“All right, all right, goddamn it…slow ahead!”
Robley nodded, left the wheelhouse, took his place on the front edge of the hurricane deck, where his view of the enemy and his own gun crew was unimpeded.
He looked right and left. The line of pugnacious gunboats blasting away, from the 830-ton, bark-rigged side-wheel steamer McRae to the fast river tug Jackson, made his heart sing. Fighting back, that was the thing. Was there anything more terrifying then sitting idly by, while the serpent wrapped itself around his new nation?
The turn of the Yazoo River’s stern wheels began to slow, the creaking note lowering in pitch, and the boat’s forward motion was checked. Paine whirled around, caught Kinney’s eye, and Kinney looked quickly away.
Paine crashed the wheelhouse door open as he burst in. “I give the goddamned orders! I say when to go, and when to stop, is that clear, Mr. Kinney?”
“I reckoned it was time to stop. We getting damned close to being in range of them Yankees.” The shot from the steamer’s smoothbores was beginning to fall just a hundred yards or so beyond the bow, and some even falling around the boat.
“Slow ahead, Mr. Kinney,” he said, soft, and once again Kinney reached for the bell cord and tugged.
I will have to shoot that coward before we are through here… Robley thought. He held Kinney fixed with his eyes until he felt the stern wheels begin to turn again, felt the Yazoo River’s momentum build. She was out ahead of the others now, but that was where Robley wished to be.
Then, from deep below them, from somewhere near the bottom of the ship, a terrible wrenching sound of metal. Something snapped with a sharp report. The starboard paddle wheel stopped instantly, as if the hand of God had been laid on it, and the boat began to slew.
“Meet her, meet her!” Robley said to the helmsman. They had gone through this drill before. The helmsman spun the wheel, compensating for the off-center thrust of the single paddle wheel.
“Well, shit, reckon that’s it,” Kinney said with a hopeful tone.
“We have two engines, Mr. Kinney, and we have lost only one.”
“You don’t mean to keep on here?”
“Slow ahead, Mr. Kinney. I shall signal you when to stop.”
Paine walked out onto the hurricane deck. Am I mad? he wondered. He knew it was a terrible risk he was taking, driving the Yazoo River forward until she was within range of the Yankee’s guns. He could not muster even the slightest concern for his own welfare, or for that of his ship and men, which he considered no more than an extension of his own will.
Madness!
But can I be mad, if I understand that what I am doing is madness?
The bow gun fired again, and he traced the trajectory right to the big steamer’s hull. They were not above five hundred yards away, easy for their big rifle, and well within range of the Yankee’s broadsides.
The round shot was falling all around them now, kicking up spray that fell on the Yazoo River’s deck, but the gun crew was performing well, loading and firing, seemingly as oblivious to the shot as was Robley. He was proud of his crew. Were it not for Kinney, all would be perfect.
From the Yankee ship, a muzzle flash, a foreshortened black streak, and Robley watched as it slashed toward them, screaming by his ear, leaving a jagged hole in the wheelhouse astern. He was standing in the hail of iron, leaning into it, as if it was a cool rain at the end of a hot, humid summer day. He was revived by the gunfire, refreshed by the proximity of death.
You sulfurous and mind-tempting flames, vault couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head!
A Yankee ball came in on a flat trajectory, plowed down the hurricane-deck rail on the port side, snapping off the stanchions like a scythe through wheat.
Now what are the chances of that? Robley wondered as he looked at the unusual site, the twisted metal posts and rails, hanging at odd angles.
He turned to the wheelhouse, held up his hand for Kinney to ring slow astern, which would hold them on that spot in the river.
From the Yankees came a new note, a sharper crack, not like the flat, dull boom of the smoothbores. Robley brought his field glasses up to his eyes. The smaller ship, the one run bow first on the mud, had moved two guns aft and run them out of the after gunports. These were not smoothbores but rifles, Robley could tell by the higher pitch of their report.
As he watched through the binoculars, the port gun fired, the crack of the gun and the scream of the shell whirling past coming one on top of another. Exploding shells. This was dangerous stuff, much more so than the round shot. Robley felt exhilarated.
