Chapter 35

The desertion of Elizabeth City situated near the head of the Dismal Swamp Canal, would have been unseemly and discouraging, more particularly as I had urged the inhabitants to defend it to the last extremity.

– Flag Officer William F. Lynch to Stephen R. Mallory

“That stern-wheeler, there…” Bowater stood in the wheelhouse, pointed to the onrushing Yankee, three hundred yards downriver. “Right for him.

We’ll go in shooting.”

“Aye, sir.” Tanner at the wheel looked grim. Bowater grabbed the engine-room bell, gave three bells, full ahead.

Sons of bitches…It made Bowater mad, in a way he had not been mad before. The arrogance of the damned Yankees, bypass the fort, sweep forward as if they were brushing aside an annoyance. It was the entire Yankee way of thinking; brush aside anything that was in their way, any tradition, any sacred right, anything that prevented their building more factories, more railroads, unleashing more mechanical horror on the world.

Suddenly this fight seemed personal. uddenly Captain Samuel Bowater, detached and professional navy man, a man who followed orders, felt himself a wild-eyed patriot.

He stepped out of the wheelhouse, ent forward. “Mr. Harwell, we are going for that stern-wheeler that seems to be coming for us. Let’s shoot him in the nose as we approach!”

Harwell waved, turned back to his gun. Bowater could feel the deck vibrate as Taylor poured on the steam. Bowater heard the water boiling under the counter, felt the tug build speed and momentum as the riverbanks slipped past. She was not a quarter horse, she was a knight’s charger-heavy, slow, strong as could be.

They closed fast, bow to bow. The Yankee fired; Bowater felt the wind of the shell as it passed. Harwell fired, took the Yankee’s fore topmast clean off. He spun the elevation screw, lowered the aim. He was not used to firing so close.

The Yankees were charging down on the mosquito fleet, coming on line abreast now, picking their targets. Two of the enemy were falling on Ellis,

and she was turning, firing, backing, trying to keep from their grasp.

Bowater could see Yankee troops on the ships’ decks-they must have augmented their navy crews, while the Confederates were desperate for anyone who could stand.

One hundred yards separated the Yankee from the Cape Fear . Harwell fired again, blew the upper third off the Yankee’s stack. Smoke poured out in an ugly, disorganized cloud.

But now the Yankee turned, presented her broadside, three big guns, the bulk of her armament. Bowater grabbed the rail hard, clenched his teeth, waited for what would come.

Boom, boom, boom, the big guns opened up right in their face. Bowater felt the deck shudder, saw a plume of splinters burst right in front of him, as a shell hit the deckhouse and kept on going. Another whipped the head off the rammer at the bow gun, neat as an executioner’s ax, tossed his body back onto the foredeck as the shell continued down the side deck. Bowater heard it hit the port howitzer, a terrible clanging, a shattering of wooden carriage, a pause, and then the screaming of the men who were in the way.

“Captain! Captain!” Tanner shouted from the wheelhouse. His course was right for the Yankee, steaming to hit her amidships.

“Steady as she goes!” Would the Cape Fear take the impact? Who knew? This was her last fight in any instance, that much was clear.

Fifty yards, forty yards. “Mr. Harwell, get your men away from the bow!”

Harwell shouted, waved, led his men aft, back toward the deckhouse.

Thirty yards. Bowater could see Yankees scrambling now. The broadside guns were running out again. Too late. Smoke pumping from the broken stack, the side wheels gathered speed, as the Yankee gunboat tried to get out of the path of the suicide Rebel.

Twenty yards. The Yankee’s side wheels churned, kicked water; the Yankee inched forward, tried to turn bow on. Bowater felt some bit of sanity return. It was not time to die, not yet.

“Tanner, take her side wheel out! Glancing blow!”

Tanner nodded, looked relieved. He spun the wheel to starboard, angled in, swung it to port. The Cape Fear was moving fast, carrying a lot of momentum. The ships were side to side, passing on opposite courses. The Cape Fear’s bow struck the wheelbox, blew it apart with the impact, went

right on through, spraying paddles, twisting paddle-wheel arms, as the side wheel destroyed itself against the Rebel.

