Thieves Of Mercy

THIRTY-ONE

I saw a large portion of the engagement from the riverbanks, and am sorry to say that, in my opinion, many of our boats were handled badly or the plan of battle was very faulty. The enemy’s rams did most of the execution and were handled more adroitly than ours…

BRIGADIER GENERAL M. JEFF THOMPSON TO GENERAL G.T. BEAUREGARD

The Union ironclad fleet had let loose with a full barrage, the shots coming one upon another, by the time the Union ram Queen of the West cast off from the bank and backed into the stream. Colonel Ellet himself ran to the after end of the hurricane deck and hauled the ensign up the staff, the prescribed signal for the ram fleet to go into action. Monarch was moving off the bank, and upstream, Lancaster and Switzerland had not even put their lines ashore.

Ellet rushed back to the wheelhouse. The others would follow. They would understand, as he did, that this was their moment. It was time for the rams to go into battle and show the world that the weapon of the ancients was back, and ready to do great execution.

“Right between the ironclads, pilot, get us right downriver,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.” The pilot paused. “We’ll be right under their guns, sir.”

“Who, the enemy?”

“No, sir, the ironclads.”

“Oh, they won’t fire on us. Depend on it. Right between them, right for those Rebels.” He reached up himself and rang three bells. When they slammed the Queen’s iron-shod bow into a secesh gunboat, they would need speed and momentum, all they could get.

Memphis was gone, lost from sight behind a great wall of gray gun smoke, the cumulative output of the Union gunboat’s fire. Ellet could see the ironclads, low and dark, stretched across the river, and then in front of them a gray cloud that hung on the water and roiled up with every successive blast of the guns, and then nothing else. The smoke blotted out everything downriver, save for the blue sky, high overhead.

The Queen of the West was building her precious momentum fast, racing for the line of Federal gunboats. The flashes of the ironclads’ guns lit up the smoke, orange and red, belched more smoke into the cloud.

The Queen charged on, right between Carondelet and Benton. Ellet could see startled faces looking out from gun ports as the ram swept past and plunged into the wall of smoke.

For a moment they were blind, like being in thick fog, a world of gray and dim, diffused light. Joseph Ford, first master of the Queen of the West, began coughing hard, doubled over, and Ellet coughed too. He wondered how thick the wall of fog might be. He could not ram if he could not see.

And then they were through, bursting out of the far side like coming out of a tunnel, from gray smoke and blindness to brilliant morning-blue sky, brown water flashing in the rising sun, the steep hills on the Memphis shore, and the Rebel Defense Fleet, steaming for them.

“Here we go!” Ellet shouted. Upstream, the ironclads kept up their fire, the shells screaming past, and Ellet wondered if the gunners could see at all through their own smoke. If not, there was as good a chance of them hitting the Queen as anything, but he was too gripped with the thrill of the thing to care.

“Sir!” Ford pointed downstream. Two of the Rebels were coming up fast, side by side, their bows aimed straight at the Queen of the West.

Ellet stepped back into the wheelhouse, stood between the pilots, Richard Smith and Joe Davis, their eyes locked on the action under the bows.

“Which one, sir?” Davis asked. The Queen and the two Rebels were closing fast, bow to bow. If they hit that way, it would shatter them all.

“I don’t know…” Ellet said. They were charging right at one another. We’ll make a damn lot of widows this way…

One of the Rebels began to turn, the one on the Queen’s starboard bow began to sheer off. Ellet stepped out of the wheelhouse. Behind them, the Monarch had broken through the smoke, was coming down on their starboard quarter. Ellet could hear the men on the ironclad gunboats cheering, cheering.

He pulled off his hat and waved it at Monarch and then at the Rebel who had sheered off. “That one’s for you!” he shouted, though he knew Alfred would not hear him. “The other is my meat!”

The Monarch began to turn, to line herself up for a charging run at the second Rebel steamer. Satisfied, Ellet returned to the wheelhouse. Two hundred yards separated the Queen from the onrushing Confederate, two hundred and dropping fast, and still they came on, bow to bow.

