Glory In The Name

Bowater stepped out of the wheelhouse, out of the envelope of steam heat, into the brunt of the wind. It pulled at his sou’wester, tugged at his oilskins, found every tiny imperfection in the covering.

The Cape Fear rolled with the uncomfortable corkscrew of a following sea, but Bowater hardly noticed. He stared ahead, watched his beloved bow parting the seas, thought about what they would do next. Sink pilings like mad. Bring more ammunition to Roanoke Island. Try to augment the crews of the mosquito fleet. Drill. Wait for the Yankee tidal wave to wash them away.

And that was what they did. For eighteen days they prepared for the coming of the enemy. And then, on the 7th of February, the preparations were over, because the Yankee fleet was underway.

Thirty gunboats and schooners, the hammerhead, led in the van. Their job was to pound away at the Confederate defense, to beat a hole in it, though which the troops, seventeen thousand troops, would pour.

The mosquito fleet was drawn up, line abreast. They were above the northern pile line, near the north end of Croatan Sound, bow guns pointed downriver. They were anchored, with steam up.

To the east, Roanoke Island. Sandy, covered with low, coarse bushes, dune grass lying down in the wind. Like all of the barrier islands, it looked like no place a person would wish to live.

Fort Bartow, on the shore of Roanoke Island, guarded the pile line. Bartow was a sand-and-turf construction mounting six long thirty-two-pounders. To the west, on the North Carolina mainland, Fort Forrest, with twenty- two-pounders.

Fog sat like cotton batting on the water. At nine it thinned, lifted, swirled away, and behind it, a watery sunlight, visibility clear down to Pamlico Sound.

Two divisions of Yankee gunboats steamed north.

Bowater stood on the boat deck, at the rail, looked out over the water. He wore only his gray frock coat and cap. No oilskins, no sou’wester. It was the nicest day, weatherwise, they had enjoyed in a month.

He put the field glasses to his eyes. The masts of the Yankee steamers looked like winter-bare trees; the smoke from their stacks rolled away to the west.

Heavy footsteps on the ladder. Chief Taylor appeared. He was wearing a frock coat as well, clean and pressed. Pants quite devoid of stains or smears of coal dust. He had shaved.

Bowater looked over at him and failed to hide his surprise.

“Ain’t every day a man gets to fight in a gen-u-ine fleet action, Cap’n.”

“No, indeed. And it would seem our Yankee admiral is moved by the same spirit.” Bowater handed Taylor the field glasses and Taylor took them, put them up to his eyes, scanned the approaching enemy.

“It’s a ways off,” Bowater continued, “and I’m not as current on the U.S. Navy flags as I once was, but I do believe he is flying the signal ‘Our country expects every man to do his duty.’”

Taylor held the glasses to his eyes, chuckled. “Now ain’t that original?” He watched the fleet for a moment, then added, “It does appear they are forming in two divisions.”

The Yankee fleet, thirty or so gunboats, was coming on in two clusters. Vessels in the southernmost division were towing troop transports. They peeled off, headed east, made for the sandy beach at Ashby Harbor, four miles down the sound. The advance division of Yankees steamed up sound, made right for the fleet and Fort Bartow. They would keep the Confederate forts and the Confederate ships under fire, see that the Yankee troop transports were unmolested.

“Reckon I’ve seen enough of this here tactical situation, Cap’n. I believe I will retire to the comfort of my engine room.”

“Very well, Chief.” Taylor turned, disappeared down the ladder and aft.

Bowater was alone on the boat deck. He tapped his fingers on the rail, fought the nausea in his gut. Wondered if the other captains, if Lynch and Parker, Hunter and Cooke, felt the same. Probably. Waiting, waiting, it was always the worst. Let the iron start flying, let that linkage in the mind switch from fear to fight.

