Too late for you…
He swung the field glasses south again, looked past the beleaguered Fort Hatteras, over the low sandy island on which it stood, to the broad Atlantic, stretching away beyond.
The Union fleet was at anchor, the massive men-of-war nearly swallowed up in their own gun smoke, bright flashes stabbing through the gray cloud, as they poured their lethal shot on the poor mud walls of Fort Hatteras.
Bowater watched, mesmerized. All those ships. It was a terrible, terrible thing. He could recall the pride he once felt, looking upon those very ships, some of the most powerful in the world, enjoying the awe that their potential power could inspire. What could he do against them with his own tiny man-of-war, though she was nearly as fine as any that the Confederate States Navy could boast?
“Mr. Harwell, you may cast off the Parrott gun and try a ranging shot at the Yankee fleet,” he said. Harwell acknowledged the order, ran forward, nearly collided with Hieronymus Taylor coming up the ladder from the deck below.
“Good afternoon, Captain,” he said and paused to bite the end off a new cigar, spit the torn bit over the side, and light the noxious thing. He looked up, and for a long moment he just stared out at the Union fleet and the hail of iron they were hurling at the Confederate fort.
“Oh, Lordy…” he said at last.
“Behold, Chief Taylor,” Bowater said. “This, I believe, is why the Yankees do not lie awake nights for fear of the Confederate States Navy.”
24
Every effort that nautical skill, invention and courage can put forth must be made to oppose the enemy’s descent of the river, and at every hazard.
– Stephen R. Mallory
It was not difficult, Robley Paine discovered, for a man of means to get what he wanted, the increasing constrictions of war notwithstanding. Because the one thing people wanted more than anything was hard currency, gold, and that Robley Paine had.
Robley Paine had never been one for bank accounts, drafts, scrips, ephemeral bits of paper. He had all those things, of course. The world was too complicated for one to do business without them. But Paine’s primary concern, his raison d’etre, had been his boys’ legacy, and he would not trust that to preprinted forms and bankers’ promises. He would see, before all else, that his boys were set, that the Paine plantation and the Paine fortune would be there for them.
He was not alone in that, of course. It was the dream of every planter in the South. But the wealth of most other men was measured in land and slaves. What cash they had was paper currency issued by banks, or now by the Confederate States, which was already showing signs of devaluation, though the government had been issuing the notes for less than a year.
Robley Paine, however, kept a good deal of his wealth in gold, solid gold, bullion and coin.
Gold was a real thing, something one could hold in one’s hand, currency traded the world over and not subject to the machinations of government and finance, inflation, devaluation, the crash of the stock market. The worth of gold would not fluctuate with the fortunes of armies in the field.
Robley had been building his gold reserve for years, had resisted increasing his land-and slaveholdings to make certain the money was there for his boys. Nothing on earth would have induced him to spend it. Let the fiscal world crumble around him, let King Cotton lose his throne, Robley Paine’s boys would be sitting on a small pile of gold, that precious metal that had always been and would always be considered wealth.
But now his boys were gone, his reason for keeping that wealth blown away by Yankee invaders, and there was no reason in the world for him to hang on to it. Quite the opposite. Now he had real purpose in the spending of it.
He took passage to Vicksburg, the town draped like a blanket over high hills looking down on the twisting Mississippi below, walked along the river, stepping fast, his cane clicking on the stone quays and the wooden docks. His ancient wound ached until he was limping as if freshly shot, but it did not slow him in his search for a vessel.
He did not find one in Vicksburg, had not really thought he would. From there he took passage south, down to the great port city of New Orleans, a place he knew well, a place where he was known and where he knew people who could help him, a place where he knew he would find what he needed, every article. It was all to be had at New Orleans.
Robley was welcomed into the offices of Mr. Daniel Lessard, his shipping agent, with a greeting befitting an old friend, one who had been a steady source of income for many years. Lessard met him with hand extended and a smile that faded a bit as he looked on Paine’s face. “Robley, this is a surprise…” Lessard led Paine into his office, seated him in front of the big desk. “Are you well, sir? If you will forgive an impertinent question?”
