Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo Page 10

  Inside Manassas, it became chaos. The sailors were singing at the top of their lungs, the Union ships were sounding their warnings, and the vibration of the propeller shaft through the deck was making Austin’s feet numb. He peered through the tiny port at the vessel looming above.

  They were ten yards from Richmond when Riley’s flare streaked skyward.

  “Fire the gun,” Warley shouted to the gun captain.

  The shot from the cannon struck the side of Joseph H. Toone and exited from the other side. Then Richmond’s bell began to ring the call to arms. In the confusion, Austin never hesitated in his advance and never deviated from his course. Hands firmly on the wheel, he steered Manassas directly into the side of Toone. The cast-iron ram performed as designed. It parted the planks of the frigate like a knife through the belly of a fish. The ram wedged between a pair of thick ribs two feet below the waterline. Water poured into the hull through a six-inch gash.

  Fortunately, it was not a fatal blow.

  ON BOARD MANASSAS, Austin touched the tip of his fingers to his forehead. When he brought them away and into the light, he could see red. At impact his head had slammed into a bulkhead and opened a cut. He dabbed at the wound with his handkerchief. Later he could tend to the wound—right now it was time to make another run at the Union ship.

  “Full astern,” he shouted down the hatch to Hardy.

  In Manassas’s engine room, one of the condensers had sprung a leak, and the hold was filled with a thick cloud of steam. A crewman had been badly burned and lay off to one side, moaning. Hardy diverted the steam through one of the side ports on Manassas—a device designed to repel boarders by blasting them with a stream of scalding water and steam. Tying a rag over the split condenser pipe, he slammed the controls into full astern.

  But Manassas did not move.

  As soon as the Union officers organized their crews to begin firing, Manassas would be taking direct broadsides. Austin wasn’t confident that the armor plating could withstand such an attack. He spun the wheel hard to starboard in an attempt to free his command.

  Manassas shuddered as the propellers began to find purchase.

  “Get us out of here,” Warley yelled to Austin.

  Austin still had no idea the ram was wedged in Toone’s hull. On Toone, a seaman aimed at Manassas with a black-powder revolver. He was just about to squeeze off a round when a thin stream of scalding water struck him in the face. Screaming in pain, he flipped over the side into the river. At that instant, Manassas’s propeller shaft slowed, then reversed direction. The four-bladed bronze prop began to bite at the muddy water.

  Deep inside Toone, the iron bolts holding the ram to the solid wood bow began to squeal like a pig stuck by a saber. Something had to give, and it would not be the interwoven layers of hardwood forming the bow. Manassas crabbed its way sideways.

  And then, like a string of firecrackers being ignited, the nuts began to pop off.

  The nuts, with portions of the bolts still attached, shot across the cargo hold of Toone and embedded themselves in the far wall. All at once, the ram was pulled from the bow of Manassas. With the wheel turned to the locks, the Confederate ram had little choice but to respond to the helm. Once free, the vessel slammed full abeam into Toone. Richmond and Toone had been anchored perpendicular to the current, with their anchors upstream. This allowed the Union vessels a margin of safety in case of attack—the cannon were pointing upriver toward the enemy.

  Manassas slipped under one of the hawsers holding the anchor.

  The thick line slapped against the rounded wooden deck and pulled tight. Deep below the Mississippi River, Toone’s anchor was wedged against the hulk of a sunken French schooner. The wreck had lain in the mud for nearly a century and was stuck as fast as if encased in cement.

  “Get us out of here,” Warley yelled to Austin.

  Austin still had no idea the ram was wedged in Toone’s hull.

  “I’m backing out,” he shouted. “We’ll come at her again.”

  Manassas lurched in reverse. The inside of the ship quickly filled with smoke.

  “I’ve got no draft for the fires” Hardy yelled topside, “and one of the condensers is blown. We’re now down to a single engine.”

  Austin backed away to assess the damage.

