Glory In The Name

Bowater gave Johnny St. Laurent money from his own pocket to buy a special dinner for the crew, and Hieronymus Taylor did as well, though neither knew the other had, and as a result Johnny had more money than he could spend in a Confederacy beginning to feel the pinch of the blockade.

He prepared a meal-mock turtle soup and fried whiting, Fowl a la Bechamel and Oyster Patties for an entree, with Stewed Rump of Beef a la Jardiniere as a second course and Charlotte aux Pommes and Apricot Tart made with dried fruit for dessert-that was not just the best that Samuel had ever enjoyed aboard a naval vessel, but among the half-dozen best he had ever eaten.

They ate in the forecastle, the single biggest space on board, which still would not have been big enough if a third of the Cape Fears had not been in hospital at Norfolk. The place was scrubbed out fastidiously, and both Negroes and officers were invited, and it was a fine time.

Bowater stayed after, lent his tenor to the songs that Taylor and Jones performed, the words of which he involuntarily knew by heart. Taylor gave him the opening movement of Mozart’s Quartet in C Major, which, at another time, Bowater would have perceived as an elbow in the ribs, but on that night seemed more a peace offering, and Bowater chose to take it as such. The men endured the classical interlude without complaint.

New Year’s followed, and Johnny had money enough left over to stage another grand feast, and once again the festivities were loud and companionable. This despite the howling wind, the spitting snow, the funereal weather. This despite the fact that the Yankees possessed Pamlico Sound and Port Royal, despite the launch of Yankee ironclads on the Ohio River and the buildup of McClellan’s troops in Washington and the apparent inactivity of Johnston.

Despite all of the setbacks that the Confederacy had experienced, there was still the fact that the main armies had met but once, and that once was a Confederate victory, and on that night of December 31, 1861, the men of the Cape Fear, like all men and women of the Confederate States, had every reason to hope and to believe that their glorious cause would be carried on to victory with the next campaigning season.

And so the Cape Fears ate and drank and toasted one another and went to bed and prepared to carry on their dreary patrol.

Which they did, at first light the next morning. And then, twelve days later, the Yankees came.

33

Here is the great thoroughfare from Albemarle Sound and its tributaries, and if the enemy obtain lodgments, or succeed in passing here, he will cut off a very rich country from Norfolk market.

– Flag Officer William F. Lynch to Stephen R. Mallory

Roanoke Island: the tollgate between Pamlico Sound, now in Yankee hands, and the Confederate waters of Albemarle Sound.

Eight big rivers emptied into Albemarle Sound, the North, West, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Little, Chowan, Roanoke, and Alligator, as well as four canals. Two railways had their terminus there. Albemarle Sound was the back door to Norfolk, and with the Yankees guarding the front door, it was the only way in. Possession of Roanoke Island meant, ultimately, possession of Norfolk, Portsmouth, the naval yard, and virtually all the commerce coming into North Carolina.

Roanoke Island was important, and the Yankees knew it, so they sent over one hundred ships, armed vessels and transports, carrying seventeen thousand men, to take it back.

The Confederates knew it too, but they allowed only one thousand men, two hundred of whom were sick, and the seven vessels of Lynch’s mosquito fleet to oppose them.

January 20, 1862. The wind was singing around the wheelhouse and Samuel Bowater could feel the Cape Fear jerk at her anchor chain as Jacob woke him. He looked out the window. The sky was dull, lead-colored, the waves whipped into a froth. The weather had not been agreeable in some time. It promised to get worse.

Bowater dressed quickly, stepped out into the wheelhouse. Jacob brought coffee. Harwell was there.

“Good morning, Lieutenant.”

“Morning, sir.”

“Engine room?”

“Steam’s up, ready to get underway.”

“Coal?”

“Starboard bunker half full, port bunker three-quarters. Fresh water topped off. Chief Taylor reports the problem with the web bearings is fixed. He says the grates are clean as of now, but said…the…ahh…poor-quality anthracite coal produces a lot of clinker.”

Bowater nodded. He could just imagine the way the chief had really phrased it. Taylor took a special pleasure in shocking Harwell because Harwell was so very shockable.

The wheelhouse door opened, and the blast of wet air filled the wheelhouse with noise and cold. Tanner stepped through, shut the door. He was wearing a greatcoat, wrapped tight around him, a tarpaulin hat. “Sea Bird’s signaling ‘Get underway,’ sir.”

“Very good. Mr. Harwell, let us get the anchor up.”

Harwell saluted, disappeared, and Bowater stepped up beside the wheel and looked out the window. Most of the mosquito fleet was visible to him, riding at their anchors. They were in Croatan Sound, the passage between Roanoke Island and the North Carolina shore, roughly three and a half miles wide. The fleet was clustered off Pork Point on Roanoke Island.

Bowater’s eyes moved to the Sea Bird, flagship of Commodore Lynch. She was a side-wheel steamer, a former passenger boat, now mounting a thirty-two-pounder smoothbore and a thirty-pounder Parrott. Black smoke peeked out of her funnel, only to be whipped away in the wind. The signal flag, “Get underway,” stood out straight and flat in the wind, as if it was painted on a board.

Raleigh had steam up as well. She was a tug, like Cape Fear, but smaller, built for canal work. She sported a thirty-two-pounder forward.

The other vessels in the fleet did not have steam up. Bowater could see CSS Curlew, 260 tons, an iron side-wheel steamer, the most substantial vessel of the fleet. There were also the Ellis, Appomattox, and Beaufort. Each was a tug. Each mounted a single thirty-two-pounder.

Anchored astern of Cape Fear was Fanny, the iron-hulled screw steamer taken from the Yankees a few months earlier, and the former tug, now CSN gunboat Forrest. That was it. The mosquito fleet. The ships that stood between the Yankees and Albemarle Sound.

From forward came the clank of chain coming in, and Seth Williams came in from the wind and blowing spray, took the beckets off the wheel, stood ready.

Clang…clang…clang… Bowater looked out the window. Harwell, bundled up in oilskins and sou’wester, waved his arm in a chopping motion. Up and down, the anchor right under the bow. Bowater rang slow ahead. The Cape Fear began to drift, her anchor free, windborne. The prop caught the water, drove her ahead, Williams met her with the wheel. Underway. To starboard, Sea Bird was butting the chop, steaming ahead, and Raleigh as well.

Those two, Seabird and Raleigh, had gone down sound the day before, scouted out the Yankees. Their report was not encouraging. Dozens, literally dozens, of ships coming in over the bar to Pamlico Sound. Gunboats, troop transports, supply ships. They were struggling with the breakers over the bar, but one by one they were managing to get their vessels over.

No one of the mosquito fleet doubted they would, because the officers of the mosquito fleet were all former officers of the United States Navy, and deep in their divided hearts they believed their old service capable of anything.

So the Confederate Navy would be the Spartans, and Croaton Sound their Thermopylae.