Glory In The Name

would get blacker and blacker and the water would turn a weird grayish blue and you could feel the change in the atmosphere, feel it on some primal level, and you knew when the sky opened, and the wind began to whistle, and the seas rose, that it was going to be bad.

That was how he felt, early evening, April 23, 1862, sitting on the hurricane deck of the Yazoo River, worrying the cigar in his mouth, looking downriver at the desultory fireworks. The bombardment had slowed around noon, for the first time in five days. There were rumors the ships of the Yankee fleet had shifted their anchorages around. Change. It meant something was going to happen. The storm had to break soon. The pressure was too great.

He turned and looked at the boats on the Confederate side. An odd assortment, and none too menacing. Besides the Yazoo River, there were the McRae and Jackson, old wooden steamers, veterans of the river war. There were two vessels from the Louisiana State Navy, the Governor Moore and the General Quitman, both wooden steamers mounting two guns each. There was part of the ad hoc River Defense Fleet, the commander of which, John Stephenson, had such an aversion to taking orders from a naval officer that Commander Mitchell finally decided to just ignore him and his boats.

There was the low, whale-backed ironclad ram Manassas, the oddest thing that Taylor had ever seen afloat. But she had proved her worth before, at the Head of the Passes, and Taylor hoped she would again, and perhaps with greater results.

Lastly there was the ironclad Louisiana. She was a massive affair, 264 feet long, sixty-two feet wide, with an eclectic collection of sixteen guns. She was potentially the greatest threat to the Union forces, another CSS Virginia, let loose among the wooden walls. Unfortunately, her odd combination of paddle wheels and screw propellers was inadequate to maneuver the huge vessel. She was unable to steam under her own power, and even with tugs could not get upriver against the current. She was tied up at the foot of Fort St. Philip, a floating iron battery, no more.

First Assistant Engineer Hieronymus Taylor sat for a long time on the hurricane deck, looking out over the water, thinking. There was much to ponder. The sun sank into the marshes. To the north lay his beloved New Orleans. Would there be Yankees in those narrow, ancient streets in the next week? The next day?

It was near midnight, most of the ship asleep, when he sighed, stood, tossed his cigar overboard. In the evening quiet he heard it hiss in the water. He stepped forward to the small pilothouse. The officers were maintaining watch as if at sea, and Bowater and the pilot Risley were standing on the pilothouse roof, talking in low tones about the river, the current, what they would be up against.

“Evening, Captain,” Taylor said, in a neighborly way, looking up at Bowater, standing on the four-foot-high roof.

“Good evening, Chief.” Bowater was in shirtsleeves, rolled up, his braces dark against the white shirt. He was smoking a cigar as well, the first time Taylor had ever seen him do so.

“Expecting some excitement tonight, Cap’n?”

“Could be. Could well be.”

Taylor nodded. “I think so too. Tonight’s the night. I can feel it in my bones.” With that he turned and climbed down to the deck, then through the small door into the casement. Only a few lanterns were lit. The guns lurked in the dark, and between them, men sleeping at quarters, like grown bears and their cubs, all hibernating.

Taylor threaded his way through the men, found Acting Master’s Mate Ruffin Tanner lying on his back, mouth open, snoring. He nudged him with his toe, nudged harder until the sailor woke up.

“What the hell…?” Tanner muttered, looked up through half-closed eyes.

“Tanner, you awake?” Taylor asked.

“Am now, you son of a bitch…”

“Good. I need ya to get a couple of your sailor boys, launch the starboard boat.”

“Starboard…why? This on the cap’n’s orders?”

“No, it’s on my orders, and I would be damned grateful if you would stop arguing and do it.”

Tanner climbed to his feet, stretched, looked Taylor over. Then he nodded. “Starboard boat.” They understood one another, the sailor and the engineer. Taylor knew he could count on the man.

Taylor opened the hatch to the engine room and climbed down, climbed into the familiar heat and Stygian atmosphere.

“Jones! Where the hell you at? You hidin in the damn coal bunker again?”

Moses Jones, fireman of the watch, stepped out from behind the engine, an oil can in his hand. “I’se here, boss. What da hell you needin now?”

“I need you to round up all the darkies we got in the engineering division. They’s you and Tommy, they’s William and Noah and Caesar we got up in Yazoo City…” The men from Yazoo City were slaves whose owners had hired them out to the navy as coal heavers. Taylor wondered if their masters thought themselves patriots for such sacrifice. “What other darkies we got aboard?”

Moses cocked his head, squinted at him, trying to divine the man’s motives. “What you wants ta know for?”

“Will you stop yer damned arguing, you black son of a bitch?”

“They’s the two fellas in the steward’s division and Johnny St. Laurent.”

Johnny St. Laurent. Taylor wondered how he could have forgotten him.

“All right, see here. You round up all them fellas from the engineering division, Tommy and them new hands from Yazoo City, an y’all meet me on the fantail. Just do it,” he added to Moses’s forming question.

Taylor climbed back up into the casement, made his way aft to the makeshift galley where Johnny St. Laurent slept. He shook the sleeping cook until he got a response.

“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.