Chapter 43

April 15-The enemy brought up his whole fleet… Orders were repeatedly given to Captain Stevenson, of the river fleet, to cause the fire barges to be sent down nightly upon the enemy; but every attempt seemed to prove a perfect abortion…

– Report of Brigadier General Duncan, C.S. Army, Commanding New Orleans Coast Defenses

The order came from Secretary Mallory.

NAVY DEPARTMENT, C.S.

Richmond, April 15, 1862

Sir:

Work day and night to get the Yazoo River ready for action. The preparation of ordnance stores and the drilling of the crew should all progress simultaneously. Not an hour must be lost. Spare neither men nor money. Put the best officers you can get on board the ships, if those we send don’t arrive in time. Proceed at the first possible convenience to New Orleans and place yourself and your vessel at the disposal of Commander Mitchell, CSN.

S. R. Mallory

Secretary of the Navy

Lt. Samuel Bowater, CSN

Yazoo City

New Orleans, Bowater thought, as he read the terse order. So it is to be New Orleans … There did not seem to be much consensus as to the direction from which the chief threat was coming, north or south. Hollins and his fleet had been sent upriver from New Orleans to meet the Yankee ironclad gunboats, leaving New Orleans with little in the way of naval protection.

Now there seemed to be a shift in policy.

The Yazoo River was, happily, a far way toward completion when the telegraph arrived. Hieronymus Taylor had pronounced her engines as fit as they were going to get, and nothing short of running them under load could reveal any further defects. The gunboat iron was bolted in place, so it looked as if the entire upper works were covered with wide wood strips painted dull brown.

The guns and ordnance had arrived the day before Mallory’s telegram; three nine-inch shell guns and six thirty-two-pounder smoothbores. That left one gunport empty, and into that went the ten-inch Dahlgren of Yazoo River ’s original battery. The old six-pounder was left on the landing.

They hoisted the guns aboard, set them at their gunports. They finished off the last of the armor, the iron over the wheelboxes. The officers’

quarters were no more than a few roughed-in bulkheads, the crew quarters were hammocks slung along the gundeck, but that was how it had to be.

Bowater did not think they would have to endure that inconvenience for long.

On the 18th of April they were underway. The crew numbered 153.

They included the original Cape Fears, the new men sent by Mallory, and eager volunteers from Yazoo City, men who were not sailors, but who were perfectly capable of hauling on a gun tackle or carrying shot and charge to guns, or heaving coal in the engine room. Artemus Polkey signed on as ship’s carpenter. A pilot by the name of William Risley, thickset, heavily bearded, volunteered to take the ship south and to fight her if need be.

There was no place for Robley Paine. He was not a pilot, not even a sailor. His leg had become so lame that he could hardly walk at times, and his health was not good.

Still, when he came to Bowater, and admitted to all of those imperfections, and begged to nonetheless accompany his ship on what they all understood might be her death run, Samuel was much moved. The Yazoo River was there because of Robley Paine, and him alone. Bowater knew he could not leave Robley Paine on the beach, force him to watch his ship sail off without him.

They got off the dock under their own power and steamed down the Yazoo River. Four miles above the Mississippi, one of the main bearings on the starboard engine cracked in two, bringing the engine to a halt with a sound that made every man aboard wince. They limped into Vicksburg on

the port engine. Taylor and Burgess worked for seven hours straight, right through the night, and the next morning they were underway again.

From Vicksburg it was 250 miles to the Crescent City. They steamed all day, all night, with both engines wide open, slowing only when they had to shut down the port engine to replace a throttle valve that jammed half-open.

Samuel Bowater looked out the narrow window at the forward end of the wheelhouse. It was not really a window, more a long rectangular opening in the armor plating, but then it was not really a wheelhouse either, but more of a low pilothouse, a four-foot-high ironclad box with sloped sides sitting on top of the casement.

Six feet below the roof of the box, mounted on the gundeck, was a platform that formed the deck of this truncated pilothouse. On that deck was mounted the wheel and the two telegraphs to the engine room. Crowded onto the platform, the lower part of their bodies in the casement, upper half, from the chest up, in the short wheelhouse, stood Bowater, the pilot, Risley, the helmsman, and a midshipman to relay the captain’s orders. It was the oddest lash-up Bowater had ever witnessed, but he reckoned it would do.

He moved his head from the port beam forward beyond the bow, to the starboard beam. The great, wide, brown Mississippi lay before them, over a mile wide, and crowded with shipping as they closed with New Orleans.