The air was filled with the sound of battle, a continuous rolling fire from the Rebels and the Yankees, the buzz of round shot passing close, the scream of the rifle shells, the occasional crash of shot hitting the Yazoo River, taking off bits of the superstructure, chipping away at the wheelhouse. And under it all, the hiss and puff and clank of the single engine, driving the single paddle wheel slow astern. And then it stopped.
Paine was aware first of the change in sound, some part of the tapestry of battle noise gone. And then the Yazoo River began to turn, to drift downstream, spinning broadside to the Yankee fleet, the current sweeping her into the deadly broadsides.
What…what… Robley was not sure what to do. They had never lost both engines. They had never been under fire.
Kinney appeared on the deck below, running forward with the awkward run of a short, stocky man. “Let the anchor go! Let the anchor go!” he shouted as he ran. Someone let fly the ring stopper and the anchor plunged down into the water and the chain raced out after it.
From the hurricane deck, Robley watched the action take place but did not know what to say. He turned and looked at the wheelhouse, but there were no answers there. How in hell did Kinney get down there so fast? Why didn’t he just call down from the wheelhouse?
The chain ran its length and stopped. The anchor grabbed hold and the Yazoo River spun around, bow upstream, hanging at the end of the chain, the Yankee shot falling all around and passing over her deckhouse to fall in the water beyond.
Now what in hell? Robley was at a loss. Robley, who was starting to feel his oats as ship’s captain, realized he had no idea of what to do.
Boots on the ladder and Kinney appeared on the hurricane deck, and behind him, Brown, the engineer, filthy, sweat-soaked, face streaked with coal dust, eyes red, watery, and utterly disingenuous.
“What is it, Brown?” Robley demanded.
“Lost the rod on the starboard engine. Now it’s a bearing on the port crankshaft. It’s a fucking mess.”
Robley shifted his gaze to Kinney, who met his eyes with defiance. “You best signal one of them towboats to come over here, give us a tow upriver. Fight’s over, Cap’n.”
For a long moment no one moved, no one spoke. Paine, Kinney, and Brown, they stood facing one another.
Paine broke the silence. “I know you two.” He pointed to Kinney, put his finger right in the pilot’s face. “You are cock”-he moved his finger to Brown-“and you are bull, and you are both goddamned liars. Go get that engine going.”
“I done told you, the bearing…”
“Don’t you lie to me, you son of a whore!” Robley could feel his control slipping, the emotional dam he had built up to keep the rage contained crumbling. If it collapsed he did not know what would happen, and he was afraid. The dam was the thing that stopped him from simply roaming the streets and shooting down every son of a bitch who did not deserve to breathe, but still did, while his boys did not.
Brown took a step back. He looked frightened, frightened of what he saw in Robley’s eyes. “Cap’n, I ain’t…”
Kinney’s hand came out of his coat, a five-inch double-barrel Remington derringer in his meaty palm. “You’re a goddamned lunatic, Paine, and all your money don’t change that. Keep yer hand away from that pistol.”
Robley reached across his chest, put his hand on the butt of the Starr.
“I said keep
yer hand away from that pistol,” Kinney repeated, his voice rising in pitch. Paine pulled the heavy weapon loose, swung it up.
“Put the goddamned gun down!” Kinney screamed, but Kinney had made a big mistake, because he was a coward, and cared for nothing but his own skin, and was as terrified of hanging for murder as he was of being killed by Yankees, while Robley Paine did not care a whit about any of it.
Robley pointed the Starr at Kinney’s trembling hand and just when Kinney realized he had better shoot, because Paine was beyond being threatened, Paine pulled the trigger. The Starr roared, and the.44 bullet hit the derringer with a sharp pinging sound, blew the gun and three of Kinney’s fingers clean off the hurricane deck.
Robley swung the smoking barrel around so that it was pointing right in Brown’s face, not six inches from the tip of his nose. “Slow ahead, Mr. Brown,” he said, just loud enough to be heard over Kinney’s shrieks of pain and terror and the rumble of the big guns.
