“You whoremonger bastard!” Sullivan roared at the Yankee ram. He had one of his pistols in his hand, a big army.44, and he was blasting away. Bowater thought he had better take it easy or he would kill himself before the Yankees did, but he had no time to dole out medical advice. He stepped into the wheelhouse and leaned over the speaking tube. “Engine room, stand by!”
He grabbed a spoke of the wheel, twisted it around, with Baxter adding his weight. The Page heeled as she leaned into the turn, spinning toward the Yankee ram, bow to bow.
They hit with an impact that threw Bowater against the wheelhouse bulkhead. His arms came up to protect himself and he put his elbow right through the glass. He heard Baxter give a grunt as his chest hit the wheel, heard the horrible sound of the General Page’s bow crushing against the Yankee’s.
The forward momentum stopped, the Page surged back, and Bowater was flung to the deck. He landed on his back in a pile of books and charts, and a half-eaten dinner that someone had left in the wheelhouse.
Baxter was clutching the wheel to keep to his feet. He twisted around, looked at Bowater, opened his mouth to speak, and a bullet blew the top of his head off. Bowater could only watch as the blood and bone flew out in a spray across the wheelhouse and the helmsman tumbled forward, a surprised look on his face, and collapsed right beside him.
Bowater climbed to his feet and looked out the glassless window. The two ships were grinding together, but the Yankee had called for turns astern and was extracting himself from the Page’s bow. Bowater grabbed the bell, gave a jingle, two bells. All right, Taylor, get us out of here.
Bowater stepped out of the wheelhouse. The minie balls were hitting like hailstones, but they made no impression on him. Mississippi Mike was lying in a heap, just forward of the wheelhouse, his arm moving feebly.
Bowater took a step toward him, heard a terrible screeching sound behind. He turned. The walking beam was making its rocking motion, up and down, pushing the paddle wheels astern, but it did not sound happy about it. That can’t be a good thing, he thought, but there was nothing for it. He knelt by Sullivan, half rolled him over.
“Cap’n Bowater… give a fella a warning…”
“You shot, Sullivan?”
“Don’t reckon…”
Bowater looked up. Ruffin Tanner was there, kneeling beside him. “Bow took a good hit, sir. Sprung some planks betwixt wind and water. We’re shipping it now, but I don’t think it’s coming in so fast the pumps can’t keep up. The bow gun went right over the side.”
Bowater nodded. “Can you take the helm?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Help me get Sullivan up first.” They each grabbed an arm and lifted, twisting Sullivan around until he was sitting up, and then leaned him back on a stanchion. The fall had opened his wound. There was a dark wet spot the size of a dinner plate on his shirt.
“Oh, hell, just when I was gettin better,” Sullivan gasped.
Tanner raced into the wheelhouse, pulled Baxter’s body out of the way, grabbed the wheel. Bowater stepped in after him. The Page and the Yankee ram were still backing away from one another, the distance opening up between them. Ramming distance.
“We’re going to circle around and give it to this son of a bitch broadside,” Bowater said. He grabbed the bell rope, rang up four bells. “Put your helm hard to larboard.”
“Hard to larboard, aye!” Tanner said and spun the wheel. Bowater was happy to have a navy man, a deepwater sailor, on the wheel, and hear the familiar brisk response to a helm command.
The screech from the walking beam was even louder now as the paddle wheels stopped, then went ahead, changing the momentum of the ship from sternway to headway.
“Wheelhouse!” Hieronymus Taylor’s voice came echoing out of the speaking tube.
“Wheelhouse here!” Bowater shouted back.
“Just thought you beats might like to know, things ain’t lookin too almighty grand down here. You can ring that fuckin bell all you want, but I don’t know how long it’s gonna do you any good!”
Bowater paused. What did one say to that? “Very well,” he shouted. Very well.
Hieronymus Taylor, as a rule not overly concerned with his own mortality, still had often wondered how a condemned man could march calmly to his death. It was, after all, the final moment, the dread end.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause, he thought, in Shakespeare’s words.