Oh Lord, oh Lord… Ellet had played this scene out a hundred times in his head, a thousand, but here were difficulties he had not imagined, such as what he would do if the Rebel would not turn away from his bow-on attack.

And there was more to think of. If the Queen of the West hit the closest Rebel, then the Rebel right behind would have a clear shot at hitting the Queen, broadside. And there was a third secesh ram, just downriver. He could not hit one without being hit by the other. He could not hit bow to bow.

“Sir,” Davis began, tentative but urgent. The Rebel fired her bow gun and the water just forward of the Queen was torn up by grape and cannister.

In the instant the Rebel’s bow gun went off, she began to turn, backing down and then sheering off, exposing a swath of larboard side, right under Ellet’s bow and seventy yards off. The Confederates were unwilling to risk a head-on collision, but they had decided that too late. Incredible, it was a gift from heaven.

“There, there!” Ellet pointed toward the Rebel’s side. The pilots were nearly dancing with excitement. Davis took the wheel from the helmsman, gave a quarter turn to larboard, following the turning Rebel boat around as the space between the ships dropped away.

The Rebel’s stern wheel was really digging in. Ellet could picture the skipper laying on the bell, shouting for steam to get him the hell out from under the Yankee ram.

Too late, too late… Davis brought the bow around so the Queen was pointing first at her foredeck and then her deckhouse as the Rebel tried to steam away.

The Queen of the West struck just forward of the Rebel’s wheelhouse. She did not even slow as she plowed on through. The side of the Confederate boat caved in like an eggshell. The chimneys leaned over, threatening to fall on the Queen’s foredeck. The whole vessel seemed to bend in the middle under the ram’s crushing impact.

Then the Queen was brought up short, brought to a jarring halt by the mass of the ship impaled on her bow. Ellet was flung forward, hit the low wall and window of the wheelhouse hard, as tables, charts, instruments, crockery, and the pilots all flew across the space in a shower of debris.

The Queen twisted around, her paddle wheels still driving her into the rebel ship, which was filling fast and hanging on their bow. Ellet bounced off the wheelhouse’s forward bulkhead and staggered back, but managed to keep his feet.

“Full astern!” Ellet roared, but he was the only one still standing. He crossed the wheelhouse, gave a jingle, three bells, full astern.

For a second the Queen was still, the terrible vibration in her deck gone, as the paddle wheels stopped. Then they began to turn again, churning in reverse. The ship shuddered as the paddle wheels struggled to pull the ram from the dying Confederate. Ellet could hear screeching and snapping sounds as the massive paddles drove the ship astern and drew the bow from the Rebel’s side.

He turned to see what execution Monarch was doing, but he saw instead another Rebel rushing at them, black smoke churning from her chimneys, a mad bull charging a red cape. It was exactly as he had feared. Hung up on one ship, he was easy pickings for another.

He grabbed the bell and gave another jingle and three bells because he could think of nothing else to do. There was nothing else to do but brace for the impact.

The pilot, Davis, pulled himself to his feet, looked out the window at the Rebel ram, now looming over them. “Oh, hell!” he shouted and then the Rebel struck them, right in the larboard paddle wheel. Painted boards and buckets and metal arms, bits of rail and parts of the Queen’s gig flew into the air and became so much debris as the Rebel drove the attack into the army ram’s side.

The Queen heeled hard to starboard with the impact, and the paddle wheel made a terrible groaning noise as it was sheered clean off.

“Damn it! We’re done for!” Ellet shouted. So soon? Was that all the battle for him? He did not think it was above ten minutes since he had cast off from the bank at the sound of the guns, and now the Queen was disabled and he would be lucky if she did not sink under him.

“Damn!” he shouted again and raced out of the wheelhouse to better see the damage. The sound of the battle was much louder on the hurricane deck, the low thunder of the ironclad gunboats as they poured their fire into the Rebels, the sharp crack of the Rebels’ smaller guns, the shouting of men on the sinking Rebel ship and his own men on the main deck below.

