Unknown to Spencer, he had already taken a good part of Albion’s revenge. John Winslow was dead on his own quarterdeck, cut in two by a 32-pounder shot. The ship was drifting, engines dead, masts shot through or hanging shattered over the side. Its hull was riddled and taking water, its decks were a ruin, half its guns out of operation, and the dead and dying strewn across the wreckage. The two heavier British frigates were closing, their guns tearing the guts out the ship, and they were taking everything the surviving Dahlgrens could throw. The senior officer aboard Kearsarge was now Lamson. From Dauntless an officer called through a megaphone, “Do you strike, Kearsarge? Do you strike?”
“Fuck you, you Limey bastard!” a seaman shouted back, waving his fist. Lamson looked up to the quarterdeck and only then realized just the dead occupied it. “Do you strike, Kearsarge?” came again from Dauntless. If any man had the ability to take in a situation at a single glance and cut to the heart of it, it was Lamson. A glance at the Topaze saw the Aleksandr Nevsky cutting across the British frigate’s bow and raking her with the larboard battery. She had come to join the fight after leaving the Gannet adrift and burning. The Marine sergeant, his head bandaged, reported to Lamson. “Sergeant, it’s time for the Marines to be infantry. Use your Spencers to kill everyone on that deck.”
Turning back to the Dauntless, he cupped his hands and bellowed, “Double canister! Double canister, sir! That is my answer!” He sensed what was coming next, could see with his mind’s eye the Dauntless’s gun deck crews climbing the ladders to the decks armed with pikes, cutlasses, and pistols to board. “Prepare to repel borders!” he shouted again.
Dauntless lurched closer; the men massing on her deck were visible. Among the blue jackets and their pikes were the red coats of the Royal Marines, their Enfields with fixed bayonets. Lamson’s Marines rose from their concealment and fired their repeaters into the packed crowd as bodies pitched forward over the side or backward into the crowd. “Sergeant! The carronade!” Lamson grabbed him by the arm and pointed at the fat, blunt gun on the Dauntless’s forecastle. This naval shotgun would sweep his deck with musket balls. The sergeant dropped the gunner with a single shot and then with a smooth cocking of the handle, he shot the next man who grabbed the lanyard. By then his men had dropped the rest of the gun crew.
Dauntless was now a bare yard away, and the British were still massing on the side. The forward XI-incher swung on its pivot to point at a sharp angle down the side of the enemy ship. The British were flexing their legs to make the leap from their greater height as the ships closed that last yard when the gun captain yelled, “Fire!” The gun leapt back on its lines, spewing two large tins of small iron balls into the crowd. The ships ground against each other. The remaining members of Gettysburg’s crew raced up the ladders to repel borders, but there was only silence from the British ship. They watched the blood pour out of the Dauntless’s scuppers onto the Kearsarge’s deck and then cascade out of the wreckage as the British ship drifted away, leaving a pink stain in the water.
From this moment, the Kearsarge became only a spectator to the last stage of what would be called “the Battle of the Upper Bay.” The Topaze and the Nevsky continued to throw broadsides into each other, with the Topaze clearly getting the upper hand. The Peresvet was locked in a slugging match with the smaller but deadly Alert. Time had run out for the British. A swarm of harbor defense gunboats were steaming down the East River from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Alone, none of them would be a match for any of the British ships. In a swarm they could hem a larger ship in and strike from any direction. The end was inevitable, especially since more powerful warships were also coming to their aid. The first of them was the Oslyabya, rushing to Lisosvky’s aid.
Captain Spencer was no romantic; he knew when the game was up. He did take intense satisfaction to see the Kearsarge listing badly from the water rushing in through the colander that was her hull. She would go down and soon. His mission was all but accomplished. Now Spencer must save what he could. He signaled the Alert and Dauntless to break off action and steam for the Verrazano Narrows and escape. Gannet was adrift and in flames. Dauntless limped south escorted by Alert. Running the gauntlet of the forts at top speed Topaze and Alert made it through with heavy damage. Dauntless’s slowness was her doom as the shot and shell from the forts hailed down on her. Slowed even more, she was caught by Oslyabya and the gunboats and pounded to pieces. She refused to strike and went down fighting.
As Lamson watched the battle recede, the surviving engineer reported the damage below. The ship was taking water too fast. The pumps had been destroyed with the boilers. A gunboat came aside and asked if Kearsarge needed assistance. “I need a tow to the Navy Yard before I sink,” he called over. It would be close. The ship was settling fast.
BRITISH EMBASSY, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:44 AM, SEPTEMBER 24, 1863
The Foreign Office special courier was rushed into the office of Ambassador Lord Lyons. He knew what news the courier brought, and it confirmed his worst fears. After Moelfre Bay, it could only be war. He imagined the news had spread immediately from the ship to the docks and must at this moment be flying through Washington.
Lyons called for his secretary and instructed him to personally request an interview with the Secretary of State. Then he carefully examined his instructions.
The halls of the State Department were crowded when Lyons entered just before two in the afternoon. The whispers that announced his identity silenced the crowd but did not quell their angry looks or the occasional hiss. Wretched manners, these Americans. He was ushered through open doors directly into Seward’s office. Seward was facing the open window, hands clasped behind his back. He cut such a slight figure, but when he turned he seemed to grow from the anger in him.
Lyons did not betray his concern as he bowed. “Mr. Secretary, it is my sad duty to inform you that as of September 10 a state of war has existed between the British Empire and the United States of America.” He went on to describe the justifications of Her Britannic Majesty’s government for taking these much-provoked steps, reading from his instructions the precise language directed by the Foreign Office. When he had finished, he bowed once again and presented the declaration to Seward.
“Lord Lyons, is it the custom of Her Majesty’s government to attack before delivering its declaration of war? Even for Britain, that is a new and yet unfathomed perfidy.”
“Attack, Mr. Secretary?”
“Lord Lyons, don’t play games with me!”
“I assure you, sir, that I do not understand what you mean.”
Seward’s skinny face had flushed red. Lyons could not help thinking that with his shock of unruly white hair and great Roman nose, he looked nothing more than a fighting cock ready to strike. “The telegraph from New York has been on fire for the last two hours with news of a great naval battle in New York Harbor. A British fleet pursued a U.S. warship escorted by two Russian ships into the Upper Bay in a running battle that rages as we speak.”