They powered past. Bowater watched running Yankees, shouting Yankees, angry Yankees, so close he could see their faces. Small arms banged away. Bowater could hear the thud of bullets hitting woodwork. The Cape Fears fired back.

On the Yankee’s boat deck, a lone figure, an officer, leaning on the rail.

Lieutenant S. P. Quackenbush. Bowater knew him well, had spent long hours on watch with him, in past years. Quackenbush doffed his cap and Bowater doffed his as they passed, as if the entire scene was not bizarre enough.

The Yankee’s forward gun went off, right into the Cape Fear’s deckhouse, the muzzle not ten feet from the bulkhead. The proximity saved them; the shell just made a hole and kept on going.

“Come left, come left!” Bowater shouted, and Tanner spun the wheel and Bowater looked out over the wild melee on the river. Sea Bird was sinking fast, rammed by a Yankee gunboat. Ellis was side by side with a Yankee and they were going at it, hand to hand, but the Yankees carried marines on board, and they outnumbered the Rebels four to one.

The smoke lay like morning fog on the river, the gunfire was nearly continuous, the gunboats moved in and out of the clouds from their own guns. Boats whirled, steamed ahead, fired, slewed around in the wild dance on the water.

Bowater stood in the wheelhouse door. “Make for Ellis-let us see if we can come to her aid.” Full ahead. They were still going full ahead. He looked at Ellis. He did not think they would reach her in time.

Ellis’s crew was being pressed by boarders from two sides. Cutlasses flashed, small arms fired. Hand-to-hand naval combat. It was something from another era, like this entire wild ship-on-ship fleet action.

The Cape Fear staggered, as if shoved from behind, slewed sideways, and the aft end seemed to explode. Bowater turned to see splinters and bits of rail and wood flying as high as the deckhouse.

“Steady as she goes!” he shouted to Tanner, then ran aft, skirted the huge hole that had been the boat deck, stopped at the after rail.

Quackenbush! His ship was disabled but his guns would still bear, and he was firing, had hit the Cape Fear square on the stern. The lovely rounded fantail was gone. The vessel ended three feet shorter in a jagged, gaping

profusion of broken frames and shattered planks. But it was well above the waterline, and would not stop them.

Quackenbush! There was a sense of betrayal. Before, Bowater had fought anonymous ships, captains who might as well have been foreign enemies. But Quackenbush? They had laughed together. They had traded bottles of wine, for the love of God, and Quackenbush had displayed a surprisingly refined palate!

Both howitzers were knocked out, the guns on the deck, the carriages in half a dozen pieces. Three dead men lay scattered about, as if they had fallen exhausted, except that they were each missing one or more limbs.

The rest of the gun crews were gone, forward, Bowater supposed.

Bowater pushed himself off the rail, ran forward again. Another shot, broad on the starboard beam; the deckhouse shook. Bowater stumbled, fell forward, broke his fall with his hands. He used the momentum to scramble back to his feet.

A Yankee gunboat had broken through the bank of smoke, was steaming down on them, a dark cloud roiling up from her stack. A screw steamer, no vulnerable side wheels. A cable length away, coming right at them with malicious intent.

Bowater ran back to the wheelhouse. “Come right, come right!” Tanner spun the wheel. Ellis would have to look after herself. Bowater glanced back at the tug. Too late in any event.

It was a jousting match once again, the Cape Fear and the Yankee, bow to bow and coming straight on.

Bowater stepped to the front of the boat deck. “Mr. Harwell, you see your target!”

“Aye, sir! I only have two more shells, sir!”

Bowater nodded. Two more shells. Howitzers gone. The only weapons left were the men and the Cape Fear herself.

“Use them now! We’ll ram and board her!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Madness! The fight was lost, it was a suicide run, take one of the bastards down with you. Pointless, but Bowater could think of no other option. Run for Norfolk? He could not do that.

“Merrow, run down to the engine room. Tell Chief Taylor I want the throttles open wide, and then all hands out of the engine room. Tell him to arm his black gang with pistols and cutlasses.”

Merrow repeated the basics of the order, hurried off. One hundred yards; the Yankee fired again, missed. Harwell fired and missed as well.

