The Sea Hunters Part 12

Warm and humorous exterior aside, you somehow knew this wasn't u man you'd want tracking you down a backcountry road or through u bayou.

After we explained our intentions, Sheriff Bergeron graciously loaned us the department search boat, a well-crafted aluminum vessel that had been designed and built by a prison trusty. Our only obligation was to pay one of his deputies to operate the boat.

I've also found that almost every town or city situated on or near water has a boat owned by either law-enforcement officials or the fire department. This craft, we soon discovered, was used mostly in dragging for drowning victims. The following morning, we soon gathered a small crowd of gawkers along the levee while we towed our gradiometer back and forth. Seeing the cable stretched over the stern, they constantly shouted out questions over the water. "Who drowned?

Anybody we know? How many died?" Not a one believed us when we yelled back that we were searching for an old shipwreck.

The nice thing about searching in a river versus the open ocean is that you have something to look at besides water. The surface is also much smoother, the only waves coming from the wash of a pa.s.sing towboat with a string of barges. The craft loaned to us by Sheriff Bergeron had a comfortable little cabin that kept out the sun and ridn.

Another great enjoyment that comes from working with people who have grown up and live in the surrounding neighborhood is that they tell fascinating stories. Strangers are perfect repositories for local gossip, mysteries, and secrets. I'm always more than happy to listen.

I never know when I'll hear a plot inspiration for my next book.

The deputy sheriff, appointed by Sheriff Bergeron, steered our nifty little prisoner-built boat up and down the river without complaint. He sat through the ordeal patiendy, making course changes as directed by Schob, who kept one eye glued to his range finder. Only once did the deputy Turn to me and ask, "Just what is it we're looking for?"

"An old Civil War shipwreck," I replied.

He looked at me funny. "Why for?"

I didn't think "Because it's there" would satisfy him, so I said, "It was the only Confederate boat that kicked h.e.l.l out of them d.a.m.ned Yankees."

His eyes suddenly shone like a beacon. "Hey, I like that."

It was then he pa.s.sed around a thermos of coffee. I must say one thing about southern down-home brewed coffee with chicory. If you have worms, you'll never have them again.

I wish someday to lie back in a hammock as the day drags on and the gradiometer sings its song while drinking Dom Perignon and dining on cold roast pheasant and caviar. It never hurts to think big. I usually have to settle for a baloney sandwich washed down with a bottle of geriatric fruit juice. I tell myself I must be doing something wrong.

We began our search above Free Negro Point at Mulatto Bend Landing (they have rather odd names for places along the river), four miles north of Baton Rouge. This was recorded as the site where Arkansas was run aground by her crew before she was put to the torch. The only question was, how far did she drift around and below the bend before she eventually sank?

As With most disastrous events, there were many eyewitnesses to the destruction of Arkansas, but no one recorded exactly where she blew up and sank. One account that made fascinating reading came from a book called A Conifederate Girl's Diary by Sarah Morgan Dawson. As a young teenage girl, she stood on the levee and watched the Rebel crew burn and evacuate the ship. She described Arkansas as "a clumsy, rusty, ugly flatboat with a great square box at the center, while great cannon put their noses out the sides and front. The decks were crowded with men, rough and dirty, jabbering and hastily eating their breakfast.

That was the great Arkansas! G.o.d bless and protect her, and the brave men she carries."

As teenage girls are p.r.o.ne to do, Sarah, her sister Miriam, and two friends excitedly met and flirted with the young men of the ironclad's crew after they abandoned their ship. I She was especially smitten with the naval hero Charles Read, who laughed in the face of death but who blushed with shyness when talking with the young, vivacious Sarah.

Her account put the ironclad precisely on the west bank at the river's bend when the crew set it on fire.

I accepted her version as gospel while discounting the old newspaper report of the Union Navy frigate Mississippi's being found at the gravel company site because contemporary accounts emphatically claimed Mississippi blew herself out of existence and slid under the water far to the north of downtown Baton Rouge.

One of the U.S. Navy's original steam frigates, the Mississippi grounded and burned while attempting to run the guns of the Confederate-held fort upriver at Port Hudson, a good fifteen miles from Arkansas's final resting place. George Dewey, of Manila Bay fame during the Spanish American War, was not the captain but the ship's executive officer. After being abandoned by her crew, the frigate drifted down the river ablaze until her powder magazines exploded and she went to the bottom of the river that gave her its name.

It became obvious to me that the report of workers' finding a Civil War vessel at the Thompson Gravel pit indicated the site that belonged to Arkansas, and certainly not Mississippi, which couldn't possibly have carried that far. its shattered hulk still lies deep beneath a vast swamp where the river once ran just below Prophet's Island. The sh.e.l.ls that were found were obviously from the ironclad's guns. The human skeletons are a mystery, since no bodies were left on board the Arkansas, and almost all the crew was known to have escaped the Mississippi.

