Glory In The Name sb-1

by James L. Nelson

  “Johnny, come with me,” Taylor said, and Johnny, who had been with Taylor on many a misadventure, stood and followed without question.

  They met on the fantail, Hieronymus Taylor and a cluster of black men in Confederate sailor’s garb. On the starboard side, Tanner and two seamen held one of the Yazoo River’s boats against the ironclad hull.

  “All right, you boys,” Taylor began, and then he was interrupted by footsteps in the casement, stepping through the door. Captain Bowater.

  “Chief, what are you doing?” Bowater asked. It was not a friendly tone: anger, confusion, but mostly suspicion.

  “I’m lettin’ the darkies go, Cap’n. They ain’t got a dog in this fight.”

  “You are…what?”

  “Letting the darkies go. Givin them a boat. Let ’em sail on down to the Yankees. We don’t need ’em, don’t need no divided loyalties for the fight we got comin.”

  “What makes you think their loyalties are divided?”

  “Well, let’s jest see.” Taylor turned to the men on the fantail. “Any you men don’t want to go over to the Yankees, wants to remain in the Confederate Navy, stay and fight, step on over there.”

  Taylor pointed to the port rail. There was a long pause. No one moved.

  “Who is going to pass coal, Chief?”

  “I can pass coal. Burgess can pass coal. Got two white coal passers, don’t need so damn many down there anyhow.”

  Bowater was silent, clearly did not know which way to go on this.

  “How ’bout you, Cap’n? You gonna let your boy Jacob go?”

  “Jacob’s been with me all his life. He certainly would not think of deserting.”

  “That a fact? Why don’t we ask him?”

  The two men stared at one another. The moon was rising, and gave just enough light that they could see one another’s eyes, but just barely.

  “Very well. Tanner, go fetch Jacob,” Bowater said.

  Silence on the fantail, an ugly silence, like two men holding one another at gunpoint. And then a moment later Tanner and a very confused Jacob climbed out the small door onto the deck.

  “Jacob,” Bowater said. “Mr. Taylor here wishes to let all of the Negroes go, let them get into the boat there and row down to the Yankees and ostensible freedom. He suggests I allow you to go, so I will.

  “The choice is yours. Remain where you are, and stay with me, or step over with those other men”-Bowater pointed to the cluster by the starboard rail-“and go with them to the Yankees. What will it be?”

  The silence settled down again, and every eye was on Jacob, and Jacob clearly was not happy about it. His eyes shifted between Bowater and the men at the starboard rail. At last he made some little sound-it might have been a muttered word-and with three quick steps he crossed to the starboard rail and took his place there.

  Jacob shook his head. Taylor could see the sorrow in his face, his eyes. Finally he spoke. “Massah Sam’l, I’se sorry. Really, I’se sorry. But what the hell else you expect me ta do?”

  Bowater looked from Jacob to Moses, to Johnny, then to Hieronymus Taylor. Then, without a word, he turned and disappeared through the door into the casement.

  “All right, y’all, this here’s your chance and you best take it!” Taylor said, loud, and his voice moved the men to action. They climbed down, one after another, into the boat, faces frightened and expectant, all at once.

  “Boss.” Jones stopped, as Taylor knew and feared he would. “This here, this here’s a fine thing you doin’…”

  “Shut up. Think I wouldn’t rather see your black ass stop a shell before mine? Git the hell in the boat, afore I change my stupid mind.”

  Moses nodded, and to Taylor’s irritation smiled and then climbed into the boat and took up an oar.

  “Go on, y’all!” Taylor shouted. “Head on downriver, that’s where you’ll find them Yankees, lead ya to the Promised Land!”

  The men at the thwarts dipped their oars and pulled and the boat began to fade into the night.

  “Go on!” Taylor shouted. “Go work in one of them damned factories up North, see how damned good ya had it here!”

  Then from the dark, from the amorphous white shape which was all he could see of the boat, Moses Jones’s voice cut though the dark like a knife. Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave you…

  Then all of the men in the boat together: Away, you rolling river…

  Then Moses again: But Shenandoah, I’ll never grieve you…

  Hieronymus Taylor stood on the fantail and watched until first the boat and then the singing were swallowed up in the dark. He smiled despite himself, shook his head, stepped into the casement, and shut the ironclad door.