There was a strange numbness that had accompanied him down into the engine room, that awkward climb down the short ladder from boiler deck to the lowest part of the ship, on which the engines and boilers were mounted. It was like a climb up onto a gallows.
He recalled the feeling, helping Guthrie replace that fire tube, the gut-wrenching, piss-your-pants fear in the face of that dubious boiler. It was a long time past. He was almost too tired to care anymore, so sick of being afraid that he barely had the energy for it. That, he imagined, was how men went to their deaths. Since the Battle of New Orleans, since the horror of the boiler explosion that had wiped out his black gang, Taylor had pondered considerably on his reluctance to work around boilers. Now, in the middle of another fight, in a flimsy, unarmored ship, he was ready to admit the truth of the thing.
“I’m scared to death.” He said it out loud. He was marching up the gallows steps. He was a dead man. Why the hell not say it? “I am plumb, outright, full-blown, goddamned scared out of my wits. I’m like to shit myself, right here.” It felt good.
“What was that, Chief?” Burgoyne was checking the water levels in the gauge glass on the boiler face.
“Nothin, nothin.” Over the hiss and thump of the engines, through the deck, they could hear the thunderous gunfire and feel the vibration through the water that enveloped the hull.
Bowater rang four bells and Taylor twisted the throttle open. None of it sounded good-the pistons, the cranks, the walking beam-but it was holding together.
If somethin would just let go, it’d give me some damned thing to think about, he thought. As soon as that idea had formed in his head, he regretted thinking it-bad luck-but it was too late. The feed water pipe burst, spraying hot water all over the forward end of the engine room. A coal passer named Luke found himself right under the broken pipe. He screamed under the burning shower, dropped his shovel, and ran forward.
“Oh, come on, it ain’t even steam!” Taylor yelled after him, but the sound of the man screaming unnerved him. He swallowed hard. “Burgoyne, close that boiler up, get the steam down. Larboard boiler on line, come on now, stoke her up! We got enough water in there?”
Burgoyne slammed the damper shut and the third engineer opened the door on the second boiler, worked the valves to bring the steam on line. “Enough water for now, Chief!”
Taylor hobbled back, fast as he could on his splint, shut off the feed water valve, and the spray of near boiling water dropped off to a trickle. “Burgoyne, get a fish plate on that pipe, quick now!”
“Fish plate?”
“Yes, a damned fish plate. Please don’t tell me you don’t know what a fish plate is.”
“No, no. I knows what a fish plate is, hell yes. I just don’t know as we gots one.”
“Well look for one, if it ain’t too much trouble.”
Burgoyne hurried over to the workbench. The bell rang out, four bells again.
Taylor glared at it. Ol’ Bowater wants him some steam, huh? Got somethin in mind.
He twisted the valve full open. You can have all the steam I got, Cap’n, but it ain’t gonna be what this bucket could do on her palmiest day. The engine speed increased with the additional steam. The crank made a terrible sound. “Someone get some oil on that!” he shouted, but the end of the sentence was lost when the gauge glass on the working boiler shattered with a tinkling sound like a little bell, which might even have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the fireman’s shriek as the boiling water sprayed his bare arm and chest.
>
“Shut that down!” Taylor shouted. “An everyone stop screamin, goddamn it!” Burgoyne turned from the bench, took a step toward the boiler. “Not you, Burgoyne, you find the damned fish plate! Luke, you done screamin? Shut off the valve to that gauge glass.”
Luke approached it with caution, the boiling water spewing out, reached under and twisted the valve fast. The water stopped spraying. But now they did not know how much water was in the boiler.
What the hell was I afraid of? Hell, I wish the boiler would blow right now and put us out of our damned misery.
A shell hit the deckhouse overhead and Taylor jumped and felt his heart pounding hard in his chest. Well, maybe not.
Another shot hit with a clanging noise that reverberated through the engine room. Damn it, that’s the chimney, he thought. A shell had hit one of the chimneys.