Six minutes later, with the shells and round shot still falling like hail around them, the Yazoo River’s port paddle wheel began its slow revolutions, the anchor chain was brought in, and the battered gunboat crept back to her place in the line of battle.
Captain Pope stamped the deck, slammed his fist down on the taffrail in frustration. They were taking fire from the Rebels, and none of the Richmond’s guns had the range to hit back. The dammed gunboats were too far away, save for the one stern-wheeler that had come so aggravatingly close. They had watched her slew around and come to anchor, and for a happy moment thought they had shot out her engines or paddle wheel. But fifteen minutes later she was underway again.
He felt like an idiot. He did not think this would reflect well on him.
He turned to the signal quartermaster. “Make a signal to the ships beyond the bar-‘Get underway.’”
“‘Get underway,’ aye, aye, sir,” he said and turned to the bag of signal flags at his feet.
Damn, damn, damn… Pope thought. We have to do something. What?
The signal flag snapped up the halyard, fluttered there for five minutes, and then came down again. The scream of the Rebel shells, the boom of the port-side Dahlgrens, continued unabated, the smoke hanging thick on the deck before swirling away south.
“Sir?” Whitfield was crossing the deck, a worried look on his face.
Now what?
“Yes, Luff?”
“Captain Handy’s coming aboard, sir,” he reported with a puzzled tone. “He has his men with him.”
“His…men? You mean his crew?”
“It would seem so, sir.”
“What, has he…has he abandoned his ship?”
“Ahhh…” Whitfield hesitated, but happily for the executive officer Captain Handy himself appeared through the gangway. He was wearing his dark blue frock coat and cap. Around his waist was wrapped the Vincennes’s battle ensign, great folds of red, white, and blue cloth.
“What the devil…?” Pope said as Handy climbed the quarterdeck ladder, stopped, and saluted.
“I am here, sir,” Handy reported, his voice near shouting to be heard over the din of the Richmond’s guns and the Rebel artillery.
“I can see you are here, Captain,” Pope replied, shouting and sputtering. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Your signal, sir. I am obeying your signal.”
“What signal?”
Handy, looking suddenly unsure, glanced around. “Your signal you just ran up. ‘Abandon ship.’”
“I didn’t signal ‘Abandon ship.’ I signaled for the vessel beyond the bar to get underway.”
“Oh. Well, sir, my signal quartermaster saw the signal flag, blue, white, blue, as did I. We interpreted that as signal number one, ‘Abandon ship.’”
“Sir, I do not know what you saw, or thought you saw, but I most certainly did not signal for you to abandon ship!”
“I am sorry, sir,” Handy shouted. “But I most certainly…”
Pope shook his head, cut him off in mid-argument. “Captain, I will not debate this point with you! Get your men and get back to your ship and defend it from the enemy in a manner such as is expected of you.”
Handy shut his mouth, straightened a bit, held Pope’s eyes, but made no effort to move. “The thing of it is, sir, before we abandoned her, so the Rebels would not take possession, sir, we set slow match to the power magazine.”
Pope’s mouth fell open of its own accord. “You…what?”
“Slow match, sir. The Rebels…she’s going to blow any minute, sir.”
For two hours, the mosquito fleet pounded the Yankees, and then they were done. Ammunition all but gone, coal bunkers running low, crews near the point of exhaustion, they put up their helms and stoked their fires to provide steam for their tired engines to stem the flood of South West Pass, steaming upriver to New Orleans.
Robley Paine sat on the stool in the Yazoo River’s wheelhouse, holding the Starr cradled in his lap. Five feet in front on him, sobbing and cursing, Captain Kinney piloted the boat north. Paine was confident that Kinney would do a proper job, because Kinney was aware that the next bullet would part his skull, the moment the Yazoo River touched bottom. It seemed a wonderful motivator.
Paine did not like the sound of the single engine. It was growing noticeably louder, crashing and clanging. But he had confidence that Brown would keep her turning as long as she was physically able to turn. The motivational techniques he used on the pilot seemed to work even better with the engineer.
