Glory In The Name

Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five…

“All right, damn it!” Wilson said with finality. “Let’s go!” He rang the bell, three bells, full ahead. He grinned with the relief of having made a decision. Jonathan took his hand from the butt of the.44.

With turns ahead and the swift-moving current, the Abigail Wilson surged forward, steaming from the anonymity of the dark river into the fire and the light. A quarter mile from that stretch of river where Forts St. Philip and Jackson covered the water with their withering crossfire, where the big Yankee ships were struggling through the smoke, blind, firing away, where the Confederates swarmed like feral dogs, biting, dodging, biting again.

Wilson stepped out of the wheelhouse and Jonathan followed behind. Down below on the foredeck, the men were gathered around the old six-pounder smoothbore.

My gun… Jonathan thought with some amusement. Wilson had been careful to tell him that, to ask permission to put it aboard the tug. As if Jonathan Paine could care about such a thing, as if he could ever wish to own, or even see, a cannon.

“Here we go, boys!” Wilson shouted to the gun crew, his voice a little too loud, a little too exuberant.

Bobby was standing back some from the bow, leaning on the rail, keeping out of the way, ready to jump in and help, the way he always was. The flash of gunfire lit his dark skin. Like the others, his face was turned to Wilson, but his eyes shifted, met Jonathan’s. Jonathan gave him a little wave and Bobby gave a half-smile and waved back.

The men at the six-pounder cheered, waved their hats. Jonathan knew where they were at, in their heads, knew the blood lust and the apparent insanity that made men willing, even desire, to charge into such a fight. He did not feel it himself. Nor did he feel fear, or anger, or hatred of the Yankees, or much of anything at all, beyond a profound need to look into his father’s living eyes, at least one more time.

Then they were there, like steaming into a hurricane, right in the middle of the gunfire. The shells screamed over their low deck and wheelhouse, the smoke embraced them so that everything beyond the Abigail Wilson’s bow became dull and indistinct. The fires and the muzzle flashes lit the smoke from within. The guns were deafening.

Dead ahead of them loomed one of the big Yankee ships, a ghost ship in the smoke, and the Wilson’s gun crew fired at its dull outline. The six-pounder sounded puny against the backdrop of serious artillery. There was no way to know if they had hit the Yankee, or if they did, whether their shot had done any damage.

A tug emerged from the smoke astern, passed close, the Confederate flag snapping at the ensign staff, a raft of some sort made off to the bow. One hundred feet beyond the Wilson and the raft burst into flames, lighting up the tug and the big Yankee for which she was steaming.

Fire raft! Jonathan thought. He had heard of such things. The idea went back to Sir Francis Drake, and further. He watched, fascinated. The tug looked for all the world as if she was on fire, with the mounting flames of the raft sweeping back toward her, and Jonathan figured if she was not, she soon would be.

The Yankee was turning, trying to avoid the threat, but the big ship could not outmaneuver the smaller tug. The flames on the raft cut through the smoke, illuminated the tug and her target.

The fire raft slammed into the Yankee, the impact making the flames leap high, catching the Yankee ship’s rigging, sweeping along her painted sides. She was engulfed. Jonathan could not see how she could avoid burning to the waterline.

The tug backed off, leaving the raft against the Union ship’s side, turned hard, making her escape. But the flames had not distracted the Yankee gunners. From the ship’s side, ten guns opened up, point-blank range, ripping the tug to pieces. The wheelhouse and deckhouse were shattered, the boat slewed around as the helmsman was killed, the steering gear wrecked. She turned a half circle and began to settle fast, water pouring in through some unseen rent aft. She listed to starboard, her bow lifted from the river.

“Helmsman!” Wilson shouted. “Make for the tug there!” He was pointing at the sinking vessel. “We’ll see if any of those poor bastards are still alive!”

The Abigail Wilson turned north, turned toward the blazing Yankee ship and the thundering fort beyond. The Confederate gunners in the forts had seen the Yankee man-of-war’s distress, were concentrating their fire on her, while she was hitting back as hard as she could. Jonathan could see men swarming around the flames, heard the hiss of steam as hoses played on the fire. On her stern he could read the name Hartford.

They came up with the sinking tug. Wilson stepped over to the rail, oblivious of the shells whistling past, the occasional minie ball hitting the deck.

“No one alive there,” Wilson said and turned his back on the sinking tug. Jonathan looked for himself. The vessel was a wreck, torn apart, sinking fast. There was no sign of life aboard, no one yelling for help. With one broadside the Yankee ship had reduced it to a complete wreck, as if a furious storm had been pounding the hull against a reef for two days.

“That son of a bitch is done for! Let’s get downriver!” Wilson shouted. It was not clear to whom he was speaking or to whom he was referring, but the helmsman put the helm over to port and the tug turned, plunging into the fight, the men at the bow firing at anything too big to be a Confederate vessel.

Jonathan Paine could not have imagined a scene such as the one around him. The Battle of Manassas seemed a well-organized, leisurely affair compared to this. It was madness, the dark night lit up only by cannon fire and burning ships, the war elephants of the Yankee fleet pushing upriver. Confederate vessels everywhere, ripping around the water, looking for their chance, or listing from shots below the waterline, or in some cases fleeing upstream. There were Rebel boats surrounded on all sides, blasting away at every point on the compass, Union ships hounded by gunfire on every quarter.

Into that madness the Abigail Wilson steamed, engine full ahead, her bow gun barking out as fast as the men could load and fire. Bobby was hauling on one of the train tackles now; three men lay dead or wounded against the bulwark. Minie balls were splintering the wood, a shell took off part of the boat deck as it screamed past.

Jonathan looked up. A big side-wheeler was passing them, firing into the night as it went. Most of the shot was high-perhaps the gunners were concentrating on the forts, perhaps it was the accidental shell that had hit the Abigail Wilson. It would take only one well-placed accident to end them.

“There!” Wilson shouted, slapping Jonathan’s arm, pointing.

Jonathan followed his arm. There was a boxy-looking ironclad, two hundred yards downstream, just visible through the smoke. She looked to be in some difficulty, did not look as if she was fully under control.

“What?”

“That’s her! That’s the Yazoo River! Your father’s ship!”

Jonathan sucked in his breath. After all this long journey, the proximity to his father seemed unreal, and suddenly he was afraid. He looked again at the ironclad. Smoke was coming from her stack, and from the many holes in her stack, and from her gunports it seemed. Jonathan could see the smoke in the bright light that seemed to pour out of her, and stupidly he wondered why they had her lit so bright below, how many lanterns it would take to do that.

The Abigail Wilson closed with her, and the shock of coming up with his father’s boat passed and with it the dull stupidity that had numbed Jonathan’s mind. Of course they were not lighting up the interior of the boat with lanterns. The ironclad’s gundeck was on fire.

46

A few moments after the attack commenced, and the enemy succeeded in passing with foreseen ships…the battle of New Orleans, as against ships of war, was over.

– Report of Major General Lovell, C.S. Army,

Commanding Defenses of New Orleans