  As soon as Manassas engaged Richmond, the rest of the Confederate flotilla sprang into action. The tugs Watson and Tuscarora raced past. Attached to their sterns were a total of five burning fire rafts, and the two ships were looking for a target. Just then, the guns of Richmond opened up. The Union gunners were firing blind—shells began raining out from every direction.

  Manassas backed away a short distance in the fog, and Warley assumed control. Almost at once, he noticed that the ship was responding sluggishly.

  “Something is wrong,” he shouted to Austin.

  Just then Hardy popped his head through the hatch from the engine room. Hardy’s face was covered with soot, and his eyes were as red as a Washington apple. In one hand, he held an ax.

  “I can see up through the deck,” he shouted. “The stack is attached and dragging.”

  With Austin supporting him on the slick deck, the two men hacked off the smokestack. It floated a short distance, then sank from sight. Climbing back down into the pilothouse, Hardy addressed Warley.

  “Sir, we’re damaged,” Hardy said. “The ram is gone, and we’re down to one engine. Other than our single gun, we’re completely defenseless.”

  Warley nodded and turned his crippled vessel upstream.

  “There will be time to fight another day,” he said slowly.

  When it was all said and done, the battle at the Head of the Passes decided little. The Union navy suffered damage that they repaired, and the blockade was not broken. Even so, the actions of the Confederate fleet gave the citizens of New Orleans a much-needed shot of confidence. The crew of Manassas was hailed as heroes, and the vessel was towed to the shipyard for repairs. The vessel, which had entered its first battle as a privateer, officially entered into the roles of the Confederate navy. Engineer Hardy was promoted, and Charles Austin was made her official master.

  The repairs necessary on Manassas stretched on for months. Her appearance was now changed. Instead of two thin stacks, she now sported a single thick one.

  FOR UNION PLANNERS, the Mississippi River was a linchpin to winning the war. The river was the artery for shipping and commerce, and it tied together the western Confederate frontier. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln summed it up succinctly: “The Mississippi is the backbone of the Rebellion. It is the key to the whole situation.”

  The most important city was New Orleans—a hotbed of rebellion and unrest as well as a growing center of shipbuilding and weapons manufacture. By 1861, a total of five shipyards and twelve docks were operating, and the city was second only to Norfolk, Virginia, as a Confederate shipbuilding center. New Orleans had inventors and risk-takers. The first Confederate submarines were tested in Lake Pontchartrain, and newly developed torpedoes (sea mines) were designed there. Equally important, a large number of the cotton traders funding the rebellion lived in the city, and the blockade runners shipping the cotton to London loaded their cargo at the wharves.

  Primary defense for the city was provided by Fort St. Philip on the east side of the river and Fort Jackson on the west. The pair of forts were located some seventy-five miles downstream, near the Head of the Passes. Fort St. Philip was considered to be the stronger of the two. Built of brick and rock and covered with sod, it had originally been constructed by the Spanish. St. Philip had a total of fifty-two guns pointed at the river. To the west, across the expanse of muddy water, Fort Jackson had been built by the Union before the war and bristled with seventy-five guns.

  In addition to the pair of forts, a second barrier to the Union navy had been laid in place. Stretched across the river between the two forts was a heavy chain that was supported by the sunken hulks of six sacrificed schooners designed to snag any Union vessels venturing
upstream.

  At first glance, the Confederacy fielded what appeared to be a formidable defense.

  “SHIP ISLAND,” DAVID Farragut said quietly.

  Folding his brass spyglass, Farragut slid it into the pocket of his uniform jacket. Farragut was one of the Union navy’s few flag officers, and his uniform proudly displayed this fact. His epaulets featured the stars denoting his rank. Unlike most of his officers and men, Farragut’s uniform had been carefully tailored and fit him perfectly. Farragut was not a tall man, but his erect posture and squared shoulders made him appear larger. A sense of his own importance infused his being and radiated outward to envelop those around him. Farragut was a man comfortable with leading, comfortable with decisions, and comfortable with fate. The fleet he commanded had left Hampton Roads, Virginia, on February 2. Nine days later, they stopped in Key West, and nine more found him here in the Gulf of Mexico off the Mississippi River.

