The Sea Hunters Part 6

The mauled crew of the frigate found sudden encouragement now that they could train all the broadside guns on their venomous adversary.

The gunners got off three broadsides that shattered the muzzles on two of Virginia's guns, smashed her smokestack, tore away her anchors and blew all but one of her lifeboats to splinters. Their fire was well aimed and deliberate, but an exercise in futility. Even at point-blank range, c.u.mberland's fire caused little if any serious damage to her enemy.

On board the rapidly flooding ship was a scene of macabre horror.

The gun deck was awash with the blood, entrails, and limbs of the decimated crew. There were so many dead scattered among the guns the living worked feverishly to pile them in heaps on the opposite side of the deck out of the way. The wounded, carried below to the berth deck to await medical attention, were powerless to save themselves as the water crept up from below and through the open hatches.

A gravely injured seaman named Winston Humbolt was waiting to be tended by a surgeon. His good friend and shipmate, Tom La.s.ser, who had had a wounded hand treated and was returning to the fight, stopped by to offer a few words of encouragement.

"TOm, are you going to leave me?" Humbolt whispered.

La.s.ser cradled his friend's head in his lap. "No, Winny, I won't leave you."

Lieutenant Morris was standing on the main deck as a final shot from the ironclad scored a direct hit on the stern gun crew nearby.

The gun crew seemed to dissolve from the blast. Morris was struck dumb with shock. He stood frozen, splattered with gore and small bits of human remains, too dazed to move. The bile rose in his throat as he saw badly maimed gunner Karl Hunt, his legs shot off below the knees, crawl over to his gun and pull the lanyard for the last time, sending a shot against the ironclad that exploded in its smokestack.

Selfridge, seeing the horror, rushed over, and helped seat Morris on a hatch behind the mainmast. "Stay with us, George. We need you.

Morris grasped Selfridge by the arm. "I'll be all right in another minute. See to the guns."

He suddenly came unsteadily to his feet and pushed Selfridge aside when he recognized a voice calling to him through the roar of the guns to surrender. He staggered to a railing and gazed down at the ironclad only a few yards away. From a hatch in the upper deck of the casemate, Buchanan repeated his demand. "Surrender your ship!"

"Never!" Morris yelled back defiantly. "I'll sink alongside first."

His reply was punctuated by a sh.e.l.l from one of c.u.mberland's nine-inch Dahlgrens.

Like a struggling scorpion that refused to die, the few operational guns on c.u.mberland kept firing away at the invulnerable Virginia. The forward slant of the deck caused one of the huge rifled guns to break loose from its moorings. Lieutenant Selfridge watched in quiet abhorrence as the cannon careered down the sloping deck, crushing a young sailor. His agonized scream was choked off as he was pushed by the gun through a railing into the river. His lifeless body rose to the surface, floating face down, a human marker to the devastation.

The guns were fired by their maddened crews until water came up the muzzles. The final shot of the dying warship was fired by seventeen-year-old Matthew Tenney as the river flowed around his knees.

After his sh.e.l.l entered an open port of the Virginia and shattered the barrel of a gun run out to fire, Tenney attempted to scramble out through his own gunport. But the surge swept him back and he was never seen again.

Only when the bow went under did Morris give the order, "Abandon ship! Those who can, help the wounded over the side."

"The flag, sir?" a seaman asked Morris.

He looked up at the stars-and-stripes fluttering in the sun.

"Leave it there for all to see." Then he turned and helped a badly wounded man over a shattered bulwark.

The rotund young drummer boy named Joselyn fearlessly remained at his station, beating the call to arms throughout the fight. Only now did he shove his drumsticks into his belt and leap into the water.

Using his drum as a float, he began to dog-paddle toward the sh.o.r.e.

The ship rolled to port and slipped down into the river. Below, on the flooding berth deck, the cries of the wounded were quickly snuffed out. Tom La.s.ser, still holding his friend's head in his lap, closed his eyes and accepted the inevitable. He and Winston Humbolt drowned together.

Battered, beaten, but game to the bitter end, c.u.mberland's keel sank into the muddy bottom of the James River, her masts still above water, her flag still flying, her fight forever over.

To a man, the crew of the Virginia agreed, "No ship was ever fought more gallantly."