Fifty percent of the Cape Fear’s ammunition plunged uselessly into the river.

Samuel Bowater watched the water boiling under the Yankee’s bow, the plume of smoke from the stack, the determined, deadly, relentless onrush of the enemy, and for the first time since the first shot at Fort Sumter, he looked on the enemy and hated him.

Chief Taylor prowled. He looked at steam gauges. Creeping past twenty-five pounds, the boiler was pushing out maximum steam. He examined the fishplate, peered into the firebox. There was clinker on the grates, glass that formed from the melting sand in the coal, and it was impeding the draft of the fire. He frowned. They should wing the fire over to the other side of the firebox, break that clinker out of there. But now was not the time.

He prowled back to the engine, ran his eyes over piping, watched the motion of thrusting and rotating parts. All was well.

He was not so sure that was the case topside. They had taken a shell in the transom; he could see places where daylight shone through the hull. The deckhouse was so punched through there was more hole than bulkhead.

They had been going full ahead, weaving, turning. That could not be good.

He lit his cigar, puffed it to life. He looked at the coal bunkers. Coal bunkers, by definition, were not always full of coal. Sometimes, such as now, they were only a quarter full. That made them, by Taylor’s lights, a piss-poor choice for the protection of a fighting vessel. Who ever heard of armoring that might or might not be there during a fight?

They were a quarter full now. That meant that for most of the vessel’s side, there was only a single layer of inch-and-a-half white oak planks over live oak frames standing between rifled ordnance fired at point-blank range and the ship’s boiler.

Don’t think about that, can’t think about that…

The Cape Fear heeled into a turn. Taylor staggered, his hand reached out, automatically fell on a nonhot surface to steady himself. Burgess dumped coal on the deck plates. Moses shoveled, flung it in the fire.

Jefferson dead, Tommy laid up, they were short-handed.

A voice called down the fidley. Taylor looked up. Merrow standing in the door. He had not even noticed the door opening, so much of the sides, bulkheads, and roof were gone.

“Chief Taylor! Chief Taylor! Captain says open the throttle up and then all hands out of the engine room! Arm yourselves with pistols and cutlasses!”

Pistols and cutlasses? It sounded like a pirate melodrama. He wondered if such an order had been heard on those waters since Maynard came after his hero, Blackbeard.

“You heard him!” Taylor shouted. “Everyone out! Cap’n wants to play rough!” The throttle was already wide open, no need to touch it.

Moses and Burgess looked at him, reluctant. Leaving their engine room for the last time.

“Come on, you damned weepy, sentimental old ladies, get the hell out of here!”

A shell hit the deckhouse, crashed through, took out the after bulkhead, exploded on exit, ripping apart the frames, the knees. With a wrenching, cracking sound half the boat deck sagged down into the fidley, and what was keeping it from collapsing into the engine room Taylor could not tell.

The destruction energized Burgess and Jones. They flung shovels and slice bars aside, leaped for the ladder, scurried up.

Burgess reached the top, paused, looked back, Moses one step below, Taylor a step below him. One last look at their fiefdom, and as they looked the starboard coal bunker exploded in a spray of planking and frames and anthracite coal. The engine room rang with the sound of metal striking metal, of red-hot ballistic shards of steel shell slamming into the boiler.

“Son of a…!” Taylor managed to get out. Burgess leaped through the door and Moses leaped after him. Taylor took the steps, flew up the steps, leaped headlong out of the engine-room door as if diving in the water, hit the deck, rolled, scrambled.

Behind him, the door blew clean out of its frame, flew twenty feet outboard, pushed by a great white cloud of condensed steam that blasted the window out of the sides of the engine room and shot like a geyser through the gaping hole in the boat deck.

Metal clanged on metal, the air was consumed with a great whooshing sound, the muffled sound of an explosion below as the boiler blew apart.

Taylor tried to make himself as small as he could, lying prone on the deck,

pressed against the deckhouse, arms over his head. He waited until the whooshing and the clanging were gone and then he looked up.

There was an odd quiet now. The Cape Fear did not vibrate, the engine did not thump. Dead in the water. Probably filling fast.

