Glory In The Name

Yazoo River began to turn, to drift downstream, spinning broadside to the Yankee fleet, the current sweeping her into the deadly broadsides.

What…what… Robley was not sure what to do. They had never lost both engines. They had never been under fire.

Kinney appeared on the deck below, running forward with the awkward run of a short, stocky man. “Let the anchor go! Let the anchor go!” he shouted as he ran. Someone let fly the ring stopper and the anchor plunged down into the water and the chain raced out after it.

From the hurricane deck, Robley watched the action take place but did not know what to say. He turned and looked at the wheelhouse, but there were no answers there. How in hell did Kinney get down there so fast? Why didn’t he just call down from the wheelhouse?

The chain ran its length and stopped. The anchor grabbed hold and the Yazoo River spun around, bow upstream, hanging at the end of the chain, the Yankee shot falling all around and passing over her deckhouse to fall in the water beyond.

Now what in hell? Robley was at a loss. Robley, who was starting to feel his oats as ship’s captain, realized he had no idea of what to do.

Boots on the ladder and Kinney appeared on the hurricane deck, and behind him, Brown, the engineer, filthy, sweat-soaked, face streaked with coal dust, eyes red, watery, and utterly disingenuous.

“What is it, Brown?” Robley demanded.

“Lost the rod on the starboard engine. Now it’s a bearing on the port crankshaft. It’s a fucking mess.”

Robley shifted his gaze to Kinney, who met his eyes with defiance. “You best signal one of them towboats to come over here, give us a tow upriver. Fight’s over, Cap’n.”

For a long moment no one moved, no one spoke. Paine, Kinney, and Brown, they stood facing one another.

Paine broke the silence. “I know you two.” He pointed to Kinney, put his finger right in the pilot’s face. “You are cock”-he moved his finger to Brown-“and you are bull, and you are both goddamned liars. Go get that engine going.”

“I done told you, the bearing…”

“Don’t you lie to me, you son of a whore!” Robley could feel his control slipping, the emotional dam he had built up to keep the rage contained crumbling. If it collapsed he did not know what would happen, and he was afraid. The dam was the thing that stopped him from simply roaming the streets and shooting down every son of a bitch who did not deserve to breathe, but still did, while his boys did not.

Brown took a step back. He looked frightened, frightened of what he saw in Robley’s eyes. “Cap’n, I ain’t…”

Kinney’s hand came out of his coat, a five-inch double-barrel Remington derringer in his meaty palm. “You’re a goddamned lunatic, Paine, and all your money don’t change that. Keep yer hand away from that pistol.”

Robley reached across his chest, put his hand on the butt of the Starr.

“I said keep yer hand away from that pistol,” Kinney repeated, his voice rising in pitch. Paine pulled the heavy weapon loose, swung it up.

“Put the goddamned gun down!” Kinney screamed, but Kinney had made a big mistake, because he was a coward, and cared for nothing but his own skin, and was as terrified of hanging for murder as he was of being killed by Yankees, while Robley Paine did not care a whit about any of it.

Robley pointed the Starr at Kinney’s trembling hand and just when Kinney realized he had better shoot, because Paine was beyond being threatened, Paine pulled the trigger. The Starr roared, and the.44 bullet hit the derringer with a sharp pinging sound, blew the gun and three of Kinney’s fingers clean off the hurricane deck.

Robley swung the smoking barrel around so that it was pointing right in Brown’s face, not six inches from the tip of his nose. “Slow ahead, Mr. Brown,” he said, just loud enough to be heard over Kinney’s shrieks of pain and terror and the rumble of the big guns.

Six minutes later, with the shells and round shot still falling like hail around them, the Yazoo River’s port paddle wheel began its slow revolutions, the anchor chain was brought in, and the battered gunboat crept back to her place in the line of battle.

Captain Pope stamped the deck, slammed his fist down on the taffrail in frustration. They were taking fire from the Rebels, and none of the Richmond’s guns had the range to hit back. The dammed gunboats were too far away, save for the one stern-wheeler that had come so aggravatingly close. They had watched her slew around and come to anchor, and for a happy moment thought they had shot out her engines or paddle wheel. But fifteen minutes later she was underway again.

He felt like an idiot. He did not think this would reflect well on him.

He turned to the signal quartermaster. “Make a signal to the ships beyond the bar-‘Get underway.’”

“‘Get underway,’ aye, aye, sir,” he said and turned to the bag of signal flags at his feet.

Damn, damn, damn… Pope thought. We have to do something. What?

The signal flag snapped up the halyard, fluttered there for five minutes, and then came down again. The scream of the Rebel shells, the boom of the port-side Dahlgrens, continued unabated, the smoke hanging thick on the deck before swirling away south.

“Sir?” Whitfield was crossing the deck, a worried look on his face.

Now what?

“Yes, Luff?”

“Captain Handy’s coming aboard, sir,” he reported with a puzzled tone. “He has his men with him.”

“His…men? You mean his crew?”

“It would seem so, sir.”

“What, has he…has he abandoned his ship?”

“Ahhh…” Whitfield hesitated, but happily for the executive officer Captain Handy himself appeared through the gangway. He was wearing his dark blue frock coat and cap. Around his waist was wrapped the Vincennes’s battle ensign, great folds of red, white, and blue cloth.

“What the devil…?” Pope said as Handy climbed the quarterdeck ladder, stopped, and saluted.

“I am here, sir,” Handy reported, his voice near shouting to be heard over the din of the Richmond’s guns and the Rebel artillery.

“I can see you are here, Captain,” Pope replied, shouting and sputtering. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“Your signal, sir. I am obeying your signal.”

“What signal?”

Handy, looking suddenly unsure, glanced around. “Your signal you just ran up. ‘Abandon ship.’”

“I didn’t signal ‘Abandon ship.’ I signaled for the vessel beyond the bar to get underway.”

“Oh. Well, sir, my signal quartermaster saw the signal flag, blue, white, blue, as did I. We interpreted that as signal number one, ‘Abandon ship.’”

“Sir, I do not know what you saw, or thought you saw, but I most certainly did not signal for you to abandon ship!”

“I am sorry, sir,” Handy shouted. “But I most certainly…”

Pope shook his head, cut him off in mid-argument. “Captain, I will not debate this point with you! Get your men and get back to your ship and defend it from the enemy in a manner such as is expected of you.”

Handy shut his mouth, straightened a bit, held Pope’s eyes, but made no effort to move. “The thing of it is, sir, before we abandoned her, so the Rebels would not take possession, sir, we set slow match to the power magazine.”

Pope’s mouth fell open of its own accord. “You…what?”

“Slow match, sir. The Rebels…she’s going to blow any minute, sir.”

For two hours, the mosquito fleet pounded the Yankees, and then they were done. Ammunition all but gone, coal bunkers running low, crews near the point of exhaustion, they put up their helms and stoked their fires to provide steam for their tired engines to stem the flood of South West Pass, steaming upriver to New Orleans.