The men on the deck stirred at the sight, which was more than feminine gallantry but instantly evoked images of Ireland itself anthropomorphized in this young woman. Almost as if commanded by this goddess of myth, the ship edged back to the dock and the gangway was lowered. As it touched the dock, Meagher hurried down and took his wife into his arms. The kiss was long and passionate as the men cheered Meagher of the Sword and his goddess, lady of Erin. Then, flag in hand, he bounded up the gangway.
The kiss was still sweet on his lips as the ship docked at Cold Spring and was challenged immediately by young men in cadet gray. The commandant of the U.S. Military Academy across the river had sent over a hundred of his cadets to guard the foundry under the command of one of their officer instructors. Meagher was pleased to see that that they had not wasted their time but had trundled a half dozen of the 10-pounder Parrot guns from the foundry down to defend the dock with the aid of many of the foundry’s fourteen hundred workers. The officer had organized his cadets into gun teams, and they seemed to know their way around the pieces, which had been admirably hidden from direct view.
Meagher barely had time to inspect the ad hoc defense when a cadet came racing down the street on long legs, his cap lost and blond hair whipping behind him, and clutching a telescope in his hand. He stopped in front of his officer and then recognized Meagher’s major general’s stars in a moment of confusion. He blurted out, “They’re coming. I ran down from the church steeple, sir, where you stationed me to look. There’s an armed boat with red-coated men aboard coming down the river.”
Meagher asked, “How long, boy, before they get here?”
“Sir, twenty minutes at most.”
In eighteen minutes the ship steamed up to the dock. Meagher peered, half hidden, through a window next to the battery screened by a wall of empty barrels. Two Armstrong field pieces were mounted on the deck, which was crowded with several companies of British troops. He was surprised to see with what confidence they came right up to the dock, confidence borne of meeting little or no resistance as they fired their way down the Hudson Valley. He was even more surprised to recognize the big men whose uniforms bore the facings of the Scots Fusilier Guards. Others, not so uniformly robust and big, had different facings and somehow did not move with the easy assurance of the guards. Canadian militia, no doubt. Canister would make no such distinction, but the Queen would feel the loss of her own guardsmen more deeply than the colonials would. Well, he thought, it was time the world’s most famous widow had something else to mourn.
The ship bumped up against the dock. Shrill voices of the NCOs echoed up the street as the men began double-timing down the gangplank. They began to fan out over the docks when Meagher gave the command to fire. The barrels masking the guns were knocked over and canister-tin cans filled with hundreds of bullet-sized lead balls-scythed into the men rushing over the docks, crowding down the gangplank, packing the decks, and clustering around the deck-mounted Armstrongs. Rifle fire from his hidden riflemen cut down the men who had made it to the street. The cadets leapt to the guns, as they had in their artillery training, to swab out the barrels and ram home new powder bags and canisters. Again they fired.
“Cease fire!” Meagher shouted to give the smoke a chance to clear. The ship was a charnel house, riddled and splintered, with its decks and gangplank piled with the dead and wounded. The pilothouse was a wreck as well. “Charge!” His Irishmen sprang from cover with a howl as he ran down from the battery to join them and dashed across the dock to the ship. The enemy had been so stunned that hardly a shot was fired as Meagher’s men climbed over the bodies on the gangplank to swarm over the ship.
USS PHILADELPHIA, INSIDE THE BAR, CHARLESTON HARBOR, SOUTH CAROLINA, 12:05 PM, OCTOBER 7, 1863
The USS Flambeau raced toward Charleston like a stormy petrel, the famous sea bird that races ahead of an ocean storm. She was one of the picket ships that Admiral Dahlgren had thrown out to sea to warn of the British approach. Dahlgren dreaded this moment. His orders to maintain the blockade against any attempt to break it had presented him with a deadly dilemma. He dared not sally out of the bar to meet the British, yet to remain inside the bar would mean that he in turn would be blockaded. That would end in inevitable surrender as coal and supplies ran out. He had had the foresight to intercept every coal and supply ship bound for the main operating base at Port Royal and keep them with him off Charleston. He had ordered the evacuation of as much of the stores at Port Royal as possible. At the same time the repair crews were working around the clock. He needed every fighting ship at Charleston. Everything that could not be repaired or carried off was to be destroyed.
Dahlgren had another reason as well for not abandoning his station off Charleston-the eight thousand troops under the command of Major General Gilmore who had been reducing the harbor forts on Morris Island. There were also four thousand of the Army’s troops garrisoning the Navy’s forward operating base at Port Royal. The Navy would never survive the shame of abandoning the Army.
As if Dahlgren had not worries enough, the need to protect the Navy’s most secret experiment also weighed heavily on his mind. He had been testing two small submersibles designed to remove underwater obstacles and to plant torpedoes (mines). These ungainly beasts could never be allowed to fall into British hands. He had orders to sink them if necessary in the deepest possible water. It occurred to him that the boats were not entirely liabilities. He had given much thought to the use of submersibles after having had the Navy’s first submersible, the Alligator, repaired at the Navy Yard when he was superintendent, and he had requested the construction of several improved models. Now, more than a year later, he had been given delivery of two such boats for trials in the harbor of Charleston. He ordered that the submersible tender and the two boats accompany his flagship. His interest in submersibles had become even more acute two days earlier when the Confederate semi-submersible, CSS David, had attacked New Ironsides with a torpedo. The explosion had rocked the ship, which had been protected by its thick iron hull and armor casemate. Although the David had escaped, his men had fished two prisoners out of the water who had prematurely abandoned ship. They had detailed plans of the boat in their pockets.
Only if the British came after him through the bar did he stand a chance of defeating them, Dahlgren thought. Even then, they only had to retreat, stand off outside the bar, wait, and starve him out. Defeat would only be delayed. Only a decisive defeat of the British and their retreat could save him, and that, given the huge force Milne had assembled at Bermuda, was impossible. For a man whose Navy life had been a continuous quest for glory, the logic of this conclusion was bitter beyond belief. He could only redeem the coming disaster by following the order of Captain James Lawrence of the ill-fated USS Chesapeake in its battle with the HMS Shannon in 1813-”Fight her till she sinks!”
Dahlgren knew that a large number of ships had arrived to reinforce Milne at Bermuda but not exactly how many and what types. All he had to go on was a London Times article of July that listed the ships of the Channel Squadron. That had arrived courtesy of Brigadier General Sharpe, someone Lincoln had mentioned in his letter as doing important work in organizing information about the rebels. Now it seemed the good general was throwing a wider net, something Dahlgren was thankful for. He desperately wished he knew how many and which of the huge Channel Fleet’s four ironclad screw frigates Milne was sending against him. There wasn’t an officer in the fleet who had not heard of the leviathans HMS Warrior and Black Prince, which were more than twice as large as his largest ship, the USS New Ironsides. The Defence class Resistance and Defence were both half again as large as the American ship. Though she was considerably smaller, she packed a greater punch than the British ships. She was armed with sixteen guns, fourteen of which were XI-inch Dahlgrens and completely outclassed the armament of the British ships. The American gun carriages and recoil systems were also far more efficient than those of the British models. Her armor was Warrior’s match as well. The British ships, however, had the speed advantage, able to move twice as fast as New Ironsides’s puny six knots.