On the day that Samuel Bowater arrived back at his home in Charleston and directed Jacob to pack his trunks for sea service, and Jacob’s own things as well, the state of Virginia, in secret session, voted to secede from the Union rather than bear arms against her fellow Southrons. All of Lincoln’s attempts to coddle the state were for naught. She would not fight for the Union.
It was the following day, Thursday, the 18th of April, 1861, that Samuel returned to the train station in Charleston, accompanied by his father and mother and his sister. He dispatched a telegraph to the ship, giving warning of his coming. He said his goodbyes to his family and boarded the train to Wilmington, North Carolina, while Jacob stowed his bags away and found a seat in whatever part of the train that Negroes rode.
On that same day, Colonel Robert E. Lee declined President Lincoln’s offer of command of all Union forces.
Around the time that Samuel Bowater stepped off the train in Wilmington, Major Robert Anderson and the garrison that had defended Fort Sumter were stepping ashore in New York, the great heroes of the Union.
All of that history was swirling around him, but Samuel Bowater disengaged himself from it, there at the top of the road that ran down to the river, a quiet place where he could look down on his first command. Jacob waited patiently behind, their bags and trunks piled on a wheelbarrow.
What would greet him when he stepped aboard? He had long envisioned this moment—assuming command of his own ship. But it had been different before. Before he had behind him nearly one hundred years of United States Navy tradition, and that based on hundreds more years of Royal Navy tradition. There was never any question then as to how he would be received by officers, warrants, men.
But this was something new, a renegade service. He would not be part of a grand tradition, stepping aboard his ship, but rather he would be setting the protocol in place.
Perhaps in one hundred years’ time, a young captain would come aboard a ship of the Confederate States Navy, confident of his part because it was a part that had been set for a century, stretching back in a great unbroken line to the year 1861. But not for Samuel Bowater. He did not have that foundation; for him it was shifting sand.
Bowater’s eyes moved beyond the former tug and took in the Cape Fear River, which ran like a rippling highway past the town. The banks were low and green and brown, and without thinking on it Samuel began to mix paint in his head, green on the palette with a touch of black, a hint of yellow to bring out the early-spring colors.
He shook his head. The most important moment of his first command was upon him, and he was thinking about painting. That would not do. He had to think about first impressions, about establishing in the minds of all aboard his absolute authority over them. He was setting precedent, for his own first command, and for all the first commands of the Confederate Navy to come after. He headed down the hill, and behind him he heard the squeak of the wheelbarrow, the slap of Jacob’s bare feet.
Sailors are sailors, he thought. Even if the history of the Confederate States Navy could be measured in months, there was still the custom and usage of the sea. There were always traditions to which they could look for guidance. Samuel Bowater had no doubt that the dignity and command presence that was part of being a Southern gentleman would see him through any awkwardness.
Still, it had annoyed him to find no one at the station to meet him. He had expected a few bluejackets at the very least, to carry his gear. A decent first officer should have seen to that.
Samuel and Jacob walked past the brick stores and the white clapboard houses of the lovely town of Wilmington, and a part of Samuel’s mind took it in, but his eyes were still on the CSS Cape Fear, his world now. There were people on her afterdeck, he could see, just smudges of gray cloth and white skin and, back a ways, nearer the deckhouse, black skin as well.
Closer, and Samuel Bowater could hear music, just the faintest strains, and he was curious, and as he grew closer still he could see that the fellow sitting on the after rail was playing a violin.
He paused again to listen. Bowater had no talent for music, but that did not quash his passion for it. He went regularly to the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and had sought out performances in every port where he had found himself for any length of time.
The strains of the violin came to him now, and he listened. The tune was familiar. Not classical, something else, but not displeasing. As a rule he despised folksy, crude ditties, such aberrations as “Dixie” and “Turkey in the Straw” and “Roll the Chariot Along.” But this was something different. The tune moved through him, clear and melodic.
And then he realized it was “Shenandoah,” the capstan chanty he had heard so often. It was one of those songs enjoyed by the lower deck, but he had a grudging affection for it as well.
And then a deep bass voice, clear and full, twined itself around the notes of the violin.
Oh, Shenandoah, she’s a lovely river…
And then, soft but all together, the rest of them,
Aaaway, you rolling river!
Then the single bass voice again.
And I shall ne’er forget you, never…
Then together,
Away, I’m bound away, ’cross the wide Missouri…
Samuel turned and smiled at Jacob, and Jacob smiled back. “Sweet as sugar, ain’t it, Massa Samuel?”
“Lovely.” The crew was gathered there on the Cape Fear’s afterdeck, singing as one, and Samuel Bowater was standing alone, watching. But he was captain, and that was how it would always be. He continued on, moved faster, anxious now to be aboard.
Hieronymus M. Taylor closed his eyes and let the bow move over the violin’s strings, let the fingers of his left hand fall easily on the fingerboard of the instrument, let the graceful melody of “Shenandoah” flow from the hollow place inside the instrument. He had a notion that every beautiful tune in the world was stowed down inside there, that his finger placement and strokes of the bow were not so much creating the sound as releasing it.
The violin smelled of coal dust and oil and smoke and soot, but there was nothing for it. It had been with Taylor for years, through his time as fireman and oiler, third assistant engineer, second assistant, and now on his third berth with the rating of first assistant engineer. Everything he had smelled that way, his clothes, his books, his bedding. Hieronymus Taylor himself smelled of those things, and even the most conscientious scrubbing could not rid him of the smell entirely.
He moved through the first refrain, and then the merest pause, and then as the violin sounded again, so Moses Jones’s voice rose with it, soft at first and then building in strength like the note that Hieronymus was coaxing from the instrument. It was as if the voice and the note were coming from the same place, as if they had been born joined in that way.
Oh, Shenandoah, she’s a lovely river …
Then the rest joined in, soft, and there were enough of them that the cumulative effect was good.
Aaaway, you rolling river…
And I shall ne’er forget you, never… Moses came in on the last dying note of the chorus, bold and strong, and Hieronymus felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Damn me, but that darkie can sing, he thought.
Three weeks the ship had been there, tied to the dock, waiting on a captain, any captain. Hieronymus, at sundown, his third day aboard, came aft and sat on the stern rail, sawed away on his fiddle, as was his habit and had been since he first put to sea. Moses had drifted over after a while, started singing soft to the tunes that the chief played, and just for fun Hieronymus stuck to song melodies, tested the breadth of Moses’s repertoire, which turned out to be extensive.