Amazing. He had very little experience with the river, had never been stationed in New Orleans. It took no imagination to see why this was where the lifeblood of the Confederacy flowed.

“How far to New Orleans, Pilot?”

“Fifteen miles. Be another sixty-five downriver to Fort St. Philip, which I reckon is where the fleet is. Ain’t no use in stationing at New Orleans.

Time the damn Yankees get to New Orleans, it’s too damn late to stop them.”

Bowater nodded. “Carry on,” he said, and stepped the four steps down from their little pilothouse deck to the gundeck below. Four steps, and the heat rose by twenty degrees, from what Bowater guessed to be around eighty to around one hundred. Sweating and shirtless men struggled with the big guns, loading and running out in dumb show, those experienced in naval gunnery instructing those who had never been this close to a cannon.

Bowater walked slowly through the odd twilight of the ironclad. In sixteen years at sea he had been aboard nearly every type of vessel afloat, but he had never seen anything like this. They were in a box, a rectangular

box with sloping sides. The rough-cut wood of the deck and the sides and bulkheads was painted white to aid in visibility, and it helped, some, but still the interior of the ironclad was gloomy. A row of lanterns hung along the centerline, despite the brilliant sun that poured in through the open gunports.

Samuel paused and looked along the port battery. If he looked at just that, just that small section of the gundeck, he could almost believe he was on the lower deck of a regular man-of-war. The broadside guns, the gunports, the sloping side like a ship’s tumble home, were all familiar things.

It was when he looked forward, when he saw the forward bulkhead, the forward-facing guns at right angles to the broadside, that the illusion was blown away. He was not on a proper man-of-war. He was on an ironclad ram, a newfound engine of war.

Ironclads at sea, armies moving by rail, communicating by telegraph.

Rifled cannons, rifled rifles, exploding ordnance. They were all Americans, Yankees and Confederates, like it or not, all children of that particular genius that was America. How apt then that in less than a year of war, Americans fighting Americans, they should alter forever the very nature of warfare.

Bowater stepped forward and was joined by Lieutenant Asa Quillin, stripped down to shirtsleeves, his shirt clinging to him, as wet with perspiration as if he had been doused by a bucket. Together they strode the length of the deck, gave words of encouragement to the men working the guns. Bowater stopped to talk with Ruffin Tanner, whom he had promoted to acting master’s mate and given command of the starboard battery.

“How do you fancy being an officer, Mr. Tanner?”

Tanner gave a long, slow chew of the tobacco in his mouth. “Ain’t bad.”

“How are your gun crews coming along?”

“Good. Gettin better. I don’t reckon aiming will be much of an issue.”

“No, I think not. Rate of fire, that’s what we’re looking for.”

“That’s what you’ll get, Cap’n.”

The Yazoo River steamed through New Orleans, the crowded docks, the sailing vessels, the paddle wheelers, the screw tugs, crisscrossing the river like water bugs. There was wild activity there, frenetic activity.

Hieronymus Taylor came up the steps from the engine room to the gundeck, joined Bowater in the pilothouse. He stoked up his cigar and the

smoke was sucked through the narrow windows and out into the evening.

“Home sweet home,” Taylor said, smiling as he peered out at the waterfront. “This won’t be the first time I got my ass whopped ’round these parts, far from.”

“Is it always this busy, Chief?” Bowater asked.

“Yeah…” Taylor said, and then, a moment later, “Well, maybe not…

somethin strange about it, seems like one damned big hurry. What you think, Mr. Pilot?”

“I think everyone with a boat’s tryin to get the hell out of town afore the Yankees gets here.”

Taylor nodded. “And fools we be, we goin’ in the opposite direction.”

They passed the city, made the 180-degree bend in the river ten miles south, and then another ninety-degree turn before the Mississippi straightened out for its final run to the Gulf.

They were fifty miles from Forts St. Philip and Jackson when they heard the gunfire.

Bowater thought it was thunder at first, a late-day storm brewed up by the sea and humidity of the Gulf. It seemed too massive to be gunfire. But it rolled on and on, distant and muted and constant, long after thunder would have died away.

“Do you hear that?” He turned to Risley and the pilot nodded.

“Mortar boats.”

“Mortar boats?”

“Yeah. Twenty or so. Old schooners, mostly. They towed ’em up, got

’em tied up to the riverbanks. They each have a thirteen-inch mortar on board, dropping them shells right into the forts. They must be murdering them poor bastards garrisoning them places. Idea is to knock the forts out and wreck the chain they got across the river, then Farragut can take his ships right up.”

