Chapter Eleven
The flotilla of small boats scraped the sandy bottom on the windswept and deserted shore. It was the middle of the night and there was a murmur of curses as oars were disentangled. When this was done: the boats commenced disgorging scores, and then hundreds, of armed men on the seaward coast of Staten Island. Scouts, landed days earlier, emerged from the gloom, gathered them like sheep, and headed them in the right direction.
Colonel Garnet Wolsey set a quick pace and led the column as it snaked its way inland. They had several miles to go in the dark and not much time to accomplish their journey. Alongside Wolsey, Captain John Knollys struggled to keep up. He hadn't been on a march in some time and was out of shape. He was soon huffing and puffing, which drew good-natured jibes from Wolsey and snickers from the men behind. He was too winded to return any comments.
Wolsey and the naval planners had counted on maintaining a semblance of offshore normalcy to hide what they were doing. The blockade of New York Harbor was maintained by a fluctuating number of ships; thus, there had been no significance given by American observers to the handful of additional ships visible on blockade. The sea off New York was a naval terminus of sorts. British ships going to and from Canada and Virginia routinely stopped to deliver messages and supplies to the blockading squadron. However, the new ships were not innocuous visitors; their holds were jammed with two battalions of seasick and sweating British infantry brought down from Montreal.
Nor was the American military aware of the large fleet of British warships assembled just over the horizon. While the British infantry headed inland, the British warships had commenced steaming for the heavily fortified narrow opening to New York Harbor.
Only a little more than a mile across, Fort Wadsworth was on the Staten Island side of the Narrows and Fort Hamilton on the Long Island or Brooklyn side. In the months since the war with England had begun, and spurred by the shelling of Boston, the forts' batteries had been reinforced and strengthened to the point that any attempt at running them or forcing entry would result in heavy damage to the attacker.
But this was not the case in their rear.
Scouts and spies had found that the back door to the Union fortifications was wide open at both locations. All American eyes looked out to sea and not to the sandy and windswept hills behind the forts.
A mile from Staten Island's fortifications. Wolsey paused and gathered his officers. It had been a hard march, but not a killing one. The men were fresh and excited at the prospect of action. They gulped water from their canteens and waited expectantly. Knollys leaned down and sucked in air, and was amazed at the way soldiers of all ranks looked to the young colonel for leadership. Then he realized he was doing the same thing.
Wolsey barked a few orders and the British force broke into separate columns that surged towards the American fortifications. At a closer distance, further orders were given by hand signal only. Their Enfield rifles weren't cocked so as to reduce the possibility of an accidental firing that would alert the garrisons.
The red-garbed infantry approached the first of the forts at a trot. No voice was raised to question or challenge them. Within seconds, they were inside the first batteries, and the garrison guards, most of whom were sound asleep, were overrun and taken without an outcry. The British continued their sweep from emplacement to emplacement without incident until, almost anticlimactically, they found a sentry who was alert and who yelled an alarm and shot at them.
It was too late. The sentry was bayoneted and died screaming. Alerted by the sounds, a handful of other American gunners tried to reach their weapons and were cut down by gunfire. There was no longer any need for secrecy or caution. It was over. The batteries on Staten Island, the southern half of the immense fortifications built to protect New York Harbor and New York City, had been taken. The British had not lost a man in the effort.
Across the narrows, Knollys saw small bright flashes of light and heard the sound of gunfire. From the location of the firing, he thought it was too late for the American garrison on the Brooklyn side to successfully defend itself, but he wasn't certain.
Wolsey ordered his men to run up the Union Jack, and they cheered as it unfurled and flew with the wind. Several hundred American prisoners watched sullenly but helplessly, while hundreds more blue-coated Americans, unarmed and panic-stricken, ran away.
Wolsey held his telescope to his good eye and watched intently across the Narrows. It was almost dawn and he could see fairly clearly.
“There it is,” he yelled, and handed the telescope to Knollys. “See it?”
Knollys did. The Union Jack flew over the other half of the Narrows. New York Harbor and City were wide open to the Royal Navy, which was approaching in all its might and in line of battle.
Admiral Sir Henry Chads stood on the quarterdeck of the massiveWarrior and watched the ominous Narrows come closer and then engulf the column like the maw of a monster. He exhaled deeply as he saw the British ensign flying from the staffs of the American fortifications. Wolsey's daring gambit had worked. Even the mightyWarrior might have had a hard time pushing through thepounding they would have received from the Union batteries, and: most certainly, the other unarmored British ships would have suffered grievously.
Sir Henry had never liked ironclads or the very idea of them. In his world, ships were meant to be wood, and preferably propelled by sails. However, he grudgingly admitted to himself that he felt safe behind the thick iron hull of theWarrior as it steamed into the harbor.
The rumble of cannon fire echoed across the water. The Americans had finally awakened to the danger bearing down on them. The batteries on Ellis and Bedloe islands opened up with a fury, as did other batteries at the foot of Manhattan, near Castle Garden. The range was distant, and no hits were scored on the British fleet.
The harbor hadn't been mined, so the British column moved straight towards Brooklyn. When in range, they commenced bombarding the densely packed merchant shipping, along with the numerous docks and warehouses.
When the Brooklyn waterfront was ablaze, theWarrior and her consorts turned towards Manhattan and pounded the Union batteries into submission. The British column then snaked its way up the Hudson River, spewing destruction and fire with every shell.
The guns on Bedloe and Ellis islands had been silenced by British gunnery. Smoke poured from the emplacements and white flags flew. The batteries at the foot of Manhattan had been pounded into rubble, and Castle Garden, only recently reconverted into a fortress, was a flaming ruin. Led by theWarrior, and followed by the woodenAgamemnon and a score of other wooden warships, the Royal Navy flotilla demolished and set afire everything they thought significant. It was a casual, methodical lethal destruction of the harbor.
From midway up the rigging of theWarrior, Admiral Chads watched as thousands of people streamed inland and away from the pounding of the British guns. It was Boston all over again. Chads was not a butcher. He was not going to fire on civilians. They were safe from him, but many of the fires appeared out of control, and those that weren't soon would be. No fire department could hope to deal with the conflagration that was developing. For their sake, Chads hoped no one would even try.
The raid was a complete success, but there was one frustrating bit of news. No one had seen theMonitor or any of her unfinished sisters. British intelligence was incomplete as to precisely where they were, and the cities of Brooklyn and New York were too large to give the casual observer a clue. The Union ironclads were small vessels that could be hidden almost anywhere, especially since they were under construction in private shipyards.
The British were confident that theMonitor was the only ironclad currently available to the Americans, and just as confident that she would not challenge theWarrior and the rest of the Royal Navy with only two guns. No ship was truly impregnable, and it was presumed that a continuous pounding by British vessels would wear the Union ironclad down and sink the hellish thing to the bottom of the harbor. Chads thought that was a marvelous idea.
Chads looked skyward at the sun. It was already after noon. All about him fires raged on the shore, and drifting, burning ships littered the once-clear waters of the harbor. He had won an immense victory. He had lost no ships and any damage sustained was minimal. With no targets of any consequence remaining, he signalled the recall and the Royal Navy began its stately parade out of New York.
