what they would do next. Sink pilings like mad. Bring more ammunition to Roanoke Island. Try to augment the crews of the mosquito fleet. Drill. Wait for the Yankee tidal wave to wash them away.
And that was what they did. For eighteen days they prepared for the coming of the enemy. And then, on the 7th of February, the preparations were over, because the Yankee fleet was underway.
Thirty gunboats and schooners, the hammerhead, led in the van. Their job was to pound away at the Confederate defense, to beat a hole in it, though which the troops, seventeen thousand troops, would pour.
The mosquito fleet was drawn up, line abreast. They were above the northern pile line, near the north end of Croatan Sound, bow guns pointed downriver. They were anchored, with steam up.
To the east, Roanoke Island. Sandy, covered with low, coarse bushes, dune grass lying down in the wind. Like all of the barrier islands, it looked like no place a person would wish to live.
Fort Bartow, on the shore of Roanoke Island, guarded the pile line. Bartow was a sand-and-turf construction mounting six long thirty-two-pounders. To the west, on the North Carolina mainland, Fort Forrest, with twenty-two-pounders.
Fog sat like cotton batting on the water. At nine it thinned, lifted, swirled away, and behind it, a watery sunlight, visibility clear down to Pamlico Sound.
Two divisions of Yankee gunboats steamed north.
Bowater stood on the boat deck, at the rail, looked out over the water. He wore only his gray frock coat and cap. No oilskins, no sou’wester. It was the nicest day, weatherwise, they had enjoyed in a month.
He put the field glasses to his eyes. The masts of the Yankee steamers looked like winter-bare trees; the smoke from their stacks rolled away to the west.
Heavy footsteps on the ladder. Chief Taylor appeared. He was wearing a frock coat as well, clean and pressed. Pants quite devoid of stains or smears of coal dust. He had shaved.
Bowater looked over at him and failed to hide his surprise.
“Ain’t every day a man gets to fight in a gen-u-ine fleet action, Cap’n.”
“No, indeed. And it would seem our Yankee admiral is moved by the same spirit.” Bowater handed Taylor the field glasses and Taylor took them, put them up to his eyes, scanned the approaching enemy.
“It’s a ways off,” Bowater continued, “and I’m not as current on the U.S. Navy flags as I once was, but I do believe he is flying the signal ‘Our country expects every man to do his duty.’”
Taylor held the glasses to his eyes, chuckled. “Now ain’t that original?” He watched the fleet for a moment, then added, “It does appear they are forming in two divisions.”
The Yankee fleet, thirty or so gunboats, was coming on in two clusters. Vessels in the southernmost division were towing troop transports. They peeled off, headed east, made for the sandy beach at Ashby Harbor, four miles down the sound. The advance division of Yankees steamed up sound, made right for the fleet and Fort Bartow. They would keep the Confederate forts and the Confederate ships under fire, see that the Yankee troop transports were unmolested.
“Reckon I’ve seen enough of this here tactical situation, Cap’n. I believe I will retire to the comfort of my engine room.”
“Very well, Chief.” Taylor turned, disappeared down the ladder and aft.
Bowater was alone on the boat deck. He tapped his fingers on the rail, fought the nausea in his gut. Wondered if the other captains, if Lynch and Parker, Hunter and Cooke, felt the same. Probably. Waiting, waiting, it was always the worst. Let the iron start flying, let that linkage in the mind switch from fear to fight.
Four bells, they rang out from the mosquito fleet, a discordant clanging under a thin overcast sky, and the first gun went off. From a mile down Croatan Sound, from the Union gunboats arranged in a long line abreast, dark squares on the water, wheelboxes bulging at their sides, thin, truncated masts pointing up, swaying in the swell, came the sharp bang of a rifled gun. The smoke jetted from the bow of a big side-wheeler, middle of the attacking division. The shell screamed by, not too close to the Cape Fear, plunged into the water a quarter mile beyond the mosquito fleet.
The battle had begun.
Bowater turned his field glasses on the Sea Bird. The gun crew was swarming around her thirty-pounder Parrott forward, running her out, twisting the elevation screw. From the flagstaff on top of her wheelhouse, the signal flag snapped out: “Engage the enemy.”
“Mr. Harwell! When you are ready!”
Harwell grinned, waved, turned to his gun. He twisted the elevation screw, fiddled with the traverse, calling for the men with handspikes to nudge it here or there. He stepped back, jerked the lanyard. The gun went off with a satisfying jar that shook the vessel under Bowater’s feet. He felt himself go calm, as if the smell of spent powder carried with it some powerful drug. He saw the shot fall three hundred yards short of the Yankee fleet.
“You are short, Mr. Harwell!” Bowater cried.
“Aye, sir!”
Harwell fiddled with the elevation screw. Not much thread left-the gun was pointed nearly as high as it would point.
Oh, hell and damnation… Bowater thought. And once more, the guns won’t reach…
The gunfire rippled along the line of Yankee gunboats, blasting
gray smoke from the big rifled guns in their bows, sending the shells screaming overhead, plunging around the Confederate fleet. Iron shrieked by, tore up the railing on the starboard side of the boat deck. A shell hit the boat in its davits, turned it into a cloud of white-painted splinters that flew high in the air and then fluttered like autumn leaves onto the boat deck, the main deck, the fantail, the water.
Seven converted tugs and paddle wheelers in the mosquito fleet. Short of ammunition, short of men. They rode at their anchors, fired back as fast as they could, but their shells would not reach the Yankees. It was Fort Hatteras all over again. They could do little but endure the pounding.
And they were not getting the worst of it. The second division of Yankee gunboats turned their attention on Fort Bartow, a larger and closer target. They positioned themselves in such a way that only three of Bartow’s guns would bear on them, and from that place they opened up. At times the fort seemed to be nothing more than a cloud of smoke and flying sand and dust kicked up by the exploding shells. But through it all, the stab of muzzle flash, as the garrison fought on.
Bowater paced, pounded his fist on his thigh, muttered curses. “Mr. Harwell! Hold your fire!” He was sick of wasted effort, wasted shells.
Then, through the din and scream, he heard the sound of anchor chain coming in. He looked to the left. Sea Bird was winning her anchor. A new flag was going aloft: “Close with the enemy.”
“At last!” Bowater leaned over the rail. “Mr. Harwell, let us get the anchor in. We are closing with the enemy!”
“Aye, sir!”
The anchor came aboard, the Cape Fear was underway. Bowater swung her north, let the other vessels find their place, came in astern of Curlew as the mosquito fleet threaded its way through the obstructions that they themselves had set.
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