Of the 326 men on board c.u.mberland at the start of the fight, 120 were dead.

Hearing the sounds of gunfire during the court-martial, the captain of the ill-fated ship, William Radford, left the proceedings, leapt on his horse, and rode the ten miles back to his ship like an army of ghosts were after him.

Reaching the low cliffs above the James River, Radford dismounted his horse, which was frothing at the mouth and coated in a foam of sweat.

He stared in horror at the men struggling and drowning in the water.

Nothing was left of his once proud ship except the masts rising from the water. He noted with no small degree Of satisfaction that her flag was still flying.

Behind him, his horse wobbled unsteadily on rubber legs and began shaking like a leaf in a stiff breeze. Then the horse dropped to the ground, its tongue falling from its open mouth and its eyes becoming glazed, exhausted to the point of death by a wild ride that came too late.

Battered though his ship may have been after conquering c.u.mberland, Old Buck Buchanan and Virginia's men had more than enough fight left in them. They now turned their attention to the next ship in line.

In a vain attempt to reach water too shallow for the ironclad to follow, Congress ran toward sh.o.r.e and grounded, her stern facing the middle of the river. Buchanan merely stationed his impregnable ship a short distance away and hammered away at the helpless frigate until her captain was dead and his second in command raised the white flag and surrendered.

Buchanan lowered his only boat that would float and sent an officer to receive the surrender. But the crusty old commander of the troops and artillery ash.o.r.e allowed that the ship may have surrendered, but he hadn't, and ordered his men to keep up their fire.

Standing with his officers on the casemate deck for a better view, Buchanan was seriously wounded, as were several other men near him, when he was struck by a rifle ball in the thigh. As he was carried below, angered that the sh.o.r.e troops had ignored the white flag of surrender from Congress, he ordered Lieutenant Catesby Jones to destroy the Union frigate.

"Burn the ship, burn her down to nothing!" he growled through the pain from his wound.

Jones took him at his word and shouted down to the gun deck.

"Fire hot shot!"

The iron cannon sh.e.l.ls were placed on grates above a furnace and heated until they were almost red hot. Rolled into buckets and carried to the guns, they were rammed down the muzzles and shot into the helpless frigate. Within minutes, Congress was blazing from stem to stern.

Through a gunport, Jones watched the conflagration with great satisfaction. The fire had reached the dying ship's guns, and they were discharging on their own, one by one, as if directed by the ghosts of their crew.

Nothing went right for the Union fleet that day. Raising her sails to go to the aid of her stricken sister ships, St. Lawrence ran aground. The mighty Minnesota suffered the same embarra.s.sment. In an attempt to join in the battle, she too became firmly entrenched in the mud. And to add insult to injury, Roanoke lay impotent with a severed propeller shaft.

The final three ships of the Union fleet lay like tethered sheep, waiting for the appearance of a tiger.

Jones approached Buchanan, who was having his leg bandaged by the ship's surgeon. "Do I have your permission to resume battle, sir?"

Buchanan stared at the bandage around his thigh, which was already turning red. "I'm told Minnesota and St. Lawrence have run aground."

Jones nodded. "They appear to be stationary. Particularly Roanoke.

Our spies report she has a broken shaft."

Buchanan stared through the door of his cabin at the light coming in through an overhead hatch. "It will be too dark to see in another half hour. I think it best we break off all action and head back to the dock.

c.u.mberland put up a good fight and caused damage that requires repair before we attack again."

"I agree," said Jones. "They'll still be at our mercy tomorrow.

We can finish them off then."

"Yes," said old Buck Buchanan, a foxlike grin on his face.

"Tomorrow is soon enough."

Jones returned to the helm and directed the pilot to come about for Norfolk. Turning its stern on a scene of destruction never before witnessed in American waters, Virginia began steaming across Hampton Roads to her dock. Behind, she left some 250 Union sailors dead and over 100 wounded, at that time the largest single loss in United States Navy history.

Just after sunset, the fire aboard Congress reached her powder magazine, and she exploded in a fiery burst of fireworks before joining c.u.mberland on the bottom of the James River. Buchanan and Jones knew they had won a great victory, and looked forward to an even greater one the following morning. They had accomplished the unthinkable with a loss of only two men killed and eight wounded.

