Thieves Of Mercy

ripped clean away were audible even over the gunfire, the shouting, the huffing of engines, and the slap of paddle wheels.

The fight was building, the ironclads from upstream having dropped down, their iron-encased central paddle wheels turning enough now to give them steerage. They were firing bow guns and broadside guns at the Confederates, crushing the flimsy upper works of riverboats never designed for that kind of abuse. But still the River Defense Fleet came on.

The once blue sky was hazy, the belching clouds of smoke hanging like fog over the river, giving everything a soft and milky look, the air choking, the water and the shoreline gray-looking through the haze. The mortar boat was firing fast, lobbing shells above the river that came screaming down from overhead and burst at water level, throwing their whistling fragments of iron in every direction, and Bowater had to wonder if there wasn’t just as good a chance of hitting friend as foe.

It was a battle now, a genuine naval battle, a fleet action, played out on the twisting Mississippi River.

The Van Dorn charged past the General Page, past the Price and the ironclad, firing away at the mortar boat tied to the bank. Her eight-inch bow gun ripped a shell through the thin side of the mortar boat’s casemate, left a neat hole as it passed on, and the Van Dorn fired again.

Bowater pulled his eyes from the sight, concentrated on what his ship was doing. The ironclad, the one that had been tied to the shore, was still in front of them. But it was listing, dragging itself toward shallow water, looking for a place to die. The Price had left it astern and was charging upriver toward the rest of the Yankee fleet.

“Baxter!” Bowater shouted in to the helmsman. “Come right! Shave the stern of that ironclad and make for the big one coming down on the right side of the river!”

Baxter turned and looked at Bowater, the cheroot hanging from his lips, his expression somewhere between amused and aghast. Bowater felt his face flush red. He had entirely forgotten himself.

Then from the edge of the hurricane deck, the booming laugh of Mississippi Mike Sullivan. Bowater caught a movement from the corner of his eye, and before he could brace for it the arm came around in a great arc, the good-natured slap on the back like being hit with a club, and he staggered forward.

“You listen to him, Baxter!” Sullivan shouted. “Do just like he said. Remember, Captain Bowater here went to the Navy School !”

Baxter grinned around his cheroot, spun the wheel. Down below, on the Page’s bow, behind the bulwark of pine boards and compressed cotton that earned the ship the designation of cotton clad, the gunners opened up on the crippled Yankee. The Page’s rifle gun roared, smoke and flame shooting out ahead of the riverboat. Bowater felt the recoil in his feet, the entire boat shuddering under the weight of the gun slamming back on her breeching.

Then it was the ironclad’s turn. From the stern guns poking out of her sloped casement and the aftermost broadside guns that would bear, the Yankees lashed out at the passing riverboat. The crash of gun, the crush of wood, the shudder underfoot as the round shot and rifled shells hit, it was all familiar to Bowater, a part of the whole, along with the smoke and the noise and the controlled chaos.

They were up with the ironclad, not more than ten yards off her stern, and Samuel had his first real look at the despised Yankee gunboats, and what he saw was a nearly perfect weapon for the war they were fighting. Around one hundred and eighty feet long, about fifty on the beam, there was no effort made here to create a sleek craft, and there was no need for one.

Underfoot, the deck shuddered from the impact of iron that struck the General Page’s deckhouse and went right on through. All along the boiler deck below, the Page’s sharpshooters fired away with their rifles at the ironclad as they passed, the sound of the small arms puny under the roar of the big guns. Sparks like fireflies flashed on the Yankee’s iron casemate as minie balls ricocheted off, the gunmen searching out the Yankees through the gun ports.

Bowater watched in awe as the ironclad slipped past. The Yankee gunboats drew around six feet, three feet less than the Price and nine feet less than the General Bragg. A centerline paddle wheel encased in iron, heavy guns bristling from every quarter, she was one of the most frightening things Bowater had seen, representative of the kind of industrial superiority the Yankees could bring to bear.

And yet she was sinking. Brought down by the most ancient of naval weapons, the ram.

“Yeeehaaa!” Mississippi Mike shouted. “There, that one!” He pointed upriver to another of the ironclads dropping down, guns lashing out in every direction, black smoke rolling from her funnels. “That’s our meat! Right into her!”

The crippled ironclad fired again, her stern guns blowing holes clean through the deckhouse. Bowater doubted that the guns, at that short range, could be depressed enough to hit the engines or boilers, or elevated enough to hit the wheelhouse. As long as they missed the walking beam’s A-frame and the steering gear, there wasn’t much they could do.

Bowater pulled his eyes from the ironclad and looked upriver.

No time for reflection. No time for philosophizing. That was the beauty of a fight such as this. It focused the mind wonderfully.

In the Cincinnati’s conical pilothouse, Commander Stembel was trying to focus, but it was not working

very well. The smoke from the gun deck rolled up the companionway and was sucked out of the square viewing ports, choking and blinding. The noise was tremendous, the sounds of the great guns firing again and again, the shudder of the vessel from the recoil of her own guns and the impact of the enemy’s guns on her iron-plated sides.

He had given up ringing the engine room. There was not steam enough to maneuver, and ringing for more would not make it appear. He stared out the view port. The first ship to ram them, and hole them, was drifting downstream, out of the fight. He hoped his gunners had blown out her boilers, killed every one of them, but he doubted it.

Another one was coming at them now, a big, boxy Confederate ram, charging like a bull, seemingly oblivious to the furious gunfire the Cincinnati was hurling at her. Stembel shouted a warning, grabbed a stanchion, and braced for the impact. There was nothing more he could do.

The Rebel struck aft with a terrible wrenching sound, rolling the Cincinnati away to starboard. The helmsman made a grunting sound and nearly fell as the wheel spun out of control and then stopped, a dead thing. Stembel met the man’s eyes, wide with surprise. “Rudder must be gone, sir. Done for!”

Stembel turned away, craned his neck to see out the view port. The Rebel was steaming on, forging upstream into the teeth of the rest of the Union fleet. Leaving the Cincinnati for dead.

We are not dead, goddamn it! Stembel clenched his teeth. Footsteps on the iron ladder. Lt. William Hoel was there. His cap was gone, his face smudged black, his hair matted down with perspiration.

“Sir? We’re taking on water, sir, pretty bad. That last ram knocked a good hole aft!”

“Yes.” Stembel looked through the view port. “It seems to have done for our steering gear as well.” He turned back. “Lieutenant, take over here. Keep her headed for the shallow water. I have to see for myself.”

Hoel’s “Aye, aye, sir” came as Stembel was already dropping down the ladder, into the gloom and smoke of the gun deck. At each of the big guns, men stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat hauled, swabbed, loaded, ran out, cursed. The officers behind them, in blue frock coats, with caps on heads, shouted orders and encouragement, and Stembel was proud of what he saw. The men were drilled, disciplined; they did not think, they just acted- loaded and fired as if nothing existed beyond their guns, as if they were not in a deadly fight on board a sinking ironclad.

Stembel made his way aft, called out encouragement, accepted the cheers of the men. He gagged on the smoke, relished the odd swirl of fresh air from a gun port. The casemate shuddered and rang from the crash of enemy shot against it, and in counterpoint the sharp pinging of the small-arms fire bouncing harmlessly away.

He reached the ladder to the engine room and climbed down, into the nearly unbearable heat and noise of the clanging pipes and hiss of steam and the working of the two big engines. He paused on the ladder, looked down into the half-light, the lanterns illuminating the space in parts here and there, and he tried to make sense of what he