The problem was to sift vague rumor from straight fact. One report had the Arkansas drifting downstream for an hour or more before she exploded. Allowing a maximum river current of four knots, Walt and I took no chances of missing our target, and extended our search lanes from a mile above the point where Arkansas was known to have struck the west bank to a point four miles below Baton Rouge, a good two miles beyond where she should have traveled in an hour and a half.

My own gut feelina was that the time/drift estimate included the interval between the moment Lieutenant Stevens left the burning vessel to when the stern, heavy with incoming water from the scuttling operation, sank a few feet and lifted the bow off the bank. Only then did she float free and allow the current to carry her around the bend and down toward Baton Rouge.

Right or wrong, I've always had this insane urge to launch my search lanes from the farthest point and work in toward my prime target area.

Most wreck hunters, on the other hand, are impatient and begin their search in the middle and work out. Who's to say who's right?

Like gold, shipwrecks are where you find them.

Beginning a mile above Free Negro Point, we worked around the bend and traveled south for nearly five miles before turning 180 degrees and beginning the upriver grid lane. So that no stone was left unturned and we wouldn't accidentally miss our wreck site, we started running our grid lanes on the east bank and worked west toward the most promising location. Except when we crossed over an occasional oil or gas pipeline, the magnetic readings were generally insignificant. The weather was balmy and the river lazy. The only traffic consisted Of six-story-high tugboats pushing huge barges. I used to watch them thread the needle between the pilings of bridges spanning the river, hoping they'd sc.r.a.pe the sides. But they never came close.

Naturally, the only anomaly that blew the gradiometer off scale we struck on the final run along the west bank. Stupid? Perhaps. But if we hadn't found our target, we at least knew where we didn't have to search again. It's called, not knowing where it is, but knowing where it ain't.

Arkansas lies under a large rock levee. Schob walked the entire area, setting plastic bottles where his magnetometer detected the presence of iron. The readings were indicative of a huge ma.s.s. When Walt finished he had almost a perfect outline of the old ironclad-165 feet by 35 feet. Not enough hard evidence for a Positive identification, but the clincher came later.

Shortly after we turned over our findings to Louisiana State archaeologists, a noted historian with a strong interest in Arkansas, prominent Baton Rouge attorney Fred Benton, led an elderly minister and longtime resident of Baton Rouge to the top of the tallest building in the city's center.

"Reverend," asked Benton, "can you show me where the Thompson Gravel Company used to be?"

The reverend nodded and raised his hand. "Right about there, on the west bank of the river."

Benton saw that the reverend's finger was pointing at the exact spot where Walt Schob and I found the one and only huge magnetic anomaly for seven miles along the river.

Walt and I rested our case.

The River War February 1862 ns, prepare to fire, Commander Henry Walke ordered the officer who directed the gun batteries on board the U.S.S.

Carondelet. Walke watched warily as his ironclad gunboat pulled into range a mile below the Confederate stronghold at Fort Donelson.

Alone, Carondelet closed the distance. The other gunboats of the Union Mississippi Piver Squadron that were ordered by Commodore Porter to support the attack on the fort were still miles down river.

Walke gave the command to open fire, and the tree eight-inch smoothLa bore guns on the front of the armored casemate spat a hail of iron shot across the broad reach of the river. Soon they were joined by the thirty-two- and forty-two-pounders on the starboard side. For two hours, the lone boat kept up a constant barrage, firing 140 sh.e.l.ls into and against the walls of the Confederate fort.

Situated in an ideal defensive position, Donelson was built on a rock bluff some 120 feet above the west bank of the water. She commanded a perfect line of fire for 180 degrees up and down the c.u.mberland River in Tennessee. Three heavy gun batteries aimed their muzzles at the water, one at the crest, the second fifty feet below, and one a mere twenty feet above the sh.o.r.eline. Sixteen guns in all, and every one threw their shot at Carondelet.

For a long while, the Union ironclad seemed immune to the missiles that exploded in the water around her. Then the 2-1/2-inch armor began to be pummeled and denied by the fort's barrage. A great roar issued from the fort as a 128-pound sh.e.l.l hurtled through the air and crashed through the casemate into the engine room.

The concussion of the blast in the boiler area felled fireman Albert Floyd. He struggled to his knees and stared dazedly at his partner, William Jeppsen, who lay face down on the deck next to him.

"By G.o.d, Billy, I'd swear that sh.e.l.l was chasing our boiler crew."

Not a sound came from Jeppsen.

Floyd raised his voice, fearing the hiss of escaping steam from a severed pipe had drowned out his words. "Billy, did you hear ryie? It was like the sh.e.l.l was coming after our boys."

Still no answer.

