Glory In The Name

He paced back and forth. He stood in the wheelhouse, gave directions to the helmsman, rang the engine room when needed. No maneuvering, though, not really. Nothing fancy. The days of weather gauge and raking shots and fleets tacking in succession were gone, the brilliance of a John Paul Jones or Horatio Nelson part of another time, when wind was the chief tactical consideration.

Finesse and seamanship were no longer part of the equation. Two clusters of gunboats, slugging each other, hitting hard, pounding away until someone dropped. They were not fencers, they were brutes with clubs, flailing at one another. It was exactly the kind of fight that the mosquito fleet could not afford. But the only other option was to run, and that was no option at all.

Tanner bounded up the ladder. “Mr. Harwell’s compliments, sir, and he has four shells left.”

Bowater nodded. Then what? The howitzers were worthless at that range. Get closer? The Yankee rifled guns would tear them apart if they tried.

The gunfire was like a rainstorm, it would swell to great intensity, dozens of guns firing at once, a wall of noise, then taper off to a gun or two, clear and conspicuous in the quiet, then swell again.

It fell off now, two guns from the Yankees, a gun from the Ellis. Forward and below, Harwell fired the Parrott.

Three shells… Bowater thought.

Half a mile off, a Yankee gunboat stood bow on to the Cape Fear. Bowater saw the plume of gray smoke, the yellow muzzle flash. He heard the scream of the shell and at the same instant the crash of wood, the tremor through his feet, as the round smashed its way into the Cape Fear’s deckhouse. He half turned, half spun with the shock of explosion as the shell went off. The boat deck abaft the wheelhouse blew apart, like a volcano erupting out of the guts of his ship.

This is it, this is it… Bowater thought, and he could only marvel that they had stood in line of battle for as long as they had before taking that fatal shell.

Four shells… Taylor thought. He had been counting, through no conscious effort. It was just the way his mind was. He could not keep himself from processing numbers. So he knew how many shells there were, and he subtracted one each time he felt the bone-jarring crash of the Parrott gun going off, delivering a concussion to the tug that she was never designed to endure.

Wonder what the Hero of Veracruz will do now?

It had been a dull battle thus far, his first and likely only fleet action and he had spent most of it standing there with his thumb up his ass. Underway briefly, then just turns to maintain position. A little ahead, a little astern. Finally he turned the throttle and reversing bar over to Burgess.

“How we doin’ there, Moses?” he shouted.

Moses tossed a shovelful of coal into the firebox, straightened, looked at the steam gauge. “Twenty pound, boss! Nice and steady.”

“Tommy! What’s the coal look like in them bunkers?”

“Black, boss, black as my black ass!”

“Shaddup, smart aleck. How much coal’s in there?”

“Little less den half, port side. A quarter, starboard.”

Taylor nodded, chewed his unlit cigar. That was not good. The coal was their only armor, the only substantial thing between them and a shell right in the boiler.

Hieronymus Taylor had to make a conscious effort not to think about what would happen if the boiler exploded. He had seen men scalded, some bad, but never one scalded to death. He could barely imagine what it would be like to stand in the way of a full blast of steam. He saw images of skin falling off, eyes seared out, bloody pulped bodies writhing on the deck plates. If he thought too long about it he knew he would run screaming from the engine room, so he pushed the images from his mind.

He ducked under the piping, stepped aft to where the twenty-inch-wide piston maintained its slow, rhythmic stroke in the big iron cylinder. Psssst, thump, psssst, thump, psssst, thump, steam and metal keeping their perfect beat. He reached down to the crankshaft, touched his fingertips to smooth bearing. He examined the color of the oil that stuck there. Black. The shaft was running hot, but Taylor knew from experience that it always ran a bit hot, and he was not concerned. He threaded his way out of the engine maze, into the ten feet of open space between engine and boiler.

The Cape Fear vibrated, rumbled with the sound of the Parrott going off. Three shells…

And then there was a crashing sound overhead and Taylor looked up and a shell blew apart in the fidley, fifteen feet overhead. The boat deck-the roof over the engine room, two decks up-was torn apart and the air was filled with the explosion and the higher-pitched noise of shrapnel streaming past, smashing into the engine, the boiler, the steam pipes, pinging and ricocheting off metal.

Dull afternoon light streamed in, lit up the cloud of coal dust and steam and black smoke from someplace. Tommy was shrieking, lying on the deck plates, but the rest of the black gang stood frozen and Taylor stood frozen and all he could think was that the boiler was about to blow and there was not one damned second left to get their dead asses topside.

34

As the enemy’s force was overwhelming, we commenced the action at long range, but as our shells fell short, whilst his burst over and around us, we were eventually compelled to lessen the distance.

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

The boiler did not blow, the panic passed, and Taylor shouted, “Moses! The boiler hit?”

He could not see the black man. A shell fragment had ripped a hole in the stack, three feet above the boiler. Black smoke came roiling out, filling the engine room. If the boat deck that formed the roof of the fidley had not been blown out they would have been completely blind, and quickly overcome.

The main steam pipe was fractured and a plume of steam was shooting out, whistling like a banshee’s moan as it poured its white cloud into the engine room, right between Taylor and Jones. It made an impassable barrier of invisible steam and scalding hot-water vapor the width of the ship.

“Boiler near knocked clean off her mounts, but she holding!” Jones shouted.

“Tommy, what the hell’s wrong?” No answer, just screaming. “What the hell’s wrong with Tommy?”

“He got hit. Inna leg!”

Taylor tried to see through the geyser of steam. “Can’t ya help him, for God’s sake?”

“Boss, I’se holdin dis boiler up wid a slice bar! I let go, da whole damn t’ing gonna go!”

Goddamn it…

Steam was hissing out of the fractured pipe in a great white cloud. Taylor could feel the hot, condensed water on his face, like a thousand biting gnats. If the pipe burst, they were dead in the water. If the boiler blew, they were just dead.

“All right, all right…” Taylor inched toward the steam, ducked under the pipe, squeezed between the side of the coal bunker and the jet of hot vapor. He looked over his head at the pipe, hanging precariously. Don’t break, don’t break, don’t break… He eased himself under and then he was on the other side of the steam.

Moses Jones was standing beside the boiler. One of the mounts was shot through, and he had shoved a slice bar under, levered the boiler up. The muscles stood out proud on his arms, sweat was dripping off his face. He couldn’t hold it much longer.

Tommy was screaming, thrashing on the deck plates. Taylor could see a jagged piece of metal sticking out of his leg, another in his stomach.

“Jefferson!” Taylor shouted. He could not see the other coal passer. “Jefferson!” Taylor ran past the boiler, looked down the side of the big metal tube. Jefferson’s body was tossed forward, sprawled out on the deck plates.