Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo Page 15

  “I’ll send down some of the gun crew and deckhands to help,” Rhind offered.

  At that instant, Keokuk rolled over a wave and the hull flexed. A bolt that held the planking to the ribs shot across the hold like a minié ball and stuck in the far wall.

  “We need to anchor,” Wheeler shouted, as he ran to inspect the damage.

  An hour later, four miles from Fort Sumter and two miles off Morris Island, Rhind ordered the anchor dropped. The engineers mounted a brave defense, but Keokuk’s short life was over. Throughout the night, the weather was calm with fair seas. And for a time it seemed that Wheeler and his crew might save the battered vessel.

  Fate, however, had another plan. The winds kicked up at 5 A.M. It was nothing that a healthy ship would even notice, but Keokuk was far from healthy. As the vessel flexed, the cotton batting that Wheeler’s crew had stuffed between the planking became saturated, then worked loose. Keokuk began sinking farther into the water.

  Rhind reacted by ordering parts of the damaged towers and smokestack cut loose, but the action did little to stop the inevitable. It was a battle that could not be won.

  The sun broke on April 8, and with it came stronger winds.

  “Signal for assistance,” Rhind said. “We need tugs to evacuate the wounded.”

  Wheeler climbed the ladder to the main deck. From shoes to belt line, he was soaked. He had gone twenty-four hours without sleep, and his face was etched with exhaustion.

  “Sir,” he said, saluting Rhind, “the water’s rising faster than we can handle.”

  Rhind pointed to a trio of approaching tugs.

  “Help is here, just keep her afloat until we off-load the wounded,” he said.

  “It will be an honor, sir,” Wheeler said, as he made his way back to the ladder, “but I estimate we have twenty minutes and little more.”

  It was 7:20 A.M. when Rhind and Wheeler stepped from the deck of Keokuk. As soon as the tug cast off, the ironclad began her death spasms. First she shifted bow-down, as water borne by the wind entered through her hawse pipe. Then the ironclad shuddered as the immense weight of the water settled in the lower hold and sprang the already battered planking. The second the water filled the hold, Keokuk burped a cloud of coal dust like the last gasp of a diseased smoker.

  Then she settled to the seafloor in fifteen feet of water.

  Her battered smokestack was partially visible. Keokuk had lived but six weeks.

  PHILO T. HACKETT spit tobacco juice at a nearby anthill and watched the tiny insects struggle to free themselves from the sticky mess. At fourteen, he was too young to be chewing, but he was also too young to be hiding on Morris Island under a makeshift covering of brush and limbs. Hackett had been hiding since yesterday evening. First, he had watched the battle, then he had observed the Union ironclad struggle to stay afloat before dying.

  Hackett’s father was stationed on Fort Sumter, and his mother was home, worried sick about her missing son. Crawling from his hiding place, Hackett made his way to his rowboat hidden on the lee side of the island.

  Then he quietly rowed across the water to report to General Beauregard.

  “I WANT THOSE guns,” Beauregard said.

  Adolphus La Coste nodded.

  La Coste was a civil engineer. However, in a war where all were called, he was not one to shirk responsibility. He stared at the aging lightship at the dock in Charleston.

  “I think we can do it, sir,” La Coste said, “but it is not without peril. We will be operating right under the nose of the Yankees.”

  “How long will it take, Adolphus?” Beauregard asked.

  “With the right help, a couple of weeks,” La Coste answered.

  “Whatever you need,” Beauregard said, walking away. “I want those guns.”

  Outfitting the lightship with tackle and hoist required a week. True to his word, Beauregard had given La Coste all he needed. The tackle was new, the ropes unused. A half-dozen divers sat on the deck amid a pile of freshly oiled saws, pry bars, and levers. Now it was time to do the impossible.

  A driving rain was making visibility nonexistent.

  Diver Angus Smith climbed up a Jacob’s ladder onto the deck of the lightship. His leather gloves were in tatters and his hands cut from his labors. Smith barely felt the pain, because the cold from being immersed in the chilled water had permeated his very being. For seven nights now, Smith and the other divers had rowed out on small boats to labor a fathom below the water. To avoid being seen, they used no lights. To avoid being heard, they were careful not to bang tools against the metal. Before first light, the divers retreated; each evening they came anew. Four days into the operation, they reported to La Coste that the guns were free from their mounts and that openings in the turrets had been hewn. Tonight was the first time the modified lightship had visited the site.