Risley took his eyes from the low gray cloud of smoke, visible now over the low marshy land to the south. “Hell, Captain, don’t they tell you nothin?”

Theodore Wilson stood on the dock, looked down the Yazoo River as far as he could see. Behind him rang the noise of packing up a shipyard, a shipyard which had come together out of nothing, had formed like Adam from the dust, a new thing. All of Yazoo County rallying to his, Wilson’s,

call, and through his influence and leadership they had turned a madman’s dream into a reality, into a formidable weapon of war.

Wilson had to admit it, to himself, at least: the past month and a half had been the best time of his life. The energy surrounding the rebirth of the Yazoo River as an ironclad had been terrific, like an electrical storm, and him in the middle of it. In the directing of resources, the delegation, the supervising, he had felt like a brigadier general. In the sheer physical work he had found a new devotion to the cause of Southern liberty, more profound than he had thought possible.

When he had first confronted Samuel Bowater, he had thought himself a patriot. Now he could not even recall that person he had been, what that Theodore Wilson had thought and felt.

The Yazoo River steamed off for New Orleans, and Wilson felt as if he had, by mistake, left some part of himself aboard, forgotten to retrieve it before the ship sailed, like a coat left draped over a rail or a box of tools. He thought of tomorrow with dread. What was there now, now that the ship had gone without him?

He had considered sailing with her, of course. He had some seamanship, some piloting skills, from running the Abigail Wilson. But not enough to pilot a vessel like the Yazoo River. He had arranged for Risley to sail as pilot, aware of his own limitations.

So what else could he do? Nothing. He had no military experience, had never even seen a gun fired in anger. Manual labor, haul a gun tackle, run ashes up the ash hoist, that was it. Shovel coal. He would be subservient to Bowater, subservient even to Robley Paine, and that would not do. So he stood on the dock, watched her steam away, supervised the disassembly of the ad hoc shipyard.

He heard footsteps behind, a shuffling, limping walk, two people, someone to ask him what they should do next, and he did not know. He was tired of this work. It was anticlimax.

“Mr. Wilson?” The voice was strong, familiar, but he could not place it.

“What?” he said, exasperated, and turned around. His eyes met the face staring at him and he sucked in his breath, felt his heart charge, his limbs jerk with the involuntary reflex of shock and panic, an encounter with the supernatural.

“Dear God…” It was nothing supernatural-Wilson realized that in the instant he was sucking in his breath-but just as surprising.

“Jonathan Paine? What in hell are you doing here, boy? We all thought you were dead.”

“Nearly was.” He lifted up his pant leg, and Wilson looked with horror at the wooden appendage. “Lost that at Manassas. Robley Junior, Nathaniel, they weren’t so lucky. Both got killed. I got the idea my daddy thinks I’m dead, too.”

Wilson nodded. God, this sorry son of a bitch looks like hell!

Skinny as a stray dog, his cheeks sunk, unshaved, in a uniform that was torn and patched. He looked old, twice his twenty or so years. Of all the boys, Jonathan had always favored Robley the most, and now he looked even more like him-the wasted, mad Robley Paine.

Behind him stood a Negro of about Jonathan’s age, one Wilson did not recognize, a slave, perhaps, he had picked up along the way.

What am I going to tell him? Wilson wondered, but Jonathan spoke again.

“I been down to Paine Plantation. My mother’s dead.”

Wilson nodded. “I knew that, son. I’m sorry.”

“There’s only a few of the servants left. No one knew where my daddy was. Someone thought he was at Yazoo City. Fellow in town told me to look here.” Jonathan looked around, as if he still might find his father.

What do I tell him? His father went mad with grief, spent all of his money-all of his boys’ money-to build a machine with which to kill himself?

“Your daddy was here. You missed him by two days. He had a dream to build an ironclad gunboat, and damned if he didn’t do it. They went down to New Orleans, to fight the Yankees. Folks reckon there’ll be a hell of a battle.”

Jonathan nodded. There was a strange look in his eyes, not the flash of impetuous youth, not the wild, undisciplined thing that Wilson was used to seeing in the youngest of the Paine boys. “New Orleans…” Jonathan looked out at the river, as if he might fling himself in, let the brown water carry him to his father, to the sea.

Wilson looked down at the ground, the few blades of grass shooting up between the gravel, kicked at the loose rocks. He looked up. The old six-pounder from Yazoo River was sitting on its carriage near the edge of the landing. Robley Paine’s gun. Jonathan’s now, he reckoned.