Floyd reached over to shake his partner and friend, and finding no resistance, rolled Jeppsen over on his back.

Jeppsen was missing most of his chest. His stomach was opened up like a can of worms, exposing the organs inside. His facial features were horribly distorted. A spray of wooden splinters from the shattered timbers stuck in his skin like quills from a porcupine. To Floyd, his friend looked like a grotesque and b.l.o.o.d.y scarecrow.

He stumbled in shocked terror to the nearest ladder, vomited, and escaped from the engine room, howling like a banshee.

"Pull back!" Walke shouted to Chief Pilot William Hoel, as the hysterical fireman ran screaming across the gun deck.

Spinning the wheel, Hoel steered the boat away from the fort. Low on steam from the ruptured line, the center paddle wheels barely pushed the ironclad over the surface of the river. A second 128-pound sh.e.l.l from the big rifled gun on the bluffs severed Carondelet's huge anchor, snapping it like a twig. Then the sh.e.l.l bounced over the forward pilothouse and smashed off part of the smokestack before falling in the river. Choking fumes began spilling into the gun deck, sending the crew to the open ports to breathe in fresh air.

As the gunboat retreated, the barrage continued without letup.

The entire complement of lifeboats were blasted out of their davits; sections of armor at the waterline were punched completely through.

Water flooded into the hold from several holes. The iron plating looked as though it had been ripped open by a giant chisel.

"'Ibe sh.e.l.ls flew across the water like skipping stones," Walke recalled later. He ordered all available steam, which wasn't much.

While they were slowly pulling out of range of the fort, one of the guns on the port side exploded, wounding twelve of her crew.

Red-hot pieces of the shattered gun flew through the air and embedded in the wooden deck, starting a fire.

Simon Grange, a seaman who had been a.s.signed to load the gun that burst, was only slightly wounded by the blast. He immediately ran to man the water pump to extinguish the fire. Grange was only a few months past seventeen years. His hair was sandy-colored and his attempt to grow a beard and look like a proper mariner was failing miserably. He had a strong chin and a crooked smile, and his eyes still held the innocence of youth.

Grange was furiously working the steel handle of the fire pump when a final Confederate shot entered the open gunport- In horror, he saw three of his shipmates' bodies fly past him, their heads shattered by the blast. They landed at his feet in one big b.l.o.o.d.y heap.

The gun deck of Carondelet suddenly took on the look of a slaughterhouse. Metal fragments, wood blown off the casemate, and mutilated bodies all shared the same s.p.a.ce. Grange stared in disgust at the spreading streams of blood that mixed with the water from the fire pump before disappearing in the cracks between the deck planking.

By the time he had put out the fire and begun helping the wounded, his eyes were hard and cold from the sight of death.

That night, Carondelet's dead and wounded were removed from the boat and Crude repairs hurriedly carried out. By next morning, she was joined by the rest of the fleet. The ironclads St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Louisville accompanied her back up the river to Fort Donelson.

Following them were the wooden gunboats Tyler and Conestoga, the latter captained by Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, former second officer of the ill-fated c.u.mberland, sunk by Merrimack.

At dawn, the battle began anew. Admiral Andrew Foote, commander of the squadron, ordered his boats to close with the fort. It was a grave miscalculation, which would cause unnecessary destruction.

With the boats positioned beneath the Confederate guns, enemy sh.e.l.ls no longer had to arc to hit their targets. Instead, they plunged straight down and, with the added momentum of gravity, slammed through the weakly armored roofs of the Union fleet.

St. Louis, Foote's flagship, was struck by a sh.e.l.l that killed the pilot instantly, jamming a spearlike splinter through his chest, then sheared away the wheel and wounded the admiral, breaking his ankle.

St. Louis drifted down river, disabled, out of the fight.

In almost the same moment, Pittsburgh's tiller ropes were severed by sh.o.r.e fire. Also out of control, she drifted with the current until she was out of range of the sh.o.r.e batteries. Louisville suffered as well, taking a well-aimed Confederate shot below the waterline, and immediately began to sink in'the middle of the river. Only a few watertight compartments kept her afloat as she struggled to retreat, handicapped by the weight from the river flooding her hull.

At the sight of the fierce, one-sided fight, unarinored Tyler and Conestoga quickly steamed away, leaving Carondelet alone once again to suffer the full effect of the fort's firepower.

"Stay the course," Walke shouted from the gun deck to the pilothouse above.

With smoke from Carondelet's guns fouling the air and cloaking her from eyes on sh.o.r.e, the solitary boat kept up her fire. But soon the wages of war became due again. A sh.e.l.l in the forward port gun misfired, peeling back the end of the muzzle like a banana skin, killing its entire gun crew and pressing the nearby armor outward as if a large boil had fanned on the casemate.

