The Sea Hunters Part 10

Arkansas came menacingly down river like a deadly serpent spouting smoke and fire at its prey. A flock of pa.s.senger pigeons burst from the trees along the edge of the river at the thunderous clap of her big sixty-four-pounders.

Below in the engine room, Chief Engineer City's stokers were furiously shoveling coal into the boilers from the nearby bunkers. The temperature continued to rise, and he shouted to his men over the noise of the guns and roaring boilers.

"The helm is calling for more steam! Shovel like the devil himself's after you!

Inside the starboard furnace, the bank of red coals was already glowing like the fires of a volcano. Shoveling as if they were possessed, the crew coal into the roaring flames before slamming the metal door and knocking the blackened latch closed with a board. Then they moved on to the next boiler and repeated the process.

"We're gaining on them, sir," Hodges said to Brown.

Before Brown could reply, a shot from Carondelet struck the forward shield of the pilothouse and bounced off, inflicting Brown with a severe contusion on his forehead as he was slammed against the hard iron wall. He lay there on the deck, feeling the throbbing of the engines THE N.

underneath him, fighting off unconsciousness as he probed the source of the blood that flowed into his eyes.

"Sir?" Hodges called out. "Will you need the surgeon?"

Brown wiped away the blood with cool detachment until he could see again. Finding no gray that indicated brain particles, he thankfully replied, "I don't think so-" His words were broken off as another shot from Carondelet struck one wall of the pilothouse and exploded against the armor. Part of the wheel was instantly sheared away and Brown was sprayed with a splash of gore that burst from pilot Hodges like juice from a crushed tomato.

The pilot crumpled to the deck, missing most of one shoulder and arm.

Another Yazoo River pilot, J. H. Shacklett, rushed up the ladder into the pilothouse to see if he could a.s.sist and was struck in the chest by the shrapnel of another exploding sh.e.l.l. He dropped to the deck on his hands and knees and tried to drag himself back toward the hatch ladder.

James Brady, a young Missourian who stretched six feet tall, had followed Shacklett into the pilothouse. Below on the gun deck when the sh.e.l.ls had struck, he looked up and saw the carnage. Abruptly grabbing a midshipman, he yelled, "Send for the surgeon and three orderlies, quickly!" Then Brady climbed into the pilothouse over the bodies and gripped the splintered spokes of the wheel.

"Stay on a course toward the Federal ironclad," Brown ordered weakly.

Brady waited for an opportunity to ram [email protected], but the river narrowed and prevented him from swinging Arkansas around on an angle.

Any hope of ramming came too late. Arkansas's superior speed soon brought her abreast of the Union ship. Broadside to broadside, the two ships raced down river, pounding away at each other.

In the thick of the battle, the accuracy of the Confederate gunners improved markedly. Sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l tore into Carondelet's stern, scrambling her steam piping and disabling her steering gear.

With pressure lost through the ruptured pipes, her speed greatly reduced and steering unmanageable, Commander Walke reluctantly ordered his helmsman to head for the nearest riverbank.

At almost the same time Brady had a.s.sumed control of the helm, Chief Surgeon H. W. M. Washington entered the pilothouse and knelt over Brown.

"I'm not seriously injured," Brown muttered. "Tend to the others first." The surgeon nodded and felt the vein on Hodges's neck. He shook his head and motioned to the orderlies. "Cover him and take him below." Then he moved to Shacklett, who, though nearly eviscerated, was still conscious. "Take him to my operating table, make him comfortable, and await my return."

After the orderlies carried out their grisly duties and removed the two pilots, Washington returned to Brown. "Captain, I must examine you."

Brown had struggled to his feet and was standing feebly next to Brady at the wheel. He stood in stony silence as Washington probed the gash on his forehead, unrolled a wide bandage, and wrapped it around the top of his head.

"You've a hard head," said Washington as he finished.

"So my father used to tell me," Brown replied with a taut grin.

By now Tyler had returned upriver in an attempt to help the crippled Carondelet- Lieutenant Commander Gwin, captain of Tyler, gave the order to a detachment of army sharpshooters that had been a.s.signed to his boat. "Go out on deck and begin firing at that d.a.m.ned Rebel with muskets and pistols."

Like a terrier pestering a wolf, the gunboat audaciously pulled alongside Arkansas as the riflemen began raking the deck of the much larger ironclad with small-arms fire.

"Stay with the Yankees, Mr. Brady," ordered Brown. "I'm going below to direct the fire."