  “Anchor and assemble the flotilla,” Farragut said to his second in command.

  It was no secret that Farragut’s fleet was preparing to attempt a run up the Mississippi River. On April 1, rebel spies reported that all but two of the vessels had crossed the bar and were now in the river. In New Orleans, work proceeded around the clock to finish the Confederate ironclads Louisiana and Mississippi.

  Louisiana was a large vessel, 264 feet in length with a 62-foot beam. Her armament was to consist of a pair of 7-inch rifled guns, a trio of 9-inch shell guns, a quadrant of 8-inch shell guns, and seven 32-pounders. Mississippi was no less a vessel. Some 260 feet in length with a beam of 53 feet 8 inches, she was due to carry a battery of twenty guns of various sizes.

  The problem was that the two ships were far from final commissioning.

  Atop the ramparts of Fort Jackson, Delbert Antoine stared west at the red sunset. The sight was unsettling to the native Louisianian, and he shared his feelings with his partner, Preston Kimble. The date was the eighteenth of April.

  “The red of the sky,” Antoine said, “looks like blood.”

  Kimble leaned over to spit off the brick walkway atop the parapet into the moat below. “If our guns don’t sink the Yankees,” Kimble said, “that gator in the moat will eat them.”

  Both Kimble and Antoine were early conscripts to the cause. They were dressed in early Confederate gray wool uniforms, now showing wear. Antoine’s eyes scanned the fort. It was pentagon-shaped and stood twenty-five feet above the water. The walls were constructed of red brick and were twenty feet thick.

  In the area of the sixteen heavy guns that pointed toward the water, the brick had been reinforced with thick granite slabs. Inside the center of the fort was a diagonal-shaped defensive barracks where five hundred men could take shelter during bombardments. The sight of the substantial construction gave Antoine little comfort.

  “They’re coming for us,” Antoine said. “I can feel it.”

  “We’ll blow them out of the water,” Kimble said, “like shooting ducks in a pond.”

  Antoine nodded. But he knew his friend’s words were just bluster. If Kimble wasn’t afraid, he was just plain stupid—or crazy.

  A FEW MILES down the river from Fort Jackson, around a bend and tied to the shore, Franklin Dodd checked the lines holding his barge to the trees. It was dark, and a stiff wind was blowing. Even so, thousands of frogs were croaking, and the sound was making Dodd angry.

  “Damn frogs,” he said to powder monkey Mark Hallet.

  “They’ll hush up when we start firing,” Hallet noted.

  An assignment to one of the numerous mortar boats was not a job relished by a Union sailor. Their job was to soften up the forts before Farragut and his ships made their run upriver. The crews’ job was simple. They would load their gun, then stand with mouth agape to avoid having their eardrums blown out. The gun would fire, then they would reload and fire again. Hundreds upon hundreds of times, the exercise would be repeated. By the end of the war, most of the crews would find themselves deaf.

  Early on the morning of April 19, the mortar boats opened fire.

  The first round slammed into the base of Fort Jackson. For five days the barrage would keep up around the clock. By noon of the first, half the Confederates were trembling.

  HALLET POURED A powder charge into the mortar. For the last few days, he had felt a pressure in his head he could not shake. He would yawn and that would relieve the pressure some, but still it always returned. He felt a hand on his arm and stared at Dodd. His friend’s mouth was moving, but Hallet could not make out the words. Wiping some powder from his blackened face with a rag, he put his ear next to Dodd’s mouth. He could smell Dodd’s breath, and it was not pleasant.

  “The word is Farragut’s making his run tonight,” Dodd shouted.

  Hallet smiled at the words, but he was worried. He had been unable to stop his body from shaking for the last two days. The only thing that brought him relief was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. So he rocked until the gun fired. Then he ran over and set another powder charge.

  ON MANASSAS, LIEUTENANT Warley knew the Union was coming. He reasoned that the first order of business for the Federals would be to send a couple of boats upriver to try to breach the chain obstruction stretching across the river. The problem was that Manassas was still upriver.