He scrambled to his feet. “Burgess, Jones, y’all still alive?”

They nodded, so Taylor reckoned they were. “All right, git yerselves some weapons. Cutlass, whatever y’all want. I’ll go see the cap’n.”

He staggered forward, rounded the remains of the deckhouse. A Yankee steamer was bearing down, fifty yards away, the son of a bitch that put a shell in their boiler, no doubt.

Taylor grabbed on to the ladder, pulled himself up. The angle was not right, the Cape Fear was listing. Must have blown a hole in the bottom. He came out on the boat deck. Bowater was there, sword in one hand, his engraved.36 Navy Colt in the other. He looked surprised.

“Chief! You’re alive!”

“If you care to call it that.”

“I saw that cloud of steam, I thought y’all were done for.”

“Almost. Next time, I reckon. Shell right in the boiler. I think we are sinkin.”

“We are no doubt sinking. And soon we’ll be fighting these bastards here.” He nodded to the Yankee gunboat, coming on fast.

“Might you have a weapon of some sort handy?” Taylor asked. Tanner stepped out of the wheelhouse, the useless wheel abandoned. He held out a cutlass and a rough sea service pistol. “Here, Chief,” he said. Taylor took the weapons. He glanced at Bowater and Tanner, the easy way they held their weapons, as familiar as a wrench was in Taylor’s hands. He felt awkward, like an amateur. He had not spent the past decades in the naval service, handling such things.

Damned navy, stupid damned navy…

The Yankee was twenty yards away, throttling down, marines and sailors on her bow, ready to board. “Let’s go meet our guests,” Bowater said and led them down the ladder to the foredeck, where Harwell had his men assembled, ready to repel.

Ten yards and the Yankees opened up with small arms, rifles and pistols, and the Rebels huddled behind the bulwark and the silent Parrott and fired back. The gunnel of the Yankee gunboat was ten feet or more above the Cape Fear; it was like firing up at the top of a castle wall.

The Yankee came dead in the water, bumped against the Cape Fear, and suddenly there were shouting, cursing blue-clad men leaping down from the deck above, landing on the Cape Fear’s foredeck, men climbing down the Yankee’s side, finding footholds in hawse pipe and wale, falling on the Cape Fear, wielding swords and pistols.

Wild! Taylor lifted his pistol, held in his left hand, shot a U.S. marine, five feet away. A bullet grazed his arm. A sailor was aiming a pistol at him, so close he could touch him. Their eyes met. Taylor swung his cutlass, knocked the gun aside just as it discharged and blasted its.38-caliber round into the deck. The sailor tried to raise the gun again but Taylor stepped into him, slammed him in the face with the hand guard of the cutlass, and he dropped.

The chief looked around. The fighting was hand-to-hand all over the deck. There was Bowater, firing, parrying, lunging, right in the thick of it.

Taylor felt that weird fighting energy he knew so well, not from combat, but from more waterfront tavern brawls then he could ever recall.

He saw a gun aimed at Bowater, ten feet away, saw the finger squeeze the trigger, the trigger deflect, and he raised his cutlass and chopped down.

He felt the blade hit bone, the gun go off, the man scream.

He felt a punch in the shoulder, as if someone had hit him hard, but there was no one there. It spun him half around. He clapped a hand over the spot; it came away red.

Taylor staggered, almost fell. Just my shoulder… he thought, did not know why that should affect his balance. And then he realized-it was the Cape Fear. She had lurched, rolled. She was going down.

Lieutenant Thadeous Harwell, for the first time in his charmed life, led his men forward into the face of a boarding enemy. Such heroics were supposed to have gone out with John Paul Jones, with Decatur and Collingwood. They were not part of modern naval warfare. But now he was given the chance to do it-ancient, noble warfare in modern times.

They were marines, but Harwell was not afraid. He shouted as he ran, waved his sword to urge the men on, though it was only twenty feet. He came sword to sword with a graybeard, an old salt, felt bad for the old man.

A lifetime at sea, and Harwell, young, strong, quick, turned his blade aside, thrust, ran the sword into the man’s belly.