"I'll stick to them like mola.s.ses," Brady said gamely.

Brown dropped down to the gun deck, his boots scratching on the sand that had been spread to catch spilled blood. Just then, three of the broadside guns were fired in one huge burst. With a colossal roar, the sh.e.l.ls hurtled across the water toward the disabled Carondelet. At the same time Arkansas's bow guns swiveled their muzzles at Tyler, now only a few yards away. Brown watched the results of the pointblank barrage with grim satisfaction.

Pieces of Tyler exploded into the air as the little gunboat shuddered from stem to stern. At the same time, on the opposite side of the Rebel ironclad, sh.e.l.ls smashed into Carondelet, heeling her starboard deck underwater and flooding her gun deck. At the same moment, a bullet from a pistol held by a Union officer on board Tyler cleanly entered the casemate through an open gun port and struck Brown in the temple, miraculously bouncing off and becoming lost in the smoke.

For the second time in less than half an hour, Isaac Brown fell to the deck nearly senseless.

Lieutenant Wharton, in command of the port broadside guns, shouted, "The captain's been hit! Take him to the surgeon!"

With the battle raging around him, Brown slowly opened his eyes, focused them, sat looked around. As he began to pull himself to his feet, Acting Master Samuel Milliken ran over and grasped him by the arm.

"Sir, you should stay down. Your head is bleeding."

"I'll survive," Brown murmured. Shaking off Milliken, he staggered toward the bow gunports where he could see the effects of his ship's well-aimed fire.

Carondelet was a shambles: her armor shattered, engines disabled, and some thirty of her crew dead and wounded by the Rebel ironclad that until an hour ago was only a cursory report by spies. She sat impotent as Arkansas swept past. Clouds of steam billowed into the air from her severed pipes as her panicked crew leaped from every opening over the side into the muddy river.

Brown stepped out onto the roof of Arkansas's casemate and called out to his old friend Henry Walke. It was never known whether Walke heard him or not, but there was no reply. Leaving the battered Carondelet hanging in the willows along the bank, Brown ordered helmsman Brady to pursue Tyler and Queen of the West.

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances the battle would have been considered the end to a fine day's job, but for the Arkansas and her crew it was only a prelude. As injured as his head might be, Brown's mind was still active and functioning. "I'm going below," he informed Executive Officer Stevens. "Don't let up our fire."

The bandage on his head stained a deep red, Brown made his way to the engine room. "Good G.o.d!" he gasped as he was struck by a wave of fiery air.

The temperature in the engine room was hovering at 130 degrees and rising. The firemen were stripped to the waist, their bodies blanketed with coal dust that adhered to their sweat, their faces beet red.

Eyes watered nonstop from the heat. Every man felt as if his skin were scorched.

Stevens peered down through the hatch and yelled to Brown. "I've arranged for relief. We'll rotate the engine crew into shifts. The second group is coming down now."

Brown stared at Chief Engineer City, who had trouble keeping his head up as he bravely fought to keep from blacking out from heat exhaustion.

"You're dead on your feet, Mr. City. You'd better go topside for a while."

City shook his head. "The breechings between the furnaces and the smokestacks have been shot away. We can't get any draft in here."

The injured captain helped the nearly prostrate engineer up the ladder toward the cooler gun deck above. After City emerged from the engine room, he collapsed. One of the sailors on deck splashed a tin ladle of water in his face to revive him. City sputtered, shook the cobwebs from his brain, and spoke down to Brown.

"One more thing, captain," he rasped as he struggled to inhale cooler air. "I can't give you more than twenty pounds of steam."

Arkansas had started out with 120.

"Tend to these men," Brown ordered Stevens. "No more than fifteen minutes down in that h.e.l.lhole. And make sure they have an ample supply of fresh water. If you want me, I'll be in the pilothouse."

Clutching his throbbing head, Brown stepped into the pilothouse Over the blood of the dead and wounded. He placed an arm on Brady's shoulder. "How goes the old Arkansas?" he asked.

"Still full of fight, captain. But we won't be ramming anyone. I barely have enough speed to make headway."

"No returning upriver then?"

"Absolutely not. If we weren't steaming with the current, a man could walk faster than we're traveling."

"Then we'll be entering the devil's sanctuary at a distinct disadvantage, " said Brown, contemplating their reception by Admiral Farragut's combined river- and ocean-going fleet that waited around the final bend of the Yazoo only two miles ahead.