Whistling through the smoke, sh.e.l.ls from the Confederate gunners splashed the river all around Carondelet. Eventually a light breeze cleared the air enough for them to walk their fire onto the target.

Projectiles began raining on the boat with great accuracy.

One struck the pilothouse and killed the pilot who had relieved Hoel.

The iron onslaught cut away the Union flag and chipped the armor from the casemate like an axe hacking bark from a tree. After another hodr of seeing his boat battered to pulp a second time without any sign of damage to the enemy, Walke reluctantly gave the order to steam out of range.

Over the past two days, his boat had taken fifty-four direct hits, forty of his crew were either killed or wounded, and the survivors were bleeding from the ears from the constant concussions.

Walke came across a wounded sailor huddled under blankets near a hole smashed in the casemate beside his gun station. "How are you doing, son?" he asked softly.

"I'm a little cold, sir."

"Go down to the boilers and warm up for a spell."

"I can't leave my gun station, sir," the young sailor murmured.

"You can if I order," Walke said, smiling. "Now go."

The sailor needed no further urging. He limped off toward the engine room.

Henry Walke did not look like a tough, hardened naval hero. He was tall, thin, and gaunt, and there was a lost, vacant look in his dark eyes.

His hair was as black as ebony, thick and oddly receding in a straight line back of his forehead. He wore a goatee and could have pa.s.sed for the twin brother of Benjamin Disraeli, Great Britain's Prime Minister.

Walke finished his damage inspection, climbed into the shattered pilothouse, and spoke to the pilot, William Hoel. "Tie up to the main dock in Caro- I want the wounded on sh.o.r.e and in the hospital as soon as humanly possible. After they've been removed, we will take the boat up the river to the Mound City, Illinois, boatyard."

"She's damaged pretty severely, captain," said Hoel. "Is there enough left for the carpenters to fix?"

"She can be fixed," Walke replied firmly as he stared at his battlewasted gunboat.

He was proud of her and his crew. Carondelet had been the first in and last out of the battle. She was badly scarred, but she would live to fight again.

A few days later, the commander of Fort Donelson surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, who was happy to admit he owed a debt to the gunboat, once he saw how considerably reduced the defenses were from the heroic fire of Carondelet.

Malcolm Chesley worked as a shipwright in the yards at Liverpool, England, before the war. In 1860 he had immigrated to Chicago, seeking work as a cabinetmaker. When the war broke out and it became evident that the Union would need trained carpenters at the Mound City boatyard, he volunteered.

He stood on the dock beside the heavy cherry-wood case containing his precious tools, some nearly a hundred years old and pa.s.sed down from his grandfather. As he waited for help in carrying them on board, he stared at the odd-looking vessel he had been a.s.signed to repair.

Carondelet was one of seven ironclads built for the river war by a brilliant civil engineer by the name of James BEads, who in 1874 built the first triple-arch steel bridge across the Mississippi River, which is still in use by auto traffic today.

As the clouds of war threatened, Eads proposed building a fleet of ironclad, steam-powered warships to operate against southern opposition on the western rivers. The United States government eventually approved his proposal, and Eads completed the ma.s.sive project in record time.

Working four thousand men in round-the-clock shifts, he finished the novel vessels in one hundred days, several months before the Monitor and Merrimack duel in Hampton Roads. Carondelet and her six sisters became the first ironclad fleet in the world to enter combat with enemy warships and land fortifications.

Her lyrical name came not from an exotic place but from Baron de Carondelet, the last Spanish governor of Louisiana. His name had been given to the small town where Eads had built her.

Not pretty, but tough and extremely efficient, the Eads ironclads or "Poole Turtles" as they were sometimes called because of their sloped sides, spearheaded General Ulysses Grant's offensive from Fort Donelson to Vicksburg. They fought up and down the Mississippi and on every river from Tennessee to Texas. As if striving for a gold star on an attendance report, Carondelet was present at nearly every engagement from 1862 until late 1864.

Chesley thought the boat unlike any he had ever seen. The hull was rounded on both ends, 175 feet in length and some 50 feet wide.

The displacement was 512 tons, and to maneuver in the shallow waters the boat drew only six feet of water. An oblong casemate sat atop the flat hull. Angled at thirty-five degrees on the sides and forty-five degrees on bow and stern, it was topped out with a flat root Near the front of the boat was an octagonal pilothouse plated with iron and level on the top. Tiny square ports were cut in the iron to see through.

Aft of the pilothouse, twin smokestacks vented the smoke from the six boilers that powered two horizontal, high-pressure engines. Beyond the stacks toward the stern was a rectangular structure with a rounded top that housed the twin interior paddle wheels. Four boats hung from davits, two on each side. Twin rudders were hung for steerageway.

The sloped, armored casemate had gunports with protective shields that could be opened and closed. Through the openings poked thirteen guns, three in the bow, four along each side, and two in the stern.