Might not make any difference… Perhaps the firebox flue would continue to draw, the chimneys would continue to suck the smoke and poisonous gas up out of the engine room. Then Taylor saw the first tendrils of smoke wafting around the tops of the boilers.
Ah, damn …
Burgoyne came ambling up. “Got this here fish plate. It ain’t quite the same size as the feed water pipe.”
“Wrap some gasket material around the pipe and clamp that son of a bitch on. We got to get water into that boiler.”
“Gasket material?”
“Find some, for the love of God!”
Burgoyne stood there for a moment, an unpromising look on his face. Bowater’s voice shouted from the speaking tube. “Engine room, stand by!”
“Stand by for what?” Taylor shouted back.
The General Page began to heel over in a turn, as much as the flat-bottomed boat would heel, enough to make Taylor grab onto the throttle to steady himself and Burgoyne stumble a step or two. “Now what in hell is he doin?” Taylor wondered out loud. And then they struck.
THIRTY-TWO
GENERAL: I am under the painful necessity of reporting to you the almost entire destruction of the River Defense Fleet in the Mississippi River in front of Memphis.
BRIGADIER GENERAL M. JEFF THOMPSON TO GENERAL G.T.BEAUREGARD
The impact tore Taylor ’s fingers from the throttle valve and sent him careening forward. He slammed into Burgoyne, who was tumbling back, and the two men hit the deck, Taylor on top of the second engineer. He could smell the stale sweat and coal dust and residue of whiskey on the man. He could hear the wrenching sound of engine parts being torn from their mountings.
Taylor ’s arms and legs were flailing and Burgoyne’s arms and legs were flailing and Taylor had a horrible image of the two of them, looking like they were copulating there on the deck plates.
He pushed himself off and rolled away as Burgoyne scrambled to his feet.
Everything was moving. Lanterns swaying, men rushing around, shouting, stumbling. One of the boilers was leaning at an odd angle. Taylor could see it move with the twisting and surging of the ship.
Oh, dear God, don’t let that son of a bitch blow up…
He pushed himself up on his arms, but standing with his splinted leg was more of a trick. “Secure that son of a bitch boiler! Git some shorin under it! Luke, Burgoyne, git some slice bars under that thing, hold her up! Eddy! Blouin! Git some shorin under that before it kills us all!”
The black gang recovered from their trance and scattered. Burgoyne and Luke grabbed up the long iron slice bars used for cleaning the boiler grates and levered them under the boiler, holding it in place. The others grabbed up wood planks and shoved them under the iron cylinder to stop it from breaking free.
Taylor crawled to the reversing lever and used it to haul himself to his feet. The engine room was filling with smoke. He could see the halo around the lanterns, hear the men begin to cough. The boiler that had been knocked out was the one they had shut down, so the steam pressure probably was not enough to blow the thing. That was probably why they were still alive and not scalded to death or shrieking their last few moments away. He twisted the throttle closed.
He was breathing hard, his mind racing, but he was thinking clearly, and the fear was gone. He did not realistically think he would live beyond the next hour, but he was not afraid, and that was something.
“Reckon that’ll hold!” Burgoyne shouted aft, and on top of his report, a jingle and two bells. Oh, hell… Taylor jammed the shifting lever to astern, opened the throttle. Overhead the big walking beam paused and then began to rock the opposite way, with a screech and a clang and a banging sound. Taylor heard something pop.
Goddamn walking beam… Tolerant as walking beams were, they were not meant for that kind of abuse. He wondered if something had been knocked out of alignment. Knocked more out of alignment. The walking beam had been in no great shape even before they started bashing into other vessels.
“Hey, Burgoyne, get back to that feed water pipe!” Taylor shouted. Without water to the boilers they would be dead in the water in fifteen minutes.
The bell rang, four bells. Four bells? What the hell they think’s goin on down here?
Taylor shifted the reversing lever, opened up the throttle, then hobbled to the speaking tube. “Wheelhouse!”
“Wheelhouse, here!”
“Just thought you beats might like to know, things ain’t lookin too almighty grand down here. You can ring that fucking bell all you want, but I don’t know how long it’s gonna do you any good!”