There would be no escape for Arkansas. Stretching from riverbank to riverbank, the thirty-seven warships of the Union Mississippi River Squadron sat anch.o.r.ed as far as the eye could see. Their black hulls, forest of masts, and endless rows of smokestacks fanned an impenetrable gauntlet bristling with over a thousand guns.

"Oh, dear lord," moaned Brady at the horrendous sight.

Brown settled onto a high stool so he could peer through a slit in the shattered armor of the pilothouse. "Straight down the middle, Mr.

Brady. We want to hit every ship we shoot at."

Brady's chin was trembling in fear at the shocking sight of so many ships with their guns aimed, in his mind at least, directly at him.

Sweat ran down his face. Still, his hands remained steady on the splintered helm.

"Yes, sir," he said in a determined voice. "Straight down the middle."

The cry echoed from ship to ship within the Union fleet. "The Arkansas is coming!" The drummers on board began beating general quarters.

Unable to make headway and maneuver into a position to fire a clear shot, the Union fleet, despite their overwhelming firepower, suffered a great handicap. Not believing Arkansas and her commander would dare take on the entire fleet, Farragut and his fleet were not prepared.

They had been caught napping, without steam in their boilers and few guns primed and loaded.

Grim and dedicated, the men on Arkansas could only pray they could survive the coming holocaust of fire as the four-knot current carried them into the jaws of the monstrous fleet of ships lying on every side of them.

The Confederate ironclad soon pulled even with the first ship in line, tf Admiral David Farragut's flagship, U.S.S. Har ord, with her twenty nine-inch guns. The guns on Arkansas's bow spat out a deadly blast of iron. The big, deep ocean-draft warship was caught unprepared and was immediately ravaged by the ironclad's well-placed sh.e.l.ls.

Hartford's anchor, two boats, and several sections of her railings were blown away by the hail of iron as her crew ran for cover.

The gunners on Arkansas were free to fire from all sides without fear of striking a fellow Rebel, and they took advantage of the opportunity.

Aiming at every point on the compa.s.s, their continuous fire could not fail but strike a target. It truly was a turkey shoot, Brown thought.

Next in line was the screw sloop Iroquois, then the river ironclad Benton, the steam sloop Richmond, and the armored ferryboat Ess.e.xAll were savaged by the mad Confederate ironclad as it steamed past, guns blazing from all ten ports.

The wind had died and the smoke from the three hundred cannon that could be trained on Arkansas soon created a dense black shroud that hung over the water. Unable to see, the Federal gunners were forced to use the muzzle flashes of Arkansas's cannon to guide their sh.e.l.l placement. In the crossfire, they struck their own ships almost as often as they did the Confederate ironclad. A cry rose from the Union ships to cease firing until the air cleared.

On board the Union gunboat Sciota, her commanding officer, Reigard Lowry, ordered his eleven-inch gun to fire at the grotesque brown intruder. The first shot struck the Rebel's casemate, but bounced high off the armor and exploded harmlessly in midair above the stern. Lowry watched carefully as another sh.e.l.l crashed into the ironclad's side.

The upper half of a body fell from a gunport. The man had been leaning out of the casemate, swabbing the gun barrel, when he had been blown in half by the blast.

Lieutenant Barbot was in charge of the battery of guns on Arkansas where the man was killed. He stared sickened at the sight of the lower half of the torso that was lying in a spreading pool of blood. Fearing the horrifying remains would demoralize his crew, already shaken by hours of continuous battle, he ordered one of his gunners to toss the carca.s.s over the side.

"I can't!" the gunner cried loudly over the roar of the guns.

"You see, lieutenant, that is my brother."

Barbot performed the ghastly duty himself.

Lieutenant George Gift, a stout Tennessean with a great breadth of shoulders, was directing the fire of the bow guns when a Union sh.e.l.l struck Arkansas's armor just to the side of the port gun. "That was a near hit!" he shouted to his crew of gunners.

"Don't worry, lieutenant," said a young powder carrier, "they say that lightning never strikes the same spot twice." The words were barely out of the lad's mouth when another sh.e.l.l burst through the port and exploded with ferocious force directly inside the gun deck. Gift's hat was blown from his head over the side, and his hair and beard were instantly singed to the skin by fire.