  Samuel Bowater stood on top of the pilothouse roof, alone, watched the boat pull away downriver. Jones’s voice, deep and clear, floated back to them.

  Jacob’s desertion had moved him in a profound way. He would never have guessed it, was certain, when he agreed to test his conviction, that Jacob would remain by his side. That he had opted instead to leave the Bowaters’ service for the uncertainties of freedom in the North shocked Samuel, changed his outlook in a fundamental way.

  He toyed with these thoughts, but his mind wandered. His father, his mother, Wendy, Robley Paine, they all stepped up for consideration, vague, half-formed thoughts. He sat on the hurricane deck, leaned back against the pilothouse.

  He did not know what time it was when he awoke, nor what woke him. He opened his eyes, looked into the dark. There were footsteps on the hurricane deck. He did not move.

  A figure stepped past the pilothouse, stepped to the forward end of the hurricane deck. In the moonlight Bowater recognized the beaten-down frame of Robley Paine.

  For a moment Paine did nothing. Then with some difficulty he knelt down on the deck, bowed his head. Clasped his hands. For a long time he remained there, in silent prayer, and Bowater was not sure what to do.

  Finally Bowater rose, and his foot scraped on the deck and Paine looked up.

  “Ah, Mr. Paine, I did not see you there,” Bowater said.

  “Quite all right, Captain,” Paine said. He stood painfully, stepped over to Bowater. There was something different about his face. The muscles seemed less tense, the edge of madness dulled. “A fine night,” he said.

  “Lovely…” Bowater said, and then, before he knew he had said it, added, “Why did you do this, sir? The ship, all of it?”

  Paine looked at him with a look that seemed to peel the buffers of secret thought away. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I did most of what I did, this past year. I don’t even recall a lot of it. I did it for my boys, I suppose. Their memory. My wife was able to let herself die, but I did not have that trick. I guess I did it because I was doomed to live when I did not want to, because the Everlasting has set His canon against self-slaughter.”

  His voice was stronger, more clear than Samuel had ever heard it. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “In any event, here we are. And even if what I did can do nothing for my boys, it can at least help my country, and that is something.” He turned to Bowater. “You are the only one who has ever had the grit to ask me that.”

  Bowater nodded. This man before him was not the mendacious lunatic who had greeted them at the landing at Yazoo City. The transformation of the ship had somehow transformed him as well. Or maybe it was the proximity of eternal rest that revived his mind.

  Then, like punctuation to the thought, the guns of Fort St. Philip opened up, two hundred yards away. Instant change, like waking from a dream, the dark and quiet blasted away as gun after gun hurled iron and fire over the water. And lit up by the muzzle flashes of the big guns, the Yankee fleet, moving slowly, line ahead, upriver, through the boom, through the crossfire of the forts.

  The lead Yankee ship staggered under the hammer blow from the fort but did not stop, did not even slow. Her sides flashed with gunfire as she hit back, wooden warship against fixed fortification. Fort Jackson began to blast away, and then the ne
xt Yankee ship in line, and the next. In less than half a minute a full-scale battle had appeared, right under their bow.

  Below, Bowater could hear his officers and petty officers shouting, could hear the tramp of 150 men rushing to battle stations, but he remained, transfixed. He considered sending for Jacob, having him fetch his frock coat and hat, but he rejected the idea. Too hot for that. He wondered at himself. There was a time when he would not have considered going into battle without his proper uniform, despite the heat.

  And then he remembered that Jacob was no longer aboard. He wondered about him and Moses and the other Negroes, if they had made it through or were caught up in that.

  No, they had had time. They would have made it through.

  Robley Paine turned to him, one side of his face lit with flickering orange light. “Our time has come,” he said.

  “It has indeed,” Bowater replied. “It surely has indeed.”

  45

  On the morning of the 25th the enemy’s fleet advanced upon the batteries and opened fire, which was returned with spirit by the troops as long as their powder lasted, but with little apparent effect upon the enemy.