He heard a pause on the other end, then Bowater’s voice. “Very well!”
Very well?
Well, what else was the son of a bitch supposed to say? Taylor grinned. He looked down. There was half an inch of water over the deck plates. He started to cough. Very well, indeed.
The two rams were circling, the General Page and the Monarch, describing a quarter-mile circle on the Mississippi River as each looked for her chance to run at the other broadside. They would not try the headlong rush again.
The gun crew on board the fantail of the General Page had hauled their thirty-two-pound smoothbore around so it was trained over the larboard side, and they were taking shots at the Yankee when she would bear. But the Union ironclads upriver were also contributing their artillery, and the Page was getting much worse than she was doling out. There were gaping holes in the superstructure, and the one chimney still standing was riddled.
Bowater could not help but think of the boilers. In ships designed for this sort of thing, the boilers were well below the waterline. But not on board the General Page, which was built for nothing more dangerous than hauling cotton and passengers up and down the river.
One shot, one shot… The wheelhouse was nearly right over the boilers, with companionways that led right down to the engine room. It was not at all unheard-of for men in the wheelhouse to be scalded to death in a boiler explosion. Taylor would have it easy, never know what hit him. But the men in the wheelhouse? They would get the tail end of the blast. It might take them days to die.
Bowater kept moving. In the wheelhouse, onto the side deck, eyes on the enemy. Mississippi Mike Sullivan had pulled himself to his feet and was leaning heavily on the rail, and he didn’t look well. They stood together, watched the Yankee circling around.
“That walking beam don’t sound too good,” Sullivan said, his voice raspy. A shell from the gunboats whistled by.
Bowater looked upriver. The ironclads were broadside to, turning around. In just a few minutes they would be running downriver, bow-first, bringing their guns to point-blank range, firing from their impenetrable casemates.
He looked back at the ram. “We don’t have time for this horseshit.” He stepped back into the engine room, rang two jingles, all stop.
The paddle wheels slowed, the headway dropped off. Bowater leaned into the speaking tube. He could see threads of smoke wafting out of the brass mouth of the tube, could smell the acrid coal-fire smell. “Chief, get up all the pressure you can. When I ring four bells, let her go!”
“You’ll get every d
amned ounce I have!” Taylor shouted back, then started coughing as his voice trailed off.
The General Page was stopped dead, and Bowater hoped the Yankee would think she was disabled. He had to make something happen. The Federal ram could steam around as long as she liked, waiting for the gunboats to come down, but if the General Page was going to do anything, it had to be now.
“Tanner, put your helm hard a’starboard. When this bastard gets close enough, we’re going to pour on the steam, twist out of her way, and take her side wheel off. Just put our bow right into it.”
“Take her side wheel off, aye, sir,” Tanner repeated. He turned the wheel its full revolutions. They waited.
A quarter mile away the Union ram altered course, straightening out, turning her bow toward the General Page. He must think we are disabled, Bowater thought. How could he not? There was no other explanation for their stopping in midriver, exposing their vulnerable side to the ram.
The Monarch was pouring on the steam, putting everything into this charge. Bowater stepped out of the wheelhouse and stood beside Sullivan, who was standing straighter now. A few hundred yards separated the two vessels. They could see the water creaming white around the Yankee’s bow.
“Cap’n,” Sullivan began, “I ain’t so sure…”
“I’m drawing him in. When he’s close enough I’ll go to four bells, turn hard, and take out his wheel box.”
Sullivan nodded. He looked as if he was going to say something, but he didn’t. He nodded again.
Two hundred yards, and Bowater considered how fast the General Page could get enough headway on to answer the rudder. That was all he needed, enough headway to turn and aim for the wheel. The Yankee’s momentum would do the rest.
He looked at the onrushing ram. You could not calculate mathematically such a thing as the exact moment to call for steam, the point when the Yankee was close enough that she could not escape, but far enough to allow the Page to turn. You had to feel it. And if you could not, you had no business commanding a ship.
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