“I have had a loss,” Paine said, in a tone that brought the discussion to a close. He fidgeted, adjusted the pistol he wore under his frock coat, a.44-caliber Starr Model 1858 Army revolver he had purchased a few years back. Most of the gold he had with him was in the hotel safe, but he carried a significant amount on his person, and he would protect himself. “I am interested in purchasing a riverboat. Do you know of any that might be suitable?”
“I know of many that are for sale,” Lessard said. Daniel Lessard was a wealthy man, and he had become such by knowing and establishing a relationship with everyone on the waterfront, from the meanest grifters to the most powerful merchants. “It would depend on what it must be suitable for.”
“River defense,” Paine said, and Lessard smiled, chuckled, then stopped as he realized that Robley Paine was not joking.
“‘River defense’?” Are you thinking of going into privateering?”
“No, I am thinking of stopping the goddamned Yankees from overrunning our home, that is what I am thinking of,” Paine said, feeling the words slip out, himself unable to contain them. He was not able to keep the menace from his voice. Lessard was visibly taken aback.
Oh, damn, oh, damn, Robley, get ahold of yourself… He could not always distinguish between the dialogue in his head and the words coming out of his mouth. “Forgive me, we are all under a great strain now, with the war…”
“Never think on it, sir!” Lessard waved his hand. “I know of several vessels might answer. There is Star of the Delta. About three hundred tons, hundred and fifty feet long, around thirty on the beam. Side-wheeler. She does not draw above seven feet. Two high-pressure, noncondensing engines, two boilers, all her machinery just recently gone over, in excellent condition.”
“She is for me, if she is what you say, sir,” Robley said. He scratched at his face, at the coarse growth of beard, wondered when he had last shaved. No bother. “When might we see her?”
“Now, I should think,” Lessard said brightly. He had some interest in this vessel, Robley could tell. The old Robley Paine would have been more cagey, would have discovered Lessard’s interest, driven a hard bargain. But now he was too pressed to argue or haggle.
“Show her to me.”
The Star of the Delta was tied up bow first not two blocks from Lessard’s office. She had the look of a vessel which had not moved in some time, but for all that she was in tolerably good order. Paine climbed up to her hurricane deck, stuck his head in the wheelhouse, ran his fingers over the wheel. He climbed down into the engine room with Lessard carrying a lantern to light the way. It cast wild shadows over the masses of piping and hulking bits of iron machinery. Paine looked at it, nodded, realized that he knew nothing whatsoever about ships and engines and such.
At last they returned to the deck above, stood on the fantail, looking out over the wide brown river. “She looks the thing, as far as I can tell,” Paine said. He looked Lessard in the eyes, and for the first time since he had resolved to defend the rivers of his home, he felt vulnerable, like a child, out of his depth. “I confess, sir, I am ignorant of these things. I look to you, as a friend, to advise me. Is this the vessel that I need? Is she in decent shape?”
Lessard put his hand on Paine’s s
houlder, gave him a half-smile, a reassuring look. “Star of the Delta is a fine vessel, strong and well cared for. She will certainly serve you well.”
For a long time Robley held his old friend’s eyes. Then he said, “Thank you. This is a trying time for me, but you have helped me along. And now I must look into the next thing, the harder thing by far, and that is arming her.”
“Arming her? What sort of armament did you have in mind?”
Robley shook his head. “I don’t know. A shell gun, forward? Smoothbores? At close range the smoothbores have the advantage, you know, with their higher muzzle velocity. But I do not know what I will be able to acquire. Or how, to be honest.”
“Well, sir…” Lessard said. “This is New Orleans. For a price, my friend, all things are to be had here…”
It was ten days before the Star of the Delta could get underway. She bore a new name then, Yazoo River. Changing the name had been the only simple part of her transformation.