Four bells, they rang out from the mosquito fleet, a discordant clanging under a thin overcast sky, and the first gun went off. From a mile down Croatan Sound, from the Union gunboats arranged in a long line abreast, dark squares on the water, wheelboxes bulging at their sides, thin, truncated masts pointing up, swaying in the swell, came the sharp bang of a rifled gun. The smoke jetted from the bow of a big side-wheeler, middle of the attacking division. The shell screamed by, not too close to the Cape Fear, plunged into the water a quarter mile beyond the mosquito fleet.

The battle had begun.

Bowater turned his field glasses on the Sea Bird. The gun crew was swarming around her thirty-pounder Parrott forward, running her out, twisting the elevation screw. From the flagstaff on top of her wheelhouse, the signal flag snapped out: “Engage the enemy.”

“Mr. Harwell! When you are ready!”

Harwell grinned, waved, turned to his gun. He twisted the elevation screw, fiddled with the traverse, calling for the men with handspikes to nudge it here or there. He stepped back, jerked the lanyard. The gun went off with a satisfying jar that shook the vessel under Bowater’s feet. He felt himself go calm, as if the smell of spent powder carried with it some powerful drug. He saw the shot fall three hundred yards short of the Yankee fleet.

“You are short, Mr. Harwell!” Bowater cried.

“Aye, sir!”

Harwell fiddled with the elevation screw. Not much thread left-the gun was pointed nearly as high as it would point.

Oh, hell and damnation… Bowater thought. And once more, the guns won’t reach…

The gunfire rippled along the line of Yankee gunboats, blasting gray smoke from the big rifled guns in their bows, sending the shells screaming overhead, plunging around the Confederate fleet. Iron shrieked by, tore up the railing on the starboard side of the boat deck. A shell hit the boat in its davits, turned it into a cloud of white- painted splinters that flew high in the air and then fluttered like autumn leaves onto the boat deck, the main deck, the fantail, the water.

Seven converted tugs and paddle wheelers in the mosquito fleet. Short of ammunition, short of men. They rode at their anchors, fired back as fast as they could, but their shells would not reach the Yankees. It was Fort Hatteras all over again. They could do little but endure the pounding.

And they were not getting the worst of it. The second division of Yankee gunboats turned their attention on Fort Bartow, a larger and closer target. They positioned themselves in such a way that only three of Bartow’s guns would bear on them, and from that place they opened up. At times the fort seemed to be nothing more than a cloud of smoke and flying sand and dust kicked up by the exploding shells. But through it all, the stab of muzzle flash, as the garrison fought on.

Bowater paced, pounded his fist on his thigh, muttered curses. “Mr. Harwell! Hold your fire!” He was sick of wasted effort, wasted shells.

Then, through the din and scream, he heard the sound of anchor chain coming in. He looked to the left. Sea Bird was winning her anchor. A new flag was going aloft: “Close with the enemy.”

“At last!” Bowater leaned over the rail. “Mr. Harwell, let us get the anchor in. We are closing with the enemy!”

“Aye, sir!”

The anchor came aboard, the Cape Fear was underway. Bowater swung her north, let the other vessels find their place, came in astern of Curlew as the mosquito fleet threaded its way through the obstructions that they themselves had set.

They closed with the Yankees. Half a mile away, nearly point-blank range, and both fleets opened up. But the Yankees had more than twice the guns, and the Yankees, it seemed, had all the ammunition they could want.

The shells came through the smoke. They ricocheted off the water, plucked sections of bulwark and cabin away, whistled and screamed through the air. The Parrott banged out, once every few minutes, whenever Harwell had his shot. The mosquito fleet kept up the fire, the Yankees returned it, three for one. The world was reduced to a haze of powder smoke, the blast of artillery, explosion of shells, the howl of flying metal, weird-sounding through numbed ears.

Eight bells, noon, one bell, two bells in the afternoon watch, and the firing did not subside, and Bowater did not know how any of them were still alive in the midst of it, still moving, ships still floating under them.