But unknown to them, their ultimate triumph was to be s.n.a.t.c.hed away.

Before the black smoke from the Virginia's shot-riddled stack drifted over the rays of the setting sun, and the final blast from the death throes of Congress rumbled across the dark water of Hampton Roads, a strange, ominous vessel materialized out of the mists creeping in from Chesapeake Bay.

In what has to be the most incredible coincidence in recorded history, the Union ironclad Monitor had arrived. On the following morning, the crew of Virginia, still called Merrimack in the North, were ready for another day's glory. They were stunned when what one of them called a "cheese box on a raft" steamed into view from behind the hull of Minnesota. The little Union ironclad made straight for the Confederate behemoth and fired her two big eleven-inch Dahlgren guns.

Virginia replied, and the world's first battle between armored ships was launched. A few hours later, it ended in a stalemate.

Neither ship absorbed much punishment and both claimed victory.

History had been made and naval warfare was never to be the same again.

Barely two weeks after the epic battles of Hampton Roads, a salvage diver by the name of Loring Bates investigated the remains of c.u.mberland to discover if she could be raised and rebuilt. He found the wreck lying in sixty-six feet of water at a forty-five-degree angle and in complete disarray. He determined that she was too badly damaged to warrant the expense of raising her.

Sporadic attempts by salvors to recover supplies and equipment of value and fights over who had the legitimate salvage contracts continued until the late 1870s. Despite the glory of her fight and the heroism of her crew, c.u.mberland and her grave in time became lost, unknown, and forgotten. It was not until 1980 that men came to find her bones.

She-Devil of the Confederacy November 28, 1864 The evening was clear, with a full moon, and the ship cast a spectral shadow over the water. One year and seven months had Pa.s.sed since c.u.mberland went down fighting only a few hundred yards down river just off the town of Newport News, Virginia. The small crew of eight seamen who were guarding the ship did not expect trouble, and most of them were asleep. Only two a.s.sistant engineers, attempting to repair an auxiliary pump, were still awake. An army transport ship had accidentally sideswiped the moored vessel, the resulting collision loosening hull planks and causing minor leakage.

Shortly after midnight, a lone man rowed toward the ship from sh.o.r.e.

He stared up at the black hull looming above him. Quietly riding into town, he had left his horse tied to a tree along the sh.o.r.e and "borrowed" a rowboat. No soldiers stationed nearby or civilian residents could witness the act he was about to perform. Climbing up the boarding ladder, a leather bag clutched in one hand, he moved like a wraith across the deserted deck of the ship. The guns did not seem ominous and menacing in the eerie moonlight, but looked like great dead beasts.

He stepped into the captain's cabin and admired the handsome mahogany doors and bulkheads. Then he walked through the ward room and past the dispensary before dropping into the engine room. He saw the engineers laboring over the faulty pump and avoided them by moving around the backside of one of the big boilers. The intruder was an engineer and appreciated the ship's machinery. Running his hands over the bra.s.s gauges, he stared at the cold boilers.

"You're a beautiful ship," he said aloud, the soft-spoken words out of place on the silent vessel. "Forgive me for what I am about to do."

Heavy of heart, he opened the bag and retrieved a large wrench.

Using it as a lever, he twisted the plugs from the valves that allowed the water to gush into the bilge. When he had removed the last plug, he dutifully waited until the water was gurgling and rising from the bilges.

He listened as the ship creaked and groaned, her timbers flexing from the increasing internal weight. It was as if she were pleading with the engineer to save her.

The engineer closed his mind to the eerie sounds and struggled up the ladder to the engine-room hatch aft of the big seven-inch pivot gun.

As he hurried across the deck to the boarding ladder, he deeply regretted his clandestine mission of sending the beautiful little ship to the bottom, but orders were orders.

Dropping down the ladder to his boat, he cast off and quickly rowed toward sh.o.r.e. After shoving the boat into the river, he watched it vanish with the current. Then he walked to his horse, untied it from the tree, and rode off without a backward glance.

Alarmed at the sudden increase of water in the engine room, the men who had been repairing the auxiliary pump awakened the chief engineer, William Lannan. After checking the rising water, he was stunned at the dramatic flow. Every effort was made to halt what appeared to be the ship's immnent sinking, but the water rose faster than it could be expelled.