On the deck around him, lying like broken and cast-off wax figures, sixteen of his gunners lay dead and wounded. Most of them were dreadfully maimed by the splinters that sprayed from the wood planking behind the iron shield. The decks were set ablaze by the sh.e.l.l, and Gift quickly manned a pump and extinguished the fire. As he washed down the deck, his stream of water pa.s.sed over the youth who just moments before had spoken to him.

The body of the boy was mutilated unmercifully, one leg blown completely apart at the thigh. His head was barely attached to his neck, by a mere thread of tissue. He had died before he struck the deck.

At the aft end of the casemate, Lieutenant Charles Read, already a veteran of the battle for New Orleans and destined for fame on the C.S.S. Florida, directed his crew who manned the twin thirty-twopound guns that fired astern. Calm and collected, he stood whistling if he were standing in line for a theater ticket.

He seemed amused as the solid shot struck the armor on the casemate and bounced away flattened, while sh.e.l.ls burst into a thousand fragments.

Sh.e.l.ls from Arkansas's guns cut across the brief distance that separated her from the Union gunboat Lancaster Although the captain of Lancaster had directed his Crew to cover the boilers with chains to deflect cannon shot, the protection proved inadequate against Arkansas's big rifled guns. Two sh.e.l.ls Penetrated the plate armor on the side of the ship and continued through the timbers into the boilers. Scalding water and steam burst throughout the vessel, boiling the men in the engine room like lobsters in a pot. A dozen men screamed in chorus from burning agony, their anguished cries heard aboard Arkansas. In the s.p.a.ce of only thirty seconds, they fell dead, the flesh cooked from their bones. The remaining members of the crew, under a deluge of cannon fire, jumped into the river to avoid certain death by the superheated steam.

Brady the pilot clenched the wheel in helplessness as Arkansas charged through the Union sailors struggling to stay afloat in the muddy water, clinging to whatever debris they could find to keep from drowning. Brady never knew whether any of Lancaster's crew were chewed up by Arkansas's twin screws.

At last, Arkansas was through the worst of it. She was badly mauled, her armor punched entirely through in places and her engines barely operational, yet she was still afloat, making steam, her guns still firing in defiance.

Ahead lay but one solitary ship, a Union ironclad flying the square banner of a flag officer. It was Benton, commanded by Commodore David Dixon Porter, the last vessel in the Union gauntlet, and considered one of the most powerful on the river.

"I think I can ram this one," Brady said to Brown. "The current seems stronger through here and is pushing us at a fair speed."

Too late, Brown observed a lookout on board Benton frantically motioning toward Arkansas. With a sudden burst of speed, the Union ironclad slipped from the path of the avenging Confederate and swung toward the opposite side of the river.

"Pour a broadside into her," Brown yelled down to the gun deck.

The exhausted and b.l.o.o.d.y gunners gave their last measure of strength and blasted out their final volley. The Union ship was raked by a storm of sh.e.l.ls. The crew on the gun deck of Benton were decimated, falling like gra.s.s under a scythe.

Admiral Farragut was furious that the lone Confederate ship had escaped the combined might of two fleets. He ordered the small, fast river steamer Laurel Hill to give chase. Quickly making steam, the heavily armed steamboat set off after the badly shattered ironclad.

The attempt came too late. Their quarry was free of the gauntlet at last.

Arkansas, looking for all the world like a bizarre barge heaped with iron sc.r.a.p, navigated the dogleg bend in the river above Vicksburg and finally came under the protection of the Confederate Army gun batteries sitting high atop the rocky cliffs of the Rebel stronghold.

Isaac Brown shielded his eyes from the sun and peered astern at the smoke from the advancing Laurel HilL "Shall we dawdle until she's within range?" he said quietly to faithful Brady at the helm.

Brady shook his head. "We'll be lucky to have enough steam to make it to the dock."

"Then take her in," Brown said, Pounding the pilot's back. "We've fought enough for one day."

On the hills of Vicksburg, thousands of soldiers, joined by a vast mob of local citizens, greeted the weary brown ship with loud cheers.

Alerted by the thunder of guns upriver, they had learned of the battle from a rider on horseback, who witnessed the spectacle from sh.o.r.e before racing into town. As Arkansas slipped alongside the dock, they ran down to the river to offer their heartfelt congratulations.

Led by three company bands, dispatched from the army in response to news of the glorious fight, the onlookers waved wildly at the gallant men who climbed dazed and exhausted onto the open deck of the ironclad.

Begrimed with gunpowder and bleeding from wounds suffered from flying wood splinters, they stood mute and indifferent to the spirited reception.