He pulled it free, did not watch the man fall. A marine aimed his pistol, fired. The ball burned a trail through his side, but Harwell raised his pistol, shot left-handed, knocked the man down.

Bowater was there, heroic Bowater. Harwell wished he could achieve the captain’s quiet stoicism, that lofty air. Sometimes he felt like Bowater’s puppy, wondered if Bowater felt the same.

Another cutlass-wielding sailor, climbing over the Parrott. Harwell met him, blade to blade. He tried to raise the pistol but the sailor did not give him the opening to do so. Their weapons rang against one another, and Harwell felt the shivers down his arm. This one was good.

Harwell pressed the attack, tried to throw him off. The sailor took a step back, came up against the Parrott. Trapped, fending off Harwell’s blade.

The opening would come. One stroke, two strokes.

Harwell was flung forward. He thought he had been shoved. He fell, off balance, past the surprised sailor with whom he had been fighting, down to the deck. He hit the hard yellow pine planks, came to a stop. Tried to move but could not.

He opened his eyes. He was looking at the front wheel of the Parrott’s gun carriage. He was jammed up there in the bow and he could not seem to move. He could feel nothing but dull warmth from his waist down, and he was confused.

Get back…in…the fight… The words ran though his head, but somehow he knew he would not be able to do so. He felt a warm, sticking something on his cheek.

Dear God…I have been hit! He tried to cry out but he could not make a sound. He had had dreams like that, where he was trying to shout but could not. This was the same thing. Was it a dream?

Then the pain came, a wave of agony shooting out along legs, arms, head, and he knew it was not a dream. He did not know what was wrong, but he knew that this was it. He was going to die. Frightening and comforting all at once. The pain was so very great, he saw death as a warm blanket pulled over him.

There was terrific excitement on the deck. Men were shouting, guns going off, but not as many. He thought that the deck was at an odd angle, but he was not sure. The Parrott lurched a bit, slid toward him. The pain swelled, eased off, swelled again. He felt cold.

Suddenly he was moving. The gun-carriage wheel disappeared and the world seemed to whirl around. He looked up. Gray sky, smoke. He did not know what was happening.

A face blotted out the sky. Captain Samuel Bowater. The captain had lifted him up, was cradling him. Harwell tried to smile, was not sure if he had managed it.

“We fought them off, Lieutenant!” Bowater said, loud. “Thanks to you, we fought them off!”

Then Harwell remembered. The words! The final words! And here, of all men on earth he would wish to say them to, here was Captain Samuel Bowater, whom he loved so dearly.

Harwell made to speak, and then a panic rushed over him. He could not recall! All that practice, and now the moment, and he could not recall. He wanted to weep.

The edges of his vision were growing dull, and he felt a lightness to his body, and then suddenly in a great rush they were there, the words he had labored over. Joy spread over him like the heat in front of a blazing fire, and he spoke and he could hear his voice was clear and loud and strong.

“Happy am I to lay down my life for this, my beloved Confederacy, and only regret that I shall not live to fight on…”

Bowater was nodding. He had heard the words, understood the sentiment. Of course, such a noble spirit would understand. The world seemed to be growing brighter. Brilliant light seemed to be streaming from around the captain, and soon the captain was lost in the light and then it was all light and then nothing.

Samuel Bowater held the dead lieutenant in his arms and he felt tears roll down his cheeks, surprising and bitter. The poor bastard had been shot right in the back, spine severed, lungs torn up, artery blown apart.

He had lied to Harwell, but he did not feel bad about that. They had not beaten the Yankees back. They had fought to a standstill, fought until the Cape Fear lurched hard, began a death roll, and the Yankees fled from the sinking tug, climbed back aboard their gunboat. Some of the Cape Fears had followed them, preferring prison to death in the river. The rest remained, grabbed on to things that would float.

He had told Harwell they had won because that was what the lieutenant, with his wild, romantic notion of war-a notion that was not dimmed by real

and bloody combat-would have wanted in his dying ears.

Harwell had smiled. He had tried to say something, it was unintelligible, a mumble of half-formed words, and then he died. He died with the smile on his lips. Bowater could not take his eyes from the smile.