There were two significant differences between the Star of the Delta and the Yazoo River. One was the addition of a four-foot iron ram on her bow, a foot below her waterline. It fit snugly around the cutwater and protruded forward like an iron shelf, a foot thick. Heavy bolts went clean through the ram and the Yazoo River’s cant frames and held the weapon securely in place.
The second addition was a letter of marque and reprisal, making the Yazoo River an official privateer. Robley had tramped through one office after another, filled in government forms, slipped bribes to greasy officials. It was the way of things in New Orleans. He had always understood it and accepted it. But it was harder now. His country was at war, and wicked people were making profit by obstructing the efficient prosecution of that war. It was insufferable, but Paine clenched his teeth, handed over the gold, tolerated it because he had to.
It was a formality, the letter of marque, as far as Robley was concerned, a bow to the legitimate authorities. Privateers captured prizes. Robley Paine was not interested in capturing anything. He intended only wholesale destruction, and he did not need a license for that.
The Yazoo River was a cotton-clad. Her armor, piled high on the foredeck and around the wheelhouse and the side decks, consisted of tightly compressed bales of cotton. They might help against small arms fire, Robley imagined, might make the men at the guns a bit more bold with the absurd belief that they were protected by the bales, but they would do no more than that.
Paine had actually purchased the cotton bales to pile on the decks, and that could not fail to amuse him. His fortune was based on growing and selling cotton; he had never purchased it in his life. Fortunately, it was not expensive, with the Union blockade already resulting in surpluses of the crop piling up in warehouses and docks.
Ten days of feverish work, of fighting with shipyard workers and recruiting sailors and engine-room crew, of getting his hands dirty working on the ship and kowtowing to corrupt officials, and spending gold at an extraordinary rate, buying coal and engine parts and food and charts and oil and shovels and slice bars and dockage. All things were to be had in New Orleans, and everyone had his hand out.
Ten days, and finally they cast off from the dock and Mr. Kinney, whom Paine had engaged as pilot, backed the Yazoo River out of her berth and into the Father of Waters. He spun the wheel once, rang up the engine room for half ahead, spun the wheel some more. Robley listened to the sounds of the big paddle wheels stop, a moment’s quiet, then the clank and splash and creak as they reversed direction.
“How does she feel, Mr. Kinney?” Paine asked. He was nominally captain, but he made no pretensions of knowing anything about boats. He left that aspect to Mr. Kinney and Brown, the engineer, both of whom treated Paine with a veiled contempt, and neither of whom Paine particularly liked. Paine did not think a fit Southern man had any business not being in the armed service. The very fact that Kinney and Brown were available made them suspicious in his mind.
“She’s fine, so far.” Kinney chewed thoughtfully at the plug of tobacco in his mouth, spit a stream into a spittoon, wiped a brown streak from his thick beard with the back of his sleeve. “Don’t know how long them goddamned engines’ll go, ’fore they blow all to hell, but so far she ain’t bad.”
Paine nodded, looked past the piles of cotton on the bow, at the brown water moving past. For all of his concerns about the ship and her crew-most of them were foreign, a surly and uninspired lot-he felt buoyed to be underway. If nothing else happened, nothing at all, he had a ship with a ram and he could end his life plowing it into the side of a Yankee man-of-war and have that to take to his grave, to tell his boys in heaven that he had done that much at least for them.
They steamed south from New Orleans, through the low delta country, the wild marshy places where the big river began to make its slow segue into the sea. The sun moved toward the horizon, but Kinney, for all of his objectionable qualities-and they were many-knew the river, and day or night, it made no difference.
It was well past dark, with the moon coming up, a thin gold sliver, when Paine began to worry. “We’ve not missed it?” It seemed as if they had been underway for some time, but Robley had never been that far down the river before.
“We ain’t missed it,” Kinney said. “Misser Lessard said the long pier north of St. Philip. We ain’t missed it.”
Daniel Lessard had helped with every step. He arranged the dockyard, located Kinney and Brown, put Robley in contact with the foundry that cast the ram. He had put Paine in the way of heavy guns. All that was needed now was to pick them up.
