Glory In The Name

Taylor…?

Mrs. Taylor gave a curtsy, which Bowater returned with a shallow bow.

“We were hoping, Captain, to see our son,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Hieronymus Taylor? We understood he is engineer aboard your ship.”

Bowater looked at Veronica Taylor. She must have been a beautiful woman in her youth. She was still a beautiful woman, all poise and dignity. “Forgive me, ma’am, I think perhaps you are mistaken,” Bowater said, and even as the words left his mouth he thought, How many Hieronymus Taylors might there be in the navy?

“It’s no surprise you should think so,” Eli Taylor said, and his voice sounded sad. He held up a little photograph, a tintype in a stamped tin oval frame, such as were produced by the thousands all over the country.

“This is our son,” the man said, and Bowater took the picture. Staring back at him, in shades of gray, was a younger, cleaner Hieronymus Taylor.

“I apologize,” Bowater said. “It’s just that…”

“We understand, Captain,” Eli interrupted him. “Hieronymus can be…difficult, at times.”

Indeed? Bowater thought.

“He has simply rejected all of his upbringing,” Veronica said, with a tone of exasperation mixed with disappointment. “His brothers and sisters are not like that, I can assure you.”

“We live in New Orleans and took ship up,” Eli prompted. “We heard from friends in the Navy Department that he might be here.”

“Yes, yes he is…no, I mean, I’m sorry, he is assigned to this ship. But he had to go away for a few days. He had business in Vicksburg.”

Eli frowned and Veronica sighed and said, “I knew we should not have written ahead, Eli.”

“Yes, dear, perhaps you are right.”

“I am so sorry you missed him,” Bowater said, and meant it, though he did not know if his disappointment was for the parents or for himself at missing Taylor’s discomfiture.

“Yes, well…” Eli said, and let the rest die off.

“He should be back by Wednesday.”

Eli nodded. “Perhaps it is best we missed him. I fear when he left home there was some…trouble. We have not been as close as I might wish.”

“I’ll tell him you came,” Bowater suggested, but Eli shook his head.

“No, no, Captain. If it is all the same, I suppose if Hieronymus does not care to see us, I won’t have him think we are thrusting ourselves on him.”

It was a very sad scene, and Bowater was looking for something helpful to say when Veronica noticed the painting.

“You are an artist, Captain?”

“Oh, no. I dabble. It passes the time.”

Veronica and Eli Taylor took a closer step, scrutinized the canvas.

“It is very good,” Veronica said.

“I do believe I see the influence of the Hudson River School, sir. A Charleston man, you must be familiar with the work of Washington Allston?”

“I have seen his painting, yes.”

“We have two Allstons in our collection,” Veronica Taylor said.

“Your work is reminiscent of Durwood, as well, but not nearly as pretentious. Of course, we have seen only your work in progress. Are you familiar with Fitz Hugh Lane?”

“Why yes, I am…” Bowater stammered. “You are well versed in painting, I see.”

“Oh, we are great patrons of the arts, sir. Every bit of it.”

“All our children were raised to appreciate the finer things, Captain,” Veronica said. “Painting, music. Hieronymus has a great gift for music. They were trained in the classics since childhood.”

Bowater nodded. He did not know what to say.

“You might say we’re overboard on the subject,” Eli said. “We named Hieronymus after Hieronymus Bosch, you know, the fifteenth-century Dutch painter.”

“Did you indeed?”

“Oh yes. His middle name is Michelangelo.”

42

I have spent my life in revolutionary countries and I know the horrors of civil war, and I told the people what I had seen, and what they would experience. They laughed at me and called me “granny” and “croaker.”

– David Glasgow Farragut

The mighty USS Hartford, mounting twenty nine-inch Dahlgren smoothbores, two twenty-pounder Parrott rifles, one heavy twelve-pounder, and one light twelve-pounder, flagship of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, was stuck in the mud.

Farragut stood on the quarterdeck, leaning on the rail, looking across the deck, over the brown, slow-moving water, over at the low, marshy shore three hundred feet away. South West Pass, one of five ways into the Mississippi River.

Black smoke roiled out of the Hartford ’s stack, drifted off to the west. Beyond the bow, Farragut could see another plume, smaller, just as black. The side-wheeler Calhoun, with a towline to Hartford ’s bow. The two ships, Calhoun and Hartford , were stoking up their boilers, building up steam enough to drag the deep Hartford through the mud. They reminded Farragut of bulls pawing the ground in preparation for the charge.

From the foredeck, over two hundred feet away, the executive officer called back, “Ready, Captain Wainwright!”

Wainwright, captain of USS Hartford, waved, called to the quartermaster, “Four bells!”

The quartermaster rang out the bells, and underfoot Farragut could hear the engine room respond, a tremor in the deck as the engines dug in, two horizontal condensing double-piston-rod power plants with thirty-four-inch strokes and cylinders sixty-two inches in diameter. Farragut looked over the side. The river was boiling and the mud was swirling like brown storm clouds.

He felt a slight jerk as the Calhoun took up on the towline and pulled. He looked across the deck, lined up one of the mizzen shrouds with a stunted tree on shore. The seconds ticked off, and slowly, slowly, the shroud seemed to draw away from the tree. They were moving.

“I believe it took Brooklyn an hour to tow across, sir,” Wainwright said. “We might go a bit faster, with Brooklyn having dug a trench for us.”

“Perhaps.” Farragut knew all that, and Wainwright knew he knew it. Saying it was Wainwright’s not too subtle way of pleading for patience, patience for a situation over which none of them had control.

Patience. It was something Farragut was running out of as quickly as he was running out of coal. They could not begin to attack New Orleans until Porter’s gunboat flotilla arrived, and the last he heard they were in Key West. They could not attack until they took their big ships over the bar, but it was all they could do to get Hartford and Brooklyn over. How they were going to get Colorado over, with her nearly twenty-three-foot depth, he could not imagine.

These ships were not built to fight this war… he thought. Most of the ships under his command had been laid down with the thought that they would be fighting the British navy on the high seas. It certainly had not been contemplated that they would be used in an attack on New Orleans.

From the main topmast crosstrees, now the highest point aboard Hartford, the