  – Major General Lovell, C.S. Army, Commanding Defenses of New Orleans

  There was no plan, no organized waterborne defense. There were not enough Confederate ships to warrant it, and with the River Defense Fleet doing what it wished to do in any event, it had never seemed worth trying. Sally forth and fight, that had been the only plan. Captain Bowater rang up half ahead, called down to Lieutenant Asa Quillin to slip the stern anchor which held them head downstream.

  The noise of the chain running out came rattling through the deck. The bitter end went overboard and the Yazoo River twisted in the stream, free of the muddy bottom. The quartermaster, wide-eyed with the shock of being roused from sleep by cannon fire, still trying to button his pants, turned the wheel with one hand, held his pants with the other, brought her on a heading for the battle.

  Risley, the pilot, climbed up to the platform beneath the pilothouse. Without a word he took the wheel, let the helmsman get his pants in order. “Heading, Captain?”

  Bowater watched the battle for a moment before replying. It was as if the night had exploded, great flashes of red and orange, the concussion of the great guns making the casement of the Yazoo River shudder, even half a mile upstream. In just a few moments of fighting the smoke had become thick enough to make some of the gunfire look muted, dull bursts of color in the dark and the gloom.

  Quillin appeared in the pilothouse looking for orders.

  “You recall, Mr. Risley, Horatio Nelson’s words, just before Trafalgar?” Bowater said. “‘No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.’ That must be our strategy tonight, because I think we’ll get no instructions from the flag. So let us plunge right in.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Risley said. The quartermaster took the helm again. “Find the closest damn Yankee and steer right for her,” the pilot instructed.

  More footsteps on the platform and Hieronymus Taylor appeared, ubiquitous cigar in mouth, his frock coat open, his hands in his trouser pockets. “Forgive my intrusion,” he said. He looked forward, out the slit of a window, at the panorama of violence under their bow. “Ho-ly God…”

  “What is the report from the engine room?” Bowater asked, irritated. He was irritated about the Negroes, irritated about Taylor’s being there in the pilothouse, irritated in general with the man.

  “All’s well, Cap’n Bowater. Boilers blown down, fires are clean, grates are clean, steam’s up.”

  “You have coal heavers enough?”

  “We have coal heavers enough.”

  Bowater turned back to the fight before him, tried to ignore Taylor. The rest of the mosquito fleet was scrambling, slipping anchors, steaming downriver. Risley ordered a hard turn to starboard to avoid collision with one of the River Defense Fleet. It was helter skelter, with no organized line of battle, and Bowater wondered if there wasn’t as much danger of colliding with friend as there was of being run down by their enemies.

  “Well, reckon I’ll crawl back in my hole,” Taylor said, and when Bowater failed to respond, added, “Captain?”

  Bowater turned. Taylor wore a strange look on his face. Not contrition, not arrogance, not apology. Something else. A touch of sentiment, perhaps.

  “Cap’n Bowater, we have been through quite a bit together, you and me. I got to say it now. You are one cold, patrician son of a bitch, but you got grit. It’s been a pleasure.”

  Taylor extended his hand, and the words and the gesture were so genuine that Bowater was taken aback. He would not have credited the man with such sincerity.

  Bowater took the extended hand, enveloped it in his two hands, and shook. “Chief Taylor, you are one insufferable pain in the ass, but you are a hell of an engineer.”

  Taylor smiled around his cigar. “Cap’n, if you live through this here jaunt, and I don’t, I would surely admire it if you could see that put on my headstone.”

  “It’ll be done.”

  Taylor regarded the men in the pilothouse. He snapped a crisp salute. “Morituri te salutamus,” he said, then turned, disappeared into the gloom of the ironclad’s lower deck.

  They had halved the distance in the time that he had spoken with Taylor, the fast-flowing Mississippi River sweeping them down on the enemy. The fight had mounted in its intensity, the smoke and noise and gunfire building on itself. The first of the Yankee ships was just now coming between the forts, blasting away with both broadsides, pushing on upriver.

  And the forts were giving it back. Five days of shelling seemed to have made no difference. The big guns were blazing away so that the walls of the forts might have been on fire, so solid was the sheet of muzzle flash.