It was bad. The larboard wheel was gone, there was nothing there. The water was littered with floating debris. It looked as if an entire ship had been blown to bits, right on that spot. Ellet turned to the deckhand beside him. “Billy, run below and see if we’re taking on water!”

There was a thumping sound now that he could not identify. He looked around. Another Rebel was moving past, slowly, as if she were disabled. Small arms! They were firing on the Queen with small arms. Bullets were thudding into the deck.

Get the men behind cover, Ellet thought and then suddenly his leg was gone from under him, as if someone had hit him in the back of the knee with a club and sent him galley-west. He hit the warm deck planks with a grunt, hands down to break his fall, still not certain what had happened.

He rolled on his back and felt the pain shoot up his leg. He stifled a shout, gritted his teeth, looked down. Blood was spurting from his knee, and his leg from the knee down seemed to jut off at an unnatural angle.

“Sir! Sir!” Ford and the pilot Davis were kneeling beside him.

“Sir, you’re hit!” “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Ellet said, his teeth still clenched.

He relaxed his jaw. Had to give orders.

“Queen’s out of the fight, larboard wheel’s gone, I reckon we’re going down,” Ellet managed, then a wave of pain hit him and he stopped for a moment, caught his breath, then went on. “I think we can get to shore with the remaining wheel. Quick, quick, run her ashore while you can!”

“Yes, sir!” Ford said, leaped up, and rushed back to the wheelhouse. Ellet closed his eyes. Both he and the Queen of the West, disabled, knocked out. But not dead. It was as if their fates were intertwined, bound together, like vines twisting around one another. Hurt one you hurt them both. It was not the first time he had thought as much.

Bowater was seething and Mississippi Mike was cursing out loud. The river man cursed with a vehemence that did not seem possible for a man with a gut wound, as if the whole thing had been in his head, and now in the excitement of the moment was forgotten. They had barely rung up two bells when the first Union ram hit the Lovell broadside with a crash that they could hear plain as could be, even over the gunfire, even a quarter mile away. The Lovell seemed to fold right around the Yankee’s bow, like a dishrag draped over a clothesline. She rolled hard and began to settle even as the Yankee was still driving into her. “Oh, son of a bitch! They done for her! Son of a whore!” Sullivan ranted. He stood up from the stool, not quite straight, hand on the butt of one of his pistols.

Bowater ignored him. “Baxter, come left. We’ll make for the second ram. Tarbox, see that the gun crew in the bow fires into that ram, there, the one to the west. Keep them at it, fast as they can.”

It was like chess, a furious, waterborne game of chess, with the pieces all moving at once, the situation changing by the second.

“There goes Sumter! Damn me, there goes Sumter!” Sullivan gasped, pointing. Sumter was racing for the first Yankee ram, which was still trying to dislodge itself from the Colonel Lovell. Bowater watched, transfixed. The actual impact was hidden from him by the wreck of the Lovell, but he could see the Yankee roll under the impact, see the debris lifted in the air.

He imagined he would have heard the sound of the impact if the gunfire had not been so intense.

Then the Colonel Lovell sank, went right down as if it had never been meant to float. She settled on the bottom with only the upper deck still visible, an island in midriver on which the survivors of her crew huddled.

The smoke from the Union ironclads was spreading down-river, and the River Defense Fleet was adding its own, and visibility was getting worse, with patches of smoke like cotton batting hanging over the water. The second ram was lost from sight, but just for an instant, and then it burst out of the cloud that enveloped it, bearing down hard on the General Bragg.

Bowater could make out the big letter M hanging between the Yankee’s chimneys. He searched his memory, pictured the rams anchored at Plum Point Bend. Monarch-she was called Monarch.

“Meet her, meet her,” Bowater called to Baxter at the wheel. They were four hundred yards downriver of the Yankee Monarch and the Bragg. If the Yankee ran the Bragg down, then the General Page would be there to do the same to the Yankee.

