tension on their faces, the nervous tapping of fingers, feet wagging back and forth like a dog’s tail. He felt it himself; the sweating palms, the quickened pulse, the sense that everything appeared sharper. He had chosen his side and he was fighting and he felt alive, and he had not felt that way in a long, long time.
Lieutenant Thadeous Harwell crouched behind the bulwark with his forward gun crew, though he did not know if he should. He was not certain an officer should be crouching. But the captain had said crouch, and he did not say for the luff not to crouch, nor had he expressed any obvious displeasure with an officer crouching, so Harwell continued to crouch.
This is it, this is it, this is it… Harwell had never been in combat. He had missed the Mexican War. That conflict had been no great shakes in the naval line in any event, and only a few had managed to distinguish themselves, such as the young Ensign Samuel Bowater. But still it was a war, which Harwell had never seen.
He had suffered with his fear that he would not see war, would never find out if he had the stuff to be a Nelson or a John Paul Jones. He had pictured himself often enough with upraised sword leading a screaming horde of bluejackets over the rail of some first-rate ship of the line. Harwell’s Patent Bridge. He knew it was foolish, that those days were over, that armor-clad steamships were spelling the death of the great sailing navies, with their thundering broadsides and boarders swarming through the smoke. But logic did not stop the dreams.
I regret…no, no…Gladly do I give my one life…“one life”… that hardly needs saying…Gladly do I give my life for this, my beloved land… Great last lines did not, Harwell believed, happen spontaneously. Hadn’t Nelson uttered one each of the many times he thought he was done for? Sure he must have practiced ahead of time. Harwell would not allow himself to be caught short.
Gladly do I lay down this life for my beloved Southern home, and only regret that I shall not live to fight on…
That’s not so bad.
Gladly do I lay down this life for my beloved South…
Good…so even if I only get the first part out, it will still stand.
“Mr. Harwell!”
The lieutenant looked up. Bowater was standing at the forward edge of the deckhouse roof, calling down. He felt his face flush. How many times had the captain called his name?
“Sir?”
“You may remove the cover from the gun, lieutenant, and prepare to fire.”
“Aye, sir!” Harwell leaped to his feet, figured the order to cease crouching must have been implicit in the order to fire.
“Your target will be the large ship to the south.”
“Aye, sir! Wabash, sir?”
“Yes, that is correct. The Wabash.”
“Aye, sir!” The Wabash. He had served for five years aboard that ship, gone from ensign to lieutenant on her decks, boy to man. But sentimental pining for ships was an emotion of the lower deck, not fit for an officer.
Gladly do I lay down this life for my dear…no…my beloved Southern home, and regret only that I shall not live to fight…to struggle…on…
They were within a mile of the nearest ships of the Union fleet, the Savannah and the Wabash, and, incredibly, Bowater could see no sign of alarm. It was beginning to make him nervous.
On the Cape Fear’s foredeck, the canvas was peeled off the ten-pound Parrott and the crew bustled around the big gun. Seth Williams, designated gun captain, hooked a friction primer to the lanyard and inserted the primer into the vent, then stretched the lanyard out. The lanyard was a pretty bit of ropework, with Flemish eyes tucked in either end, coach whipped and capped with Turk’s heads and ringbolt hitching around the eyes. It had been lovingly crafted by Eustis Babcock, starting the moment the gun came on board, so that the Cape Fear might have something attractive and seamanlike with which to fire her heavy ordnance.
Lieutenant Harwell mounted the ladder to the roof of the deckhouse and stood beside Bowater, who was pressed against the forward rail. “Ready to fire, sir,” he reported, even before he was done saluting.
“Then fire away, Lieutenant,” said Bowater, with a calm he did not feel.
“Take aim and fire!” Harwell shouted.
“Aim and fire, aye!” Williams shouted. He sighted down the gun, called for a bit of an adjustment, stepped back, bringing the lanyard taut.
Bowater felt the excitement build, clutched the iron rail tight, pressed his lips together. They were still approaching, their distance-off less than a mile, and the big Parrott was accurate up to a mile and a half. What…
Bowater’s thoughts were interrupted by the blast of the gun, the jet of gray smoke, the surprisingly violent recoil as the gun flung itself inboard, making the Cape Fear shudder from keel up.
Harwell was staring at the Wabash through his field glasses. He pointed to the sky and Williams waved his acknowledgment.
“Over, sir,” Harwell explained to Bowater. The gun crew jumped back to their places, swabbing and ramming home another shell.
A little more than two minutes passed before the big gun was run out again. Williams adjusted the elevating screw to his satisfaction, then stepped back and pulled the lanyard taut. A pause, and then he jerked the rope and the ten-pound Parrott roared out again.
Bowater kept his glass pressed to his eye, the Wabash filling the lens, and to his delight he saw a hole appear in her bulwark, blue sky where before there had been black hull, splinters big enough to see from a mile away tossed into the air.
“Hit!” shouted Harwell and the men cheered, waved hats, then fell to loading again.
“Well done, Lieutenant!” Bowater fixed the Wabash in his field glasses. It was chaos, as he reckoned it would be, an anthill kicked over. From less than a mile, Bowater could see perfectly well what was happening on the big steamer’s deck. Men were racing about, officers were crowding the quarterdeck, waving arms, men rushing over the foredeck and up the rigging. It was bedlam, Gulliver waking to find himself the captive of the Lilliputians.
Wabash carried nine-and ten-inch Dahlgrens. But her guns were not rifles, but smoothbores, already antiquated. After hundreds of years during which little changed in the way of naval warfare, things were suddenly developing so rapidly that it was difficult for any navy to keep pace.
Still, smoothbore or no, the Wabash’s guns could blow them to kindling with one broadside, if Wabash could come to grips with them.
The Cape Fear hurled another shell and a hole appeared in the Wabash’s side, and Bowater wondered what destruction that must have done to the lower deck. He wondered if Wabash was getting steam up. It would do them no good. Cape Fear would be gone before their screw bit water.
The forward gun went off once more, and Bowater saw wood fly off the after rail. It is like a turkey shoot, just an absolute turkey shoot. And once again, he found that the ease with which they were attacking the Union fleet left him feeling edgy and nervous.
He crossed over to the port side, looked out at Wabash with his telescope. There was another vessel now, a smaller one, side-wheeler, schooner rig, steaming around from behind the big steam sloop. Not much bigger than the Cape Fear. Was she going to tow Wabash off?
Bowater shifted his focus from the ship to the side-wheeler. Not towing Wabash off. She was, in fact, coming bow on to the Cape Fear. And then the puff of smoke, the scream of shell, the water plowed up forty yards away, and with it, at last, the flat report of the distant gun.