Robley Paine felt satisfied. It had been a good expedition. It could have been better, could have been much better-they could have sunk or taken or crippled one of the Yankees-but still it had been good.
It was his first experience with naval warfare, and he had learned a great deal. It would take weeks, he knew, to sort out and codify all the lessons from those twenty hours. But two of them stood out, big and bold, like headlines in a newspaper, two things he required to wage proper war.
He needed a crew of proper navy men.
He needed an ironclad.
The Vincennes did not blow up. A quarter gunner, who had been ordered to light the slow match, a man with more sense than the captain, understood that blowing the ship to kingdom come in the face of the mosquito fleet was absurd. He followed orders, lit the fuse, then cut the burning end off and threw it overboard.
He did not, however, tell anyone. For two hours Pope and Handy and the combined crew of two ships stood anxiously waiting for the massive shock of the sloop’s powder magazine to blow. When at last it was clear that the ship was not going to explode, Pope ordered the Vincenneses back aboard.
For the next ten hours they worked to get the ships off the mud and over the bar to open water, where they belonged. They set kedge anchors and heaved, they passed towlines to the small screw steamer Water Witch, and she pulled until she all but buried her stern, but it did no good. Aboard the Vincennes they started the water and pumped it over, threw round shot and spare anchors and finally the great guns into the river, but still they remained fast in the mud.
When darkness came they stood down. Pope sat on a quarterdeck hatch combing, his coat unbuttoned, his fringe of hair sticking out at odd angles. The deck seemed to pull at him with a force greater than gravity.
He heard shoes on the quarterdeck ladder and looked up. The midshipman of the watch approached tentatively, which further annoyed Pope.
“What is it?” the captain snapped.
“Boat from Vincennes, sir, brought this note.” He held out a folded letter as if he was feeding a dangerous animal. Pope snatched it away, unfolded it, angled the paper so the light from the lantern behind him fell on the words.
SIR: We are aground. We have only two guns that will bear in the direction of the enemy. Shall I remain on board after the moon goes down, with my crippled ship and worn-out men? Will you send me word what countersign my boats shall use if we pass near your ship?
While we have moonlight, would it not be better to l
eave the ship? Shall I burn her when I leave her?
Respectfully,
Robert Handy
Good God! That son of a bitch is more eager to destroy his ship then the damned Rebels are!
“Is Vincennes’s boat still alongside?”
“Aye, sir. Waiting your reply, sir.”
“Go fetch my steward. Tell him I need paper and pen.”
Four minutes later the steward came hurrying aft, the midshipman leading the way. No one was slacking off in the old man’s presence tonight.
Pope stood and wanted to groan but would not in front of his subordinates. He smoothed the paper out on the wide quarterdeck cap rail and the midshipman snatched down the lantern and held it up for the captain, maintaining a discreet distance. Pope dipped the pen and wrote:
SIR: You say your ship is aground. It will be your duty to defend your ship up to the last moment, and not to fire her, except it be to prevent her from falling into the hands of the enemy.
He paused in his writing, looked at the note. He knew the words he wished to use in the second paragraph, but he could not write them. It was not fitting for an officer and a gentleman to write the sort of thing he was thinking. Instead, he continued in a more even tone.
I do not think the enemy will be down tonight, but in case they do, fight them to the last.
You have boats enough to save all your men. I do not approve of your leaving your ship until every effort to defend her from falling into their hands is made.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,
John Pope
He folded the note, handed it to the midshipman, said, “That is for Captain Handy.”
The midshipman saluted, hurried away. Pope stepped across the deck, looked out over the dark water at the glowing lanterns on Vincennes’s deck.
…Crippled ship and worn-out men…Shall I burn her when I leave her? Good God…
“The damned Rebels have the grit and the will to come down and attack us in paddle wheelers and towboats armored in cotton,” Pope said out loud, certain that no one was near, “and that idiot Handy wants to abandon and burn a ship more powerful than the whole Rebel fleet because he is tired and stuck in the mud!”
Glory In The Name Page 30