The Cape Fear rolled again, and Bowater nearly fell over. He looked back. The after end, right up to the middle of the deckhouse, was underwater; debris and dead men were swirling around in the stream.

A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up. Taylor was there, bleeding from three places, cigar in his teeth, violin case under his arm. “We got to go, Cap’n,” he said.

“Go where?”

“Dunno. Find some damned thing will float.”

“I’m taking Harwell.”

“All right. I’ll help.”

Taylor grabbed Harwell’s feet, Bowater grabbed his shoulders, and they lifted and Taylor grunted and cursed and Bowater guessed that the wounds hurt more than he would let on.

Tanner was there, helping with the weight. They half-walked, half-slid down the deck to the water. No one spoke, no one had any idea of what they would do when the boat sank under them.

Then around the shattered deckhouse, moving fast, churning the water, came the CSS Appomattox. Lieutenant Simms in the wheelhouse pointed, reached up, and rang the engine-room bell. The Appomattox slowed, settled into her wake, stopped beside the sinking Cape Fear. Men on her fantail, anxious faces, grabbed hold of the Cape Fears, pulled them over the tug’s low bulwark. Men on the Cape Fear handed wounded over, scrambled over after them.

The Yankee gunboat fired, too high, the shell screamed past. Taylor and Bowater handed the body of Lieutenant Harwell over. “Go on, Chief,”

Bowater said, and Taylor scrambled onto the tug.

Bowater turned to Tanner. “Go…” he said and stopped. This had played out before-him, Tanner, enemy guns, the last men to leave. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“You remember.”

Bowater shook his head. It was too much. Think on it later. “Go on, Tanner, I won’t argue this time.”

Tanner nodded, climbed over the bulwark. Bowater took one last look around. The breeching on the Parrott gave way and the big gun slid down the deck, slammed into the front of the deckhouse. Bowater wanted to weep. He turned, climbed on board the Appomattox, felt the deck shake as Simms ordered up all the steam they had.

Bowater stood on the fantail, watched the Cape Fear, his first command, slip away. She went down fast, the river lapping over her, her deckhouse, her foredeck, her boat deck. Last of all he saw the wheelhouse, his wheelhouse, a place that he had come to love as much as any place he had known, go under with a roil of bubbles, and then she was gone.

He stared at the spot, but it was soon far astern, with the Appomattox running upriver to the Dismal Swamp Canal. Bowater surveyed the scene of the battle. Steamers everywhere, Union ships weaving in and out, but the fight was over. Sea Bird was all but sunk. Ellis was in Yankee hands, Black Warrior on fire, Fanny run aground and blown up, the Forrest set on fire on the ways.

Bowater forced himself to climb up to the wheelhouse, where Lieutenant Simms was looking upriver, giving helm commands.

“Lieutenant,” Bowater said, “on behalf of myself and my men I thank you for your brave and timely arrival.”

Simms smiled, nodded. “Wish I could have been there before you took that damned Yankee shell. My bow gun got knocked out, only had the howitzer, which was of little value.”

Bowater looked back. The steamers were receding in the distance, the fight left astern. “Nothing you could have done…” he said at last. “Nothing to be done.”

They continued on upriver in silence, and soon the locks of the Great Dismal Swamp Canal were ahead, gaping open like welcoming arms.

Bowater glanced down at the deck of the Appomattox.

“You’ve taken this boat though the locks before?” he asked.

“No. Reckoned this was as good a time as any to give it a try.”

Bowater nodded. “You think she’ll fit in the lock?”

Simms frowned, shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The river narrowed, the lock gates lay open. Simms rang the engine room. Half ahead. He rang again. Slow ahead. They approached the locks going two knots at most. Simms scanned the opening, looked at the Appomattox. Bowater did the same. Twenty feet away. Bowater had opened

his mouth to say he did not think they would make it when Simms said,

“It’ll be tight, but I think we’ll fit.”

The helmsman gave the wheel a subtle turn. The bow eased into the lock gates, the granite sides of the lock slid past. The Appomattox lurched to a stop, the men in the wheelhouse stumbled to keep their footing. Bowater looked down the side. The tug was jammed halfway into the lock, stuck fast.

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