  The smoke rolled over the river, more and more smoke, hanging like an acrid fog, glowing orange. And through that smoke the ships moved, the big, slow-moving Yankee screw steamers, the little ships of the Confederate defenders. Into that hailstorm of iron, Samuel Bowater pushed the Yazoo River.

  He turned to the midshipman, Mr. Worley, and said, “Go below. Tell the gun captains to fire at any target on which their guns will bear. They are to fire at will.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” the mid said, a bit too loud and high-pitched, and he hurried off.

  A gunboat was leading the Yankee line, a schooner-rigged screw-driven craft, 150 feet or so in length. “There! Steer for her!” Bowater said, pointing through the slot, and as he did a tugboat appeared out of the gloom, crossing their bow, starboard to port. In the flashing gunfire Bowater could make out the Confederate flag on her stern. He got out no more than the first syllable of a helm command before they struck.

  The men in the pilothouse staggered as the two vessels hit, and Quillin shouted, “Damned idiot!”

  Bowater looked out the slot. The tug was hung up on their bow and men were rushing along her deck, shouting, waving arms. The gunfire was so continuous now that the whole scene was lit in orange, the tug silhouetted against the flames of Fort Jackson’s barrage.

  Bowater grabbed the telegraphs, gave a ring, shoved the handles to full ahead. No time for this horseshit… The engines responded immediately, the Yazoo River surged ahead, pushing itself into the tug. With a snapping and crunching sound, audible over the gunfire, the tug peeled off the Yazoo River’s bow, bumped against her side, disappeared astern, and the ironclad was once again racing toward the fight.

  The Yankee gunboat was surrounded, Confederate ships pounding her from all sides, more maneuvering to board. No room for another. “Pilot, do you see that big ship, the one coming up next?” Bowater was shouting now, he could not be heard otherwise over the gunfire.

  “Aye!”

  “We’ll make for her!”

  The broadside below opened up, the guns of the ironclad Yazoo River firing for the first time in anger. The casement shuddered, the smoke swirled up from the gundeck, sucked out of the slits in the pilothouse.
With it, the squeal of carriage wheels on the deck, the rumble of the guns being run out, and another gun, and another. The flames from the muzzles lashed out from the side of his ship, the muzzles themselves hidden from his view over the edge of the casement.

  The embattled Yankee gunboat passed down the Yazoo River’s port side and the next ship in line loomed up, and Bowater sucked in his breath. It is the Pensacola! Dear God, it is my Pensacola!

  Four years he had served as second officer aboard that ship. There was not one inch of her that he did not know, that he had not been personally involved with in some way or another. Four years of his life played out on those decks, and though he would not admit to the sentiment, he had come to love her dearly, as much as any man had ever loved a ship, and that was very much indeed. And there she was and she was trying to kill him.

  Forward and below, the Yazoo River’s guns fired away, point-blank range, nine-inch shells and thirty-two-pound round shot, right into the guts of his old ship. Bowater clenched his fists. Pensacola must hit back, and no one knew better than he how hard a punch she could throw.

  They were just abreast the Pensacola’s foremast when the Yankee sloop opened up on them, eleven nine-inch Dahlgrens to a broadside, a forty-two-pound rifle. For an instant there was nothing to be seen through the pilothouse slot but a sheet of flame. A shell glanced off the casement, whirled past with a hysterical scream, but more hit square, made the iron ring out with a deafening clang-like being trapped in a church bell-made the entire vessel shudder and roll.

  The Yazoo River fired back, even as the last of the Pensacola’s shells were slamming into her armored sides, but now there was a new sound that cut though the gunfire. Screaming. The wounded.

  Bowater looked around for Quillin, but the luff had gone below to supervise the guns. “Mr. Risley, you have the con! Back and fill to keep alongside Pensacola…the big Yankee there! I’m going below for a moment!”

  “Aye, sir!” Risley said. Bowater took the steps at a run, plunged down into the gloom of the gundeck. It was a dark place, even on a sunny day, but in the night, with the smoke of battle, it was like a place from another world. The row of lanterns amidships swayed with the slight rocking of the ironclad in the river and cast their pools of pale light over the scene. Men swarmed around the guns, toiling at their charges-they put Bowater in mind of Roman slaves condemned to the mines.