Another fifteen minutes and Paine could see lights on the high bank to the north, where the river made a dogleg turn, and Kinney rang up slow ahead. “There it is,” he said, nodding his head toward the dark window, but Robley could see nothing, so he simply nodded.
Kinney spun the big wheel, rang full astern, spun the wheel again, rang stop. He leaned out of the wheelhouse, called, “Git them goddamned dock lines ashore, you hear?” to someone below, and then with a bump the Yazoo River was there.
Where, Paine was not sure.
Kinney turned to Paine, working the tobacco in his jaw. “Here we are, Misser Paine. Long pier north of Fort St. Philip. Whatever business you got here, I ain’t got no part of it, hear? You go ashore, do what you want. Me, I stay here.”
Paine glared at the man, unsure of what he was implying. They were here to complete a transaction set up by Lessard, and Paine could not imagine there was anything illegitimate about it. So he said nothing, stepped out of the wheelhouse and over the gangplank the crew had set over the side.
It was dark where they had landed, and Paine had to wonder how Kinney had found the place, never mind bringing the Yazoo River alongside. He could hear the sound of a million insects carried on the humid air, along with the saline smell of brackish water, the swamp smell of decay.
Thirty feet away, a lantern unshuttered, the light spilling on the hard-packed ground and the sturdy wooden pier on which Robley stood. From behind the lantern, a voice that carried nothing but accusation said, “Who’s there?”
“Robley Paine.”
“Who sent you?”
“Mr. Daniel Lessard, of New Orleans.”
Quiet for a moment, then, “Come on over here.”
Robley stepped forward, trying to see the man who spoke, but he was holding the lantern in such a way that no light fell on him. Then, when Robley was no more than ten feet away, the man raised the lantern, let the light reveal him. A stout man, stout in the way of men who did physical labor, several inches shorter than Paine. He wore a Confederate uniform that did not fit him well, hugging his midriff too tight. The butt of a pistol showed from his holster. Another man stood a few feet behind him, a rifle conspicuous in his hands.
“Who are you?” Paine asked. It occurred to him that Lessard had never told him whom he was to meet.
“You don’t ask no question. You got money?”
“Perhaps…” Paine said. He was not too happy with the way this
was playing out. “Do you have guns?” This greasy fellow, more of the overseer type than the soldier, did not seem to be a man in a position to be selling guns. How would a soldier get cannons to sell?
“Come on,” the man said, led Robley back down the pier. At the far end, half on the road, half on the pier, stood a heavy wagon, and behind it another, the sorry-looking draft animals standing patient in the traces.
Paine followed the soldier around to the back of the wagon. The man looked at his partner, gave him a nod of the head, and the other man leaned his rifle against the wheel and climbed into the wagon. He pulled back a piece of heavy, stained canvas. Underneath, the gleaming barrel of a ten-inch Dahlgren.
“New-cast, fully rifled. Come right out of the dockyard at Norfolk,” the man said, as if he was the proprietor of a store. Paine looked at the barrel, awestruck by the potential power of the thing.
“Lessard didn’t say nothin’ about carriages,” the man said. “Carriages you got to get on your own. See here.” The man led Paine to the second wagon, and once again his partner jumped in the back, pulled the cover off two six-pound smoothbores, just as Lessard had promised. Paine shook his head in wonder.
“Where did these come from?” he asked.
The greasy man exchanged a smile with his partner. “Oh, we know people. Railroad people. Things gets diverted, you understand.” He was grinning.
Paine squinted at the man. The light from the lantern, held at his waist, threw deep shadows over his face, making him look even more evil. “You stole these…” Paine said at last. “This is Confederate property, and you stole it and now you are reselling it.”
“You watch what you say, hear?” the man said. “Stole it? I’m a Confederate soldier, and you calling me a thief…”
Robley Paine felt a deep loathing in his gut. Confederate soldier? His boys had been Confederate soldiers, not this pig. His boys were dead, killed for the Confederacy, and this filth was profiteering from the cause, the cause for which his boys died.
Glory In The Name Page 25