“Look here, Sammy, look here!” Sullivan said, with a renewed strength in his voice. “There goes the Beauregard and the Price! Lord, they’re gonna spit-roast that Yankee!”

The Beauregard and the General Price were racing for the Monarch, the Beauregard charging at her starboard side, the Price her larboard. They were like two hands clapping together to smash a mosquito between them, while the Yankee, seemingly oblivious, charged forward, bow still aiming for the General Bragg.

“Come on, come on,” Bowater caught himself muttering. The Yankee was going to be torn apart in this collision, smashed in on both sides. In a wild confusion of chimneys and black smoke, thrashing paddles and bow guns blazing away, the ships came together.

And suddenly there was empty space, just water and smoke, a gap between the Confederate rams as the Monarch slipped right between the two.

“No! No! No!” Sullivan screamed and the two River Defense ships hit, nearly head-on, bow to bow. The Price’s chimneys leaned forward, hesitated, then toppled over, as the two vessels, each still under a full head of steam, pounded against each other. The Beau-regard smashed into the Price’s wheel box and ripped it away-box, wheel, shaft, everything-tore it clean off the side of the ship and dragged it along, hung up on the bow, a mass of iron and wood debris, nothing more.

“All right, here we go,” Bowater said. He was sickened by the scene. Nine Confederate rams against the two Yankees and the Yankees were decimating them. He rang four bells. Vengeance had no place in the heart of the professional naval officer, he knew, but this was different. “Right for him,” he told Baxter. “Just forward of the wheelhouse.”

The General Page surged ahead. Bowater could hear the note of the paddle wheels go up as, somewhere down below, Hieronymus Taylor cracked open the steam valve and let her go.

The General Bragg was just ahead of them, two hundred yards, twisting wildly to get out of the way of the Monarch racing down on her. Forward, the Page’s bow gun fired and a hole appeared in the Yankee’s deckhouse, but the Yankee did not slow. Instead it turned with the Bragg, keeping its bow directed at the Bragg as the Bragg tried to circle away.

When they hit, it was a glancing blow, the Monarch striking the Bragg aft and sheering off, tearing up some wood, but little else. And now Bowater was looking right at the Yankee’s broadside.

He rang four bells again, let Taylor know they needed it all. A hundred yards between them and the Yankee seemed to sense the danger. Bowater saw the paddle wheels stop, saw them reverse, the Federal ram trying to back out of the danger.

Oh, no, you won’t, you bastard… Fifty yards. The fire from the Union ironclads was terrific, the shells shrieking past. Bowater felt a jar in the deck as a shell struck somewhere aft, a clanging sound as another struck something metal. He turned around. The larboard chimney had folded like a wilting flower, half the guy wires snapped.

Thirty yards. He could see men on the Monarch’s hurricane deck. Sharpshooters were peppering the Page with minie balls, he could hear the familiar thud as they struck wood. The far right window of the wheelhouse was shot out, the sound of breaking glass delicate against the backdrop of heavy guns.

Twenty yards and the Yankee put his helm hard over, paddle wheels full ahead, and the nimble ram spun around on her center, and the broadside disappeared as she came bow-on to the Page.

“You whoremonger bastard!” Sullivan roared at the Yankee ram. He had one of his pistols in his hand, a big army.44, and he was blasting away. Bowater thought he had better take it easy or he would kill himself before the Yankees did, but he had no time to dole out medical advice. He stepped into the wheelhouse and leaned over the speaking tube. “Engine room, stand by!”

He grabbed a spoke of the wheel, twisted it around, with Baxter adding his weight. The Page heeled as she leaned into the turn, spinning toward the Yankee ram, bow to bow.

They hit with an impact that threw Bowater against the wheelhouse bulkhead. His arms came up to protect himself and he put his elbow right through the glass. He heard Baxter give a grunt as his chest hit the wheel, heard the horrible sound of the General Page’s bow crushing against the Yankee’s.

The forward momentum stopped, the Page surged back, and Bowater was flung to the deck. He landed on his back in a pile of books and charts, and a half-eaten dinner that someone had left in the wheelhouse.