He had opened his mouth to tell Jonathan that, that he was the proud owner of a six-pounder smoothbore-he could think of nothing else to say-

when he stopped, and involuntarily he shifted his eyes to the Abigail Wilson, still tied to the dock. He ran his eyes over her bow, pictured the sweep of foredeck, then glanced back at the six-pounder.

“You looking to go to New Orleans, then?” Wilson asked.

The gunboat USS Itasca, 150 feet long, five hundred tons, steamed up the Mississippi River, farther than any Yankee had come in a year.

Lieutenant C.H.B. Caldwell, commanding the Itasca, stood by the big wheel, aft. He had been charged by Admiral Farragut with removing the heavy chain, supported by half a dozen derelict schooners, which the Confederates had stretched across the river. He and his consort, Pinola, had labored for hours under the fire of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. They had managed to pull one schooner free. Their mission so far, a failure. Caldwell was not ready to report as much to Farragut, doubted he ever would.

The mortar flotilla was firing a covering fire, trying to distract the Confederate gunners, keep their minds off the two Yankee gunboats moving upriver. Streaks of light arched up high overhead, dropped into the wide area between the walls of Forts St. Philip and Jackson, made great billows of light as they exploded.

The forts were firing too, blasting at the riparian intruders with rifled shells. Exploding ordnance tore up the river, peppered the Itasca and Pinola with iron, but Caldwell was too angry to care. He steamed through the narrow opening left by the removal of that one schooner. He was playing his last hand.

He turned to the midshipman beside him. “Go down to the engine room, give the chief my compliments, and tell him that when I ring full ahead again, I want every ounce of steam I can have. Tell him to throw pitch, turpentine, whatever on the fires. I need it all.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” The mid saluted, ran off.

Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred yards upriver the Itasca steamed, until the line of schooners was lost to sight, and visible only in the light of exploding ordnance. The shells dropped all around the gunboat, screamed down the deck, took off the head of the mainmast; it was like steaming into a hornet’s nest.

“Port your helm, hard aport!” Caldwell said. Fort St. Philip, which had been right ahead, its walls bristling points of light where the guns were

firing at them, was now on the port side, now astern, as the gunboat turned to run with the stream.

Caldwell grabbed the telegraph, swallowed hard, rang full ahead.

The deck vibrated as the engineer stoked the fires up and the prop churned the water and the speed built. The gunboat was moving fast now, with the current, covering the distance that she had just steamed. Against the stars overhead Caldwell could see great quantities of smoke rolling out of the stack, and he wondered what the chief was throwing on down there.

Fort Jackson to starboard was firing madly, but Caldwell could see the schooners now, the chain between them, could see the point he intended to hit, the place where the chain hung lowest between two hulks.

“I’ll take this,” he said softly to the quartermaster, and the surprised man stepped aside, let the captain take the wheel. Caldwell gave a half turn, brought the helm amidships. He could not risk the possibility of the helmsman misunderstanding his command. They had one try, and one try only. No practice run, no drill.

They were coming on fast to the schooners, one, two, three, and between schooners three and four he pointed the bow of the gunboat. He could feel the engines throbbing below, could hear the sound of the hull pushed as fast as she could go through the water. And then they hit.

The bow of the Itasca hit the chain and kept going, up, up, as if she was leaping a wave, and the pounding engines drove the ship on, higher and higher. The gunboat seemed to be crawling out of the water as it lifted up, as it rode up on the chain.

And then it stopped and the throbbing engines could push her no more.

She sat there, hung on the chain, and it dawned on Caldwell that they might remain in that position, hung up on the chain under the Confederate guns.

The forts would blow them to pieces at first light, a failure on his part much worse than failing to break the raft.

The first tendrils of panic were creeping up his throat when the chain broke under them. The bow of the Itasca dropped down, sent the spray flying high over the rails, rocked the vessel with the waves created by her own impact.

The straining engines shoved the gunboat ahead. To port and starboard, the old schooners that had held the chain were now caught in the fast-flowing current. They swept downstream, swinging on the chain, making a gap in the obstruction like barn doors swinging open.

Caldwell smiled and would have shouted if he had not controlled himself. Forward, someone with less control whooped, and more followed suit.

Lieutenant Caldwell looked at the wide gap in the chain, big enough for the flagship, big enough even for the side-wheeler Mississippi. He had done his job. Now there was nothing but the forts and the Confederate mosquito fleet between Farragut’s big ships and the city of New Orleans.

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