Glory In The Name

Flag Officer, etc.

Captain Samuel Bowater, CSN

CSS Cape Fear

Bowater read the orders over again, and then a third time. They were fairly typical, in his experience, ranging from the obvious (“exercise your best judgment”) to the absurdly obvious (“avoid loss of your crew or your vessel to the enemy”), but beyond that they really said nothing, other than ordering him to attack the enemy as he saw fit.

He stared out the window of the wheelhouse, down at the ten-pound Parrott rifle mounted in the bow. He had come to loathe the sight of the gun. Every time he looked at it, it reminded him of his shame and humiliation, scheming like some criminal, lying to a superior officer. And just as bad-worse, perhaps-allowing himself to be talked into the act by Hieronymus Taylor, of all men. How had he come to a point where he would follow the lead of men like Taylor?

He had come to loathe himself, loathe Taylor, loathe the gun for what it represented. But now, orders in hand, he was not so certain.

It had come to a head that very morning, Commander Archibald Fairfax giving him a verbal keelhauling the likes of which he had not endured since his first year at the Navy School. But it was no more than he deserved for playing the low trick he had played, and so he faced up to, and to some extent even welcomed, the humiliation he suffered.

Those issues of honor and humiliation so occupied Samuel’s thoughts that he hardly heard a word that Commander Archibald Fairfax said, or rather shouted, neither the commander’s insinuations concerning Bowater’s fitness for command nor threats of dismissal from the service.

Samuel stood in Fairfax ’s office, in front of the commander’s desk. Fairfax, seated, ranted and jabbed a pencil in the air as if he was trying to stab it through Bowater’s chest, if only Bowater would come a bit closer.

It was not until Fairfax demanded a response from him that Bowater came back to the reality of the moment.

“It was a…fabrication, was it not? The whole thing?” Fairfax would not go so far as to say “lie.” Even military discipline had its limits where a man’s honor was concerned.

“Yes, sir. A fabrication. There was no order from Captain Cocke. I fabricated the entire story simply to secure those guns for use aboard the Cape Fear .”

Once Fairfax had, under false pretenses, given Bowater and Taylor permission to load the guns aboard, they rounded up a dozen yard workers, augmented them with the crew of the Cape Fear, and set them to it. It had taken all of the afternoon and into the evening to wrestle the ordnance aboard, the ten-pound Parrott rifle, six and a half feet long and weighing nearly nine hundred pounds, and the twin twelve-pound howitzers, two feet shorter but almost as heavy.

It would have been easiest, of course, to set the gun carriages down first, and put the guns right in place. But that would have looked as if they intended to arm the Cape Fear all along, and not carry artillery to Captain Cocke. Instead, to maintain appearances, they set everything on deck and lashed it in place and then steamed away, up the Elizabeth River in the general direction of Fort Powhatan.

They returned the next day with the guns still conspicuously lashed in place. It seemed to Bowater that there was something particularly unethical, even unseemly, about concocting an excuse in advance. He figured, if pressed about why the guns had not been delivered, he would count on his ability to fabricate some innocuous explanation on the spot.

To his relief, no one asked. For three days they steamed around with the guns lashed in place while, unseen, the men strengthened the deck and bulwarks that were to become gun stations and Eustis Babcock was set to work making up train tackles and breeching.

When that was done, and sufficient time passed, they put the gun carriages in position and with the aid of improvised shears lifted the barrels onto them. In that way they cunningly transformed their tug into a man-of- war.

Unfortunately, they had not fooled anyone. Least of all Commander Archibald Fairfax, who did take the precaution of inquiring of Captain Cocke if he had, in fact, requested the guns, before ripping Bowater apart like a bear.

“Would you care to tell me why, Lieutenant? Why you felt the need to participate in this elaborate charade?”

“I hoped that arming the vessel, sir, would lead to our engaging the enemy.”

“This navy will decide whether or not you engage the enemy, with no prompting from you. For the moment, Lieutenant, you command a tug. And you are hardly fit for that. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Samuel Bowater was not terribly concerned with losing his position or his command. He was going mad, puttering around Norfolk while the war was being fought elsewhere. He had even toyed with the idea of resigning, of looking for a berth, or whatever one called it, as an officer in an artillery company.

“I apologize, sir,” Bowater said.

Fairfax stared hard at him, and Bowater stared at a point just above Fairfax’s head. At last Fairfax made a snorting noise and tossed the pencil on the desk.

“Your apology is accepted. And you may rejoice to know that your scheme is working out just as you had anticipated,” he said, and the change in his tone caught Bowater’s attention. “Seems Forrest saw the way you loaded your boat down with guns and liked the looks of the thing. He intends to send you upriver, see what you can accomplish against the Union fleet.”

For a moment Samuel did not know what to say. He was not certain he had heard correctly. “You mean, sir… send us upriver to fight?”

“Fight? I don’t know what the hell kind of fighting you envision, Lieutenant, a tugboat against all the fleet there at Fortress Monroe. I think he had more in mind a reconnaissance, and a few shots if you can take them.” Fairfax’s anger had moderated considerably, Bowater noted. He wondered if the commander had been genuinely angry at all, or if he had simply felt obligated to berate an inferior for trying to pull the wool over his eyes.

“This might be an opportunity for a little more action in the offensive line,” Fairfax continued. “Forrest is talking about arming the Harmony the same as you have done the Cape Fear. Let me take her upriver and get my blows in as well.”

Ahhh! Bowater thought. His insubordination had put a new thought in the head of Captain French Forrest, flag officer in command of the dockyard. And that thought might lead to Fairfax’s getting the opportunity to take a vessel in harm’s way, a thing denied to most Confederate naval officers.

No wonder you’re not so mad as you make out…

“In any event, Bowater, it looks as if you get to keep the guns you so cleverly acquired. I wish you joy with them. Do you have steam up?”

“The fires are banked, sir.”

Fairfax handed Bowater a sealed envelope. “Here are orders from the flag. I don’t know what is in them, but I suspect you will want to get a head up steam.” He lifted a canvas bag from the floor, dropped it on his desk. “And here is your crew’s mail. You are dismissed, sir.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“And Bowater?”

“Sir?”

“I reckon you know better than to ever try and pull such shit as this again? At least with me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bowater, far more contrite this time, and far more sincere. He snatched up the mail bag, saluted, turned, and left quick, before Fairfax could say anything that might ruin his newfound happiness.

Now he looked at the orders in his hand and the gun on the bow and he felt quite differently about the once despised ordnance. The gun had led to the order he had dreamed of, a chance to show some initiative and dash. No more hauling guns, now he would be a fighting captain. Fourteen years in the United States Navy had nearly worn his initiative away to nothing. The Confederate States Navy was threatening to do the same. But now this. It was the chance he had hoped a fledgling service would provide.

But the Cape Fear could not move until the boilers had head up steam, and the speed