A tug was called to tow the ship into shallow water, but it arrived too late. By 7 A.M. she was plunging down, her masts and yards clawing futilely at the sky. Her death song came as the air inside compressed from the pressure of the incoming water and hissed from the ports and hatches.

Her hull vanished under a cloud of protesting bubbles. Then her keel sank into the soft bottom and the murky water became her death shroud.

History's first great raider of the seas was no more. She settled into the soft ooze to wait out time.

Two and a half years earlier, on March 22, 1862, Thomas Dudley, United States consul at Liverpool, England, stood on a seawall and watched as Oreto put out to sea. He wiped the lens of his spygla.s.s with a handkerchief and peered at the ship through the drizzle of a March storm blowing from the north. He was always on the lookout for vessels built by British shipyards and then clandestinely sold to the Confederate States of America despite maritime law that banned the outfitting of warships for belligerent foreign nations.

Oreto was a beautiful vessel, allegedly built for the Italian Navy.

With her sharply raked masts and twin smokestacks, she appeared to be moving while she was standing still. Designed as a fast cruiser, she incorporated several innovations. One was her screw propeller, which could be raised out of the water on a track to reduce water resistance when she was under sail to conserve coal. She seemed deceptively small for a Confederate raider, Dudley thought. Her overall length was just 212 feet with a 27-foot beam.

As he admired her lines, he decided that Oreto was too beautiful to be dangerous. He failed to picture her as one of the Southern States'

most successful raiders.

Dudley watched as one of the harbor pilot boats pulled away from the hull of the ship as she slipped farther into the bay. "Appears to be only a trial run," he said to his aide, standing miserably in the heavy mist beside him. "Her captain, James Duguid, is British, with no ties to the Confederacy that I know of."

The aide, a skinny fellow barely in his twenties, pointed to the several women milling about on the deck. "The ladies are most certainly not in the Confederate Navy."

"The ship looks harmless enough," said Dudley. "But just the same, we'll keep a sharp eye on her when she returns to her dock."

"I'll be glad to take up that duty," the aide said, eying a nearby pub where he could escape the damp and warm up with a bit of whiskey.

Dudley stared at the retreating ship, then motioned to his aide.

"Let's get back to the consulate. I want to make a report to our London Emba.s.sy."

Disappointed, the aide shrugged. "As you wish, sir."

Looking like a sleek thoroughbred of the sea, with barely a wisp of smoke trailing from her twin stacks, Oreto steamed past the buoys at the harbor entrance and increased her speed, heading on a course due west of Liverpool. Once land vanished in the heavy niist, Captain Duguid ordered the vessel stopped.

"The pilot boat is coming alongside," he said to his first officer.

"Help the ladies across."

Walking to the lowered boarding ladder, he handed each of the women a five-guinea gold piece. "Thank you for your company, ladies," he said graciously. "I'm sorry to see you go."

A buxom la.s.s with a dark beauty mark on her cheek flashed a wide smile at Duguid. "That's the easiest money any of us have made all year," she purred. "You look me up next time you're in Liverpool."

Duguid gallantly kissed her hand. "You can count on it."

He stood back and observed the transfer of the women to the pilot boat. He doffed his hat as the boat pulled away from Oreto and the women waved. Then he nodded to his helmsman. "Steer on a heading south by southwest until I can lay a proper course." Then Duguid turned to his first officer. "Raise the screw and hoist the sails. We have a long voyage before us."

One month later, Duguid and Oreto arrived in the port of Na.s.sau in the Bahamas. He no sooner dropped anchor than the ship was shrouded in controversy. The United States consul had immediately filed a protest to the British authorities. He claimed that Oreto was being armed in British waters and demanded she be seized. The British, who were pro-Confederate, shrugged, and replied that the ship had no guns, nor was there any evidence that anyone planned to load them on board.

A stiff island breeze blew the curtains away from the window in the office of the governor of the Bahamas, C. J. Bayley. The simple whitewashed room was furnished with a large, copper-sheathed teak desk.

Twin, stiff-backed wooden chairs, one occupied by a lean, hatchet-faced man, were positioned in front of the desk.