Baxter was clutching the wheel to keep to his feet. He twisted around, looked at Bowater, opened his mouth to speak, and a bullet blew the top of his head off. Bowater could only watch as the blood and bone flew out in a spray across the wheelhouse and the helmsman tumbled forward, a surprised look on his face, and collapsed right beside him.

Bowater climbed to his feet and looked out the glassless window. The two ships were grinding together, but the Yankee had called for turns astern and was extracting himself from the Page’s bow. Bowater grabbed the bell, gave a jingle, two bells. All right, Taylor, get us out of here.

Bowater stepped out of the wheelhouse. The minie balls were hitting like hailstones, but they made no impression on him. Mississippi Mike was lying in a heap, just forward of the wheelhouse, his arm moving feebly.

Bowater took a step toward him, heard a terrible screeching sound behind. He turned. The walking beam was making its rocking motion, up and down, pushing the paddle wheels astern, but it did not sound happy about it. That can’t be a good thing, he thought, but there was nothing for it. He knelt by Sullivan, half rolled him over.

“Cap’n Bowater… give a fella a warning…”

“You shot, Sullivan?”

“Don’t reckon…”

Bowater looked up. Ruffin Tanner was there, kneeling beside him. “Bow took a good hit, sir. Sprung some planks betwixt wind and water. We’re shipping it now, but I don’t think it’s coming in so fast the pumps can’t keep up. The bow gun went right over the side.”

Bowater nodded. “Can you take the helm?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Help me get Sullivan up first.” They each grabbed an arm and lifted, twisting Sullivan around until he was sitting up, and then leaned him back on a stanchion. The fall had opened his wound. There was a dark wet spot the size of a dinner plate on his shirt.

“Oh, hell, just when I was gettin better,” Sullivan gasped.

Tanner raced into the wheelhouse, pulled Baxter’s body out of the way, grabbed the wheel. Bowater stepped in after him. The Page and the Yankee ram were still backing away from one another, the distance opening up between them. Ramming distance.

“We’re going to circle around and give it to this son of a bitch broadside,” Bowater said. He grabbed the bell rope, rang up four bells. “Put your helm hard to larboard.”

“Hard to larboard, aye!” Tanner said and spun the wheel. Bowater was happy to have a navy man, a deepwater sailor, on the wheel, and hear the familiar brisk response to a helm command.

The screech from the walking beam was even louder now as the paddle wheels stopped, then went ahead, changing the momentum of the ship from sternway to headway.

“Wheelhouse!” Hieronymus Taylor’s voice came echoing out of the speaking tube.

“Wheelhouse here!” Bowater shouted back.

“Just thought you beats might like to know, things ain’t lookin too almighty grand down here. You can ring that fuckin bell all you want, but I don’t know how long it’s gonna do you any good!”

Bowater paused. What did one say to that? “Very well,” he shouted. Very well.

Hieronymus Taylor, as a rule not overly concerned with his own mortality, still had often wondered how a condemned man could march calmly to his death. It was, after all, the final moment, the dread end.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause, he thought, in Shakespeare’s words.

There was a strange numbness that had accompanied him down into the engine room, that awkward climb down the short ladder from boiler deck to the lowest part of the ship, on which the engines and boilers were mounted. It was like a climb up onto a gallows.

He recalled the feeling, helping Guthrie replace that fire tube, the gut-wrenching, piss-your-pants fear in the face of that dubious boiler. It was a long time past. He was almost too tired to care anymore, so sick of being afraid that he barely had the energy for it. That, he imagined, was how men went to their deaths. Since the Battle of New Orleans, since the horror of the boiler explosion that had wiped out his black gang, Taylor had pondered considerably on his reluctance to work around boilers. Now, in the middle of another fight, in a flimsy, unarmored ship, he was ready to admit the truth of the thing.

“I’m scared to death.” He said it out loud. He was marching up the gallows steps. He was a dead man. Why the hell not say it? “I am plumb, outright, full-blown, goddamned scared out of my wits. I’m like to shit myself, right here.” It felt good.

