Glory In The Name

Bowater leaned back, eyes on Taylor’s unshaven face, his carefully arranged look of innocence.

What am I supposed to say? He had been pleading with Forrest since the flag officer’s arrival to mount a gun on the Cape Fear’s foredeck, but Forrest had refused him every time, told him they could not waste ordnance arming tugs.

But Bowater could not tell Taylor that. It was none of Taylor’s affair. He did not wish to set the precedent of inferiors asking after the captain’s business. But neither could he let Taylor think he was shy about wanting to get into the fight.

Checkmate…with one question he has trapped me…

“Chief, these questions are not the business of the engineering division. But let me say that I am attempting to improve our armament by way of the proper channels.”

Taylor grunted, made a laughing sound. “Proper channels ain’t gonna get you a goddamned thing, we both know it.”

“And so that is an end to it.”

“Is it?” There was a smoothness to Taylor’s tone, like a snake-oil salesman, and it made Bowater wary and intrigued all at once.

For a long moment they sat there, silent, each holding the other’s eyes, each needing the other for his existence and hating it.

Bowater spoke first. “Go on,” he said. He said it softly, as if afraid to speak loud, afraid to admit that he wanted to listen. Here was forbidden fruit, Bowater could sense it. It frightened him, attracted him. He wanted to arm the Cape Fear, wanted it more than anything he could recall. He could feel that he was about to cross a line. He did not know what to think.

The ordnance house reminded Samuel Bowater of a buffet table laid out for the gods of war.

All of the guns that the retreating Yankees had spiked and rolled into the river had been recovered and the spikes removed from their vents. Stretched out in great rows were gun upon gun, some in carriages, some lying on the granite floor. There were massive 9-inch and eleven-inch Dahlgrens, howitzers of every size; twenty-four- pound, twelve-pound, six-pound. Long, sleek rifled barrels were lined up like fish on ice at the market, from the enormous, crushing hundred-pound Dahlgren through thirty-pound, twenty-pound, twelve, and ten.

There were James rifles and mortars and old smoothbores of antiquated design, the venerable thirty-two- pounders, and twenty-four-pounders, once the mainstay of the sailing navy’s broadside. There were twelve- pounders, nines, and fours. But like the smoothbore rifles that so many of the infantry were carrying, North and South, those guns were of another age, quickly being eclipsed by the rifled barrel and the exploding shell.

“Well, damn, Cap’n Bowater,” Taylor whispered. “I do not know where to begin.” He said it soft. They had no business doing what they were doing.

“Not with the Dahlgrens, I shouldn’t think,” Bowater said. Taylor nodded. All the reinforcement in the world would not render the bulwark and decks of the Cape Fear strong enough to support one of those monsters.

They walked down the rows of guns, looking them over, like buyers before a horse auction. “It would be a waste of time to put a smoothbore on board,” Taylor suggested, and Bowater concurred, so they moved quickly past the older guns.

They came at last to the Parrott rifles, and they stopped there and ran their eyes over the long tapered barrels with their distinctive reinforcement at the breech.

“Now this might be more of what we need,” Bowater said. In fact, he had worked out long ago exactly what gun he would like to see on the Cape Fear’s foredeck, but for some reason he could not bring himself to admit as much.

Taylor nodded again. “Ten-pound Parrott weighs just under a thousand pounds… That kind of weight would put the boat down by the head, I should think.”

“It just might.”

Taylor looked up and met Bowater’s eyes, and there was something mischievous in his expression. “Might balance her a bit…one gun off the bow and another off the stern…”

Bowater took a deep breath. He and Taylor had worked out this ruse de guerre over dessert, in the shade of the boat on the Cape Fear’s boat deck. They talked in elliptical, half-finished sentences. Bowater could not bring himself to speak more boldly. This sort of trickery was antithetical to everything Bowater was and believed and was trained to be. If honor and ethics were a rope to climb, then he had just slid down many feet. But he had to get into the fight.

The two men looked down at the guns again.

“Ten-pound Parrott forward. Two twelve-pound howitzers aft,” Bowater said in a tone that suggested the matter was settled.

Footsteps on the granite floor echoed around the building, and Bowater and Taylor looked up to see Commander Archibald Fairfax approach. Fairfax was in charge of ordnance at Norfolk, an able and active officer. He had managed to rework a number of the old smoothbore thirty-two-pounders, reinforcing their breeches and rifling them, bringing them into the modern age.

He was also in charge of fitting out the vessels stationed at the yard. “Captain Bowater, a pleasure, sir,” he said.

“Commander, good day,” Bowater said, extending a hand. “I do not believe you have met my chief engineer. Mr. Hieronymus Taylor, Commander Fairfax.”

“Commander,” Taylor said, shaking his hand. One glance told him Fairfax was old navy, through and through.

“What can I do for you, Captain Bowater?”

Bowater felt a tingling in his hands, an unsettled feeling in his gut. Up until now it had all been theoretical, which was bad enough. But now the moment was there. Now he had to lie to a superior officer, or give it up.

“We came by to see about the new guns for Fort Powhatan,” Bowater said, and when Fairfax looked understandably confused, he added, “The ten-pound Parrott and the two twelve-pound howitzers.”

There…that wasn’t so bad… He felt the rope slip though his hands.

Fairfax shook his head. “I was not aware that Fort Powhatan was to get more guns. Who gave you that order?”

“We were up there yesterday. Captain Cocke said he had sent word to you. He was under the impression it was all arranged.”

“No…this is the first I hear of it.”

“Well, hell, sir…beg your pardon, Commander,” Taylor said. Bowater hoped he would not make a hash of things now. “I can draw the fires, but now we’re going to have to take on more fresh water before we get head up steam again. We’ll need more coal, too. Got just enough on board to steam there and back with steam up now.”

“Very well, Chief,” Bowater said. “There is nothing for it.” He shook his head, turned to Fairfax. “I swear this happens every time, sir. One bureaucratic mix-up and we are set back two days.”

“Well, perhaps not,” Fairfax said. “If Cocke intended to ask for those guns, I should think the paperwork is somewhere. Be a waste for you to leave empty-handed. Why don’t you take those guns aboard and I’ll see what became of Cocke’s requisition.”

“Thank you, sir,” Bowater said. “That sort of efficiency is not something you would have heard of in the old navy.”

“No, indeed, Mr. Bowater. If we have any advantage at all over the United States Navy, it is that we are not so entrenched and somnambulant. Feel free to press whomever you need from the yard to help with the guns. Mr. Taylor, a pleasure to meet you. Good day, gentlemen.”

“Good day,” the officers of the Cape Fear said in chorus. Commodore Fairfax turned and walked away.

Done. They had their guns. And Bowater felt like a new-minted whore, just finished with her first trick. He wondered if that sort of thing got easier, and what the implications were if it did.