The Yankee gunboat was surrounded, Confederate ships pounding her from all sides, more maneuvering to board. No room for another. “Pilot, do you see that big ship, the one coming up next?” Bowater was shouting now, he could not be heard otherwise over the gunfire.
“Aye!”
“We’ll make for her!”
The broadside below opened up, the guns of the ironclad Yazoo River firing for the first time in anger. The casement shuddered, the smoke swirled up from the gundeck, sucked out of the slits in the pilothouse. With it, the squeal of carriage wheels on the deck, the rumble of the guns being run out, and another gun, and another. The flames from the muzzles lashed out from the side of his ship, the muzzles themselves hidden from his view over the edge of the casement.
The embattled Yankee gunboat passed down the Yazoo River ’s port side and the next ship in line loomed up, and Bowater sucked in his breath. It is the Pensacola! Dear God, it is my Pensacola!
Four years he had served as second officer aboard that ship. There was not one inch of her that he did not know, that he had not been personally involved with in some way or another. Four years of his life played out on those decks, and though he would not admit to the sentiment, he had come to love her dearly, as much as any man had ever loved a ship, and that was very much indeed. And there she was and she was trying to kill him.
Forward and below, the Yazoo River ’s guns fired away, point-blank range, nine-inch shells and thirty-two-pound round shot, right into the guts of his old ship. Bowater clenched his fists. Pensacola must hit back, and no one knew better than he how hard a punch she could throw.
They were just abreast the Pensacola ’s foremast when the Yankee sloop opened up on them, eleven nine-inch Dahlgrens to a broadside, a forty-two-pound rifle. For an instant there was nothing to be seen through the pilothouse slot but a sheet of flame. A shell glanced off the casement, whirled past with a hysterical scream, but more hit square, made the iron ring out with a deafening clang—like being trapped in a church bell—made the entire vessel shudder and roll.
The Yazoo River fired back, even as the last of the Pensacola’s shells were slamming into her armored sides, but now there was a new sound that cut though the gunfire. Screaming. The wounded.
Bowater looked around for Quillin, but the luff had gone below to supervise the guns. “Mr. Risley, you have the con! Back and fill to keep alongside Pensacola …the big Yankee there! I’m going below for a moment!”
“Aye, sir!” Risley said. Bowater took the steps at a run, plunged down into the gloom of the gundeck. It was a dark place, even on a sunny day, but in the night, with the smoke of battle, it was like a place from another world. The row of lanterns amidships swayed with the slight rocking of the ironclad in the river and cast their pools of pale light over the scene. Men swarmed around the guns, toiling at their charges-they put Bowater in mind of Roman slaves condemned to the mines.
It was hot in the casement, certainly above one hundred degrees. Samuel felt the sweat stand out on his forehead and back, felt the running perspiration trace cool lines on his skin and sting his eyes. He blinked it away, wiped a shirtsleeve over his face.
The place was filled with smoke and noise, men shouting, guns running out, the wounded screaming. Minie balls pinged like hail against the armored sides, thudded in the deck when they managed to find an open gunport, twanged off the muzzles of the guns. Quillin appeared out of the gloom. “Sir, we have five down, three of them are dead.”
“Did shot pierce our armor?”
One of the Yazoo River ’s guns went off, then another, then the Pensacola ’s broadside hit again. The casement shuddered and rang, the ironclad staggered under one hammer blow after another. The air was filled with the scream of metal, the sound of shrapnel slamming into the wooden sides.
Bowater could do nothing but stand, arms out, trying not to fall as the deck shuddered under him. There was Harper Rawson in front of him, pulling a swab from the