  The last few months had reinforced Warley’s opinion of Manassas. The vessel was underpowered, lightly armored, and poor-handling. Even so, if Warley sighted an enemy ship, he was ready to ram her. For the coming battle, Warley could count on little help. Louisiana and Mississippi were still not fully operational. Both had been towed down from New Orleans and were now anchored by the forts to be used as floating gun batteries.

  The Union gunboats Pinola and Itasca had been tasked with blowing the Confederate chain obstruction. Sneaking upriver, a crew from Itasca rowed a small boat to the obstruction and attached an explosive charge. The charge failed to explode. Luckily, one of the gunboats fouled itself in the chain and, attempting to free itself, pulled the chain apart, creating an opening large enough for the Union fleet to breach.

  The Mississippi was open, but the Union navy faced a gauntlet of murderous fire.

  ON APRIL 23, Manassas and her tender, Phoenix, arrived off the forts. Shells were still raining down from the mortar boats as Warley maneuvered into place. So far, Fort Jackson had been the hardest hit. Through the smoke, Warley could see that parts of her outer wall were pocked from the rain of shells. Continuing to scan the fort with his spyglass, he could see the Confederate flag still flying atop the pole.

  Just then, one of the Fort Jackson guns returned fire.

  APRIL 23 MELDED into April 24. Admiral Farragut rolled his charts and stared at the men around the table in his stateroom aboard his flagship Hartford “Are there any more questions?” Farragut asked.

  The men shook their heads in the negative.

  “Then we go at my signal,” he said quietly.

  The men filtered off to return to their commands and a strange quiet.

  Just past 2 A.M., two red lanterns were hoisted atop the mizzen peak of Hartford.

  From this point forward, there was no turning back.

  MANASSAS WAS TIED to the bank just off Fort St. Philip; because of earlier problems, she now sported but a single smokestack, but that had failed to solve all her problems. Earlier, the ship’s engineer had reported a balky condenser. Warley ordered it changed before the battle. The pilot was testing the steam power as Warley paced the decks.

  “Is the gun crew ready?” he shouted to Lieutenant Reed.

  “Yes, sir,” Reed said. “I checked with them a half hour ago, as you instructed.”

  “Fireman and black gang?”

  “All in place. The condenser is repaired—they’re making steam,” Reed noted.

  “Are the steam and water ports operational?” Warley asked.

  “If we need to repel boarders,” Reed said, “they’ll be in for a shock.”

  Just then, the pilot interrupted.<
br />
  “Sir, we have steam in the boiler and power to the propeller,” he said.

  “Then cast us off,” Warley said.

  THE BARRAGE FROM the mortar boats increased. Delbert Antoine peered through the gloom for signs of the Union navy. The air was thick with the smell of spent powder and brick dust. The temperature was cool, like the inside of a tomb.

  “I think I see something,” Preston Kimble shouted.

  Kimble was fifty feet from Antoine and closer to the water.

  Like an evil mourner shrouded in black, the dim outline of Hartford slowly materialized on the river. Kimble reached for the pistol lying on the wall of the rampart and fired a minié ball at the approaching wraith. The effect was like trying to use a flyswatter to kill a bird, but Kimble didn’t care.

  And just then the water batteries of Fort Jackson opened up with a roar.

  THE BATTLE BEGAN at 3:40 A.M.

  Lieutenant Warley opened the roof hatch on Manassas and stared at the sky. Mortar shells arced through the air with a flash of light from their burning fuses. He watched as the shells reached the apex of their trajectory and slowed. Then, looking like spinning Fourth of July sparklers, they accelerated and plunged into the Confederate forts. It was an eerie sight. The air was already clouded with smoke that hung low over the water and billowed and rolled like waves in the ocean.

  In the engine room of Manassas, Chief Engineer Dearing, who had transferred over from Tuscarora, was stoking a hellish fire of his own creation. Dearing knew the Confederate ram would need all the steam he could make, and he took the boilers to the limit just as a Federal ship appeared through the gloom.