“What was that, Chief?” Burgoyne was checking the water levels in the gauge glass on the boiler face.

“Nothin, nothin.” Over the hiss and thump of the engines, through the deck, they could hear the thunderous gunfire and feel the vibration through the water that enveloped the hull.

Bowater rang four bells and Taylor twisted the throttle open. None of it sounded good-the pistons, the cranks, the walking beam-but it was holding together.

If somethin would just let go, it’d give me some damned thing to think about, he thought. As soon as that idea had formed in his head, he regretted thinking it-bad luck-but it was too late. The feed water pipe burst, spraying hot water all over the forward end of the engine room. A coal passer named Luke found himself right under the broken pipe. He screamed under the burning shower, dropped his shovel, and ran forward.

“Oh, come on, it ain’t even steam!” Taylor yelled after him, but the sound of the man screaming unnerved him. He swallowed hard. “Burgoyne, close that boiler up, get the steam down. Larboard boiler on line, come on now, stoke her up! We got enough water in there?”

Burgoyne slammed the damper shut and the third engineer opened the door on the second boiler, worked the valves to bring the steam on line. “Enough water for now, Chief!”

Taylor hobbled back, fast as he could on his splint, shut off the feed water valve, and the spray of near boiling water dropped off to a trickle. “Burgoyne, get a fish plate on that pipe, quick now!”

“Fish plate?”

“Yes, a damned fish plate. Please don’t tell me you don’t know what a fish plate is.”

“No, no. I knows what a fish plate is, hell yes. I just don’t know as we gots one.”

“Well look for one, if it ain’t too much trouble.”

Burgoyne hurried over to the workbench. The bell rang out, four bells again.

Taylor glared at it. Ol’ Bowater wants him some steam, huh? Got somethin in mind.

He twisted the valve full open. You can have all the steam I got, Cap’n, but it ain’t gonna be what this bucket could do on her palmiest day. The engine speed increased with the additional steam. The crank made a terrible sound. “Someone get some oil on that!” he shouted, but the end of the sentence was lost when the gauge glass on the working boiler shattered with a tinkling sound like a little bell, which might even have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the fireman’s shriek as the boiling water sprayed his bare arm and chest.

“Shut that down!” Taylor shouted. “An everyone stop screamin, goddamn it!” Burgoyne turned from the bench, took a step toward the boiler. “Not you, Burgoyne, you find the damned fish plate! Luke, you done screamin? Shut off the valve to that gauge glass.”

Luke approached it with caution, the boiling water spewing out, reached under and twisted the valve fast. The water stopped spraying. But now they did not know how much water was in the boiler.

What the hell was I afraid of? Hell, I wish the boiler would blow right now and put us out of our damned misery.

A shell hit the deckhouse overhead and Taylor jumped and felt his heart pounding hard in his chest. Well, maybe not.

Another shot hit with a clanging noise that reverberated through the engine room. Damn it, that’s the chimney, he thought. A shell had hit one of the chimneys.

Might not make any difference… Perhaps the firebox flue would continue to draw, the chimneys would continue to suck the smoke and poisonous gas up out of the engine room. Then Taylor saw the first tendrils of smoke wafting around the tops of the boilers.

Ah, damn …

Burgoyne came ambling up. “Got this here fish plate. It ain’t quite the same size as the feed water pipe.”

“Wrap some gasket material around the pipe and clamp that son of a bitch on. We got to get water into that boiler.”

“Gasket material?”

“Find some, for the love of God!”

Burgoyne stood there for a moment, an unpromising look on his face. Bowater’s voice shouted from the speaking tube. “Engine room, stand by!”

“Stand by for what?” Taylor shouted back.

The General Page began to heel over in a turn, as much as the flat-bottomed boat would heel, enough to make Taylor grab onto the throttle to steady himself and Burgoyne stumble a step or two. “Now what in hell is he doin?” Taylor wondered out loud. And then they struck.