  “We’re doing this all by feel, sir,” Smith said. “It’s as black as night down there, but I think we have everything attached as ordered.”

  La Coste nodded, then stepped into the pilothouse near a single burning candle and stared at his pocket watch. It was nearly 4 A.M. Attaching the lines had taken longer than expected. Soon it would be light, and the minute the Yankees saw the lightship on station above Keokuk, they were sure to come. He stepped back out of the pilothouse.

  “Are all your divers out of the water, Smith?” La Coste asked.

  Smith did a quick count of the men on deck. Four were sleeping, still in their diving gear; one other had disrobed and stood in his long johns, peeing over the railing on the lee side.

  “They’re all accounted for, sir,” Smith said laconically.

  “Power to the turnstile,” La Coste ordered.

  Four Confederate sailors began walking in a circle. Their hands were gripping the oak arms of the turnstile. Slowly the thick lines were tightened until the 15,700-pound weight of the first gun was being supported only by cable and rope and chain.

  The cannon rose slowly through the water. Inch by inch by inch.

  La Coste stared at the wooden derrick on the bow. The wood creaked in protest as the joints rubbed, but it held fast. “Grease the fair ends,” he whispered to a sailor, who slathered animal fat on the lines. Then he staggered as the deck of the lightship settled from the immense weight being transferred. Almost imperceptibly, the cannon rose.

  Wiping water from his beard, La Coste peered into the depths of Keokuk’s grave.

  And then he saw it. The merest edge of the outer tube of the cannon.

  “Harder, boys,” he said a little too loudly.

  The cannon was almost at the top edge of the tower—a few more inches and it would be free. Then it stopped.

  “Mr. La Coste,” a deckhand whispered, “the tackle’s together. We can’t go farther.”

  Inches from salvation and miles from success. And the sky was becoming lighter.

  “Damn,” La Coste said. Soon they would be visible. Once they were spotted, this operation would be finished for good. “We need to move all the weight we can to the stern. That should raise the bow enough to give us the small space we need.”

  A little more—but not enough. The dangling gun muzzle clung stubbornly to the wreck. La Coste stared east—it was growing lighter. A few more minutes and he would need to abort the mission to escape detection. A span thinner than a slice of bread.

  Then the sea came to the rescue.

  Perhaps there was a storm a hundred miles offshore. Maybe somewhere the earth had trembled. Whatever the case, a large wave came from nowhere. It rolled across the placid surface of the water like a bedsheet being straightened.

  Into the trough in advance of the wave, the lightship dropped. Then, all at once, the hull of the ship rose, and the gun came free and hung on the cable.

  “Can you steer with the gun weight off your bow?” La Coste asked the captain.

  “I can sure as hell try,” the captain said.

  Three nights later, they came back and raised the second gun. It was not unt
il much later that the Union found out that Keokuk had been salvaged.

  A FEW MONTHS after the debacle off Fort Sumter, Captain Rodgers was sleeping in his cabin on Weehawken. He had been reassigned farther south, and the ironclad was riding at anchor in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia. Nehant, a second Union monitor, lay a league away. It was hot, four degrees over eighty, and the air was still. Wispy Spanish moss hung from the trees nearby, and the croak of thousands of frogs filled the air. The Union ships were waiting to intercept the newest Confederate ram.

  THE PILOT OF the Confederate ironclad Atlanta was groping his way down the Savannah River. The channel was narrow, and to escape detection he had ordered no lights lit. Atlanta was unwieldy, underpowered, and deeply drafted, all the things that made a ship hard to handle. Converted from the fast blockade runner Fingal, Atlanta had been armored and a cast-iron ram mounted to her bow. Her firepower consisted of four Brooke-rifled guns and a lethal spar-torpedo stretching ahead of the ram. Slowly, she went downriver.

  Atop Atlanta’s casement, ordinary seaman Jesse Merrill was standing watch. Even in the darkness, he could see the difference in the river astern. Atlanta was dragging her keel and churning up the river mud. The ship was dragging bottom.

  Peering forward, Merrill strained to see through the mist on the river. He thought he caught the outline of another ship, but just as he trained his eyes on the spot, Atlanta ran aground and he was pitched forward.

  “Back her up,” he heard the pilot whisper.

  Spinning her prop in the mud, the big ironclad struggled to break free.

  After a few minutes of rocking the ship back and forth, she was freed.

  Two HUNDRED YARDS away, Weehawken was closest to the Confederate ram. Her lookout was struggling to stay awake and losing the battle. Time after time as he peered through the port upriver, his head nodded as sleep overtook him.

  It was warm, and there was little fresh air. His head bobbed up and down.

  ATLANTA BACKED UP and started downriver again. Jesse Merrill continued to peer into the distance. There it was again. Low to the water and dark in color, he might have missed it except for the rounded sweep of the gun turret.

  Climbing down from the nest, he alerted the captain.

  “Take it slow,” the captain ordered. “The lookout sees a Yankee ironclad.”

  Seconds later, the pilot ran Atlanta hard aground again.

  First light poked through the view port and stabbed the lookout in the eye like a saber. Shaking his head, he wiped the slobber from his mustache, then scanned the water. Like a ghostly apparition some two hundred yards distant, Atlanta came into view. The lookout stared for a second, then sounded the alarm.

  He continued ringing the bell for a full three minutes.

  At the sound of the bell, Captain Rodgers leapt from his bed and ran to the pilothouse, still in his nightclothes. His second in command, Lieutenant Pyle, was already at his station.

  “She hasn’t moved, sir.”

  Rodgers scanned the water with his spyglass. “The crew is scurrying on deck,” Rodgers said. “If I had to guess, I’d say she’s run aground.”

  “I took the liberty of signaling Nehant, the lieutenant said, “and ordered a full head of steam from the engine room.”

  “Head straight at her,” Rodgers ordered.

  “Guns at ready,” Lieutenant Pyle said.

  “Commence firing” Rodgers said.

  It was impossible to miss. The first shot from Weehawken’s fifteen-inch gun scored a hit. It tore apart Atlanta’s casement like a fireman’s ax through a flimsy front door. And the rebel ironclad was powerless to reply. The grounding had keeled her over. Even with her guns depressed as far as they would go, when she tried to return fire, her shells sailed over the treetops along the riverbank. Weehawken’s second volley bashed in ten square feet of Atlanta’s armor and blew the gun crew off their feet.

  Number three tore off the top of the pilothouse. That was all it took.

  The captain hauled down the flag and surrendered.

  Later, Atlanta was taken to the Philadelphia Naval Yard, where she was refitted and returned to service as a Union navy vessel. Rodgers was hailed as a hero and promoted to commodore. As captain of the first monitor to defeat an ironclad in individual combat, he returned to Charleston to continue the fight against Fort Sumter.

  EIGHT MONTHS AFTER capturing Atlanta, Weehawken was a seasoned veteran. Her crew was honed by combat and their on-board routine entrenched. Day after day, she lobbed shells toward Sumter. So it was nothing unusual when she anchored off Morris Island to refill her magazine.

  Harold McKenzie was an ordinary seaman. And ordinary seamen followed orders. Even so, McKenzie could not help but mention his apprehensions to his friend Pat Wicks.

  “The weight is not being distributed correctly,” he whispered, as the two men carried a wooden crate filled with shells. “We’re putting too much forward.”

  But Wicks had other matters on his mind.

  “We’re taking on a full load. The officers must be planning another run at the forts.”

  Wicks had been wounded by shrapnel in the first attack on Sumter, and ever since he had been more than a little gun-shy. By contrast, McKenzie had just transferred to Weehawken. He was still itching to see combat.

  “Good,” McKenzie said. “It’s high time we taught the rebels a lesson.”

  But that was not to be, for McKenzie’s worst fears would soon be realized.

  That evening, as the sailors slept in their berths, a stiff wind came from land. The misplaced load of fresh munitions was making Weehawken ride low in the bow, and it took only a matter of moments for serious trouble to arise. As the first series of waves washed over the bow, the water flooded into an unsecured hatch. As the bow dropped a few inches lower, water raced into the anchor chain hawse pipe. As the water filled the lower hold, the bow quickly settled lower. Now the bilge pumps in the stem were of no use, and the ones forward could not handle the volume of water.

  A simple mistake, but it doomed Weehawken to an early grave.

  Wicks was in the top bunk, and he felt it first. A sharp jolt as the bow slipped down made his head strike the deck above, jarring him awake.

  “Mac,” Wicks shouted, “wake up.”

  McKenzie struggled to free himself from his berth, but Wicks’s warning would come a moment too late for either man. Weehawken was already going through her death throes. As the flow of water increased, her trim was upset. The water flowed into the lower hold, then quickly to one side. Like a toy ship in a bathtub, Weehawken rolled onto her starboard beam. Within seconds, the sea flooded in through the open turret ports and deck hatches and made contact with the boilers with a burst of steam.

  Then Weehawken slipped beneath the waves, taking thirty-one souls to their graves.

  IT WAS JANUARY 15, 1865, and the long and bloody war was drawing to a close. On board the monitor Patapsco, Commander Stephen Quackenbush looked forward to going home. His vessel had seen nearly constant action since the first assault on Fort Sumter, and he and his crew were weary from war. While similar in design to the rest of the monitor class, Patapsco had heavier armament that kept her constantly utilized. With the only big Parrot gun in the fleet, Patapsco could lie out of reach of the forts’ guns and fire without fear of damage. Because of this fact, Patapsco had fired more shells at the rebel defenders than any other vessel.

  With her record of accomplishments well recognized, it was little surprise that in early 1865 Patapsco was assigned the dangerous task of picket duty. Picket duty was no picnic; it was a dangerous combination of nightly scouting sorties and minesweeping in the outer harbor. Captain and crew hated it soundly.

  “We have a strong flood tide,” executive officer Ensign William Sampson said to Quackenbush, as the two men stood on the top of the turret, staring through the moonless night.

  “We’ll escort the launches and minesweeping boats inside the channel before we drift back out and provide fire suppo
rt,” Quackenbush said quietly.

  “Shall I go below and give the order to the helmsman and chief engineer for slow speed?” Sampson asked.

  “Do that. I’ll remain here and keep watch.”

  It was a choice that would save Quackenbush’s life.

  Patapsco steamed closer to the Confederate forts. Behind came the small, steam-powered launches equipped with grapnels and drags. Slowly, they passed the monitor and began the tedious task of sweeping for mines.

  Sampson reappeared topside. “I’ve ordered the guns run out, sir.”

  Quackenbush nodded. His command was now ready to provide fire support.

  The night passed with agonizing slowness as the Union ironclad drifted in and out of the channel. It is said the third time is a charm, but this did not ring true with Patapsco and her crew. As the tidal current carried the ship out of the harbor entrance for the third time after midnight, the hull struck a floating mine set only a day before.

  The device was a wooden barrel torpedo carrying a hundred pounds of gunpowder.

  Igniting when jarred, the torpedo ripped a huge hole on the port side aft of the bow. The explosion lifted Patapsco’s bow up in the air. Quackenbush and Sampson were thrown to the deck as a giant column of water rose into the air before slamming down on the gun turret.

  “Man the boats!” Quackenbush shouted.

  But it was too late. Patapsco dove beneath the waves in less than a minute and a half, down forty feet to the seabed. Sixty-two of the officers and crew went with her. Only the tip of the smokestack remained above water at low tide.

  Quackenbush and Sampson barely escaped being sucked under by the doomed monitor and were rescued by a launch.

  It was a fortunate rescue for the U.S. Navy.

  William Sampson later became superintendent of the Naval Academy and was named commander of the Atlantic squadron during the Spanish-American War. When the Spanish fleet attempted to escape Santiago, Cuba, Sampson’s fleet, utilizing his battle plans and temporarily under the command of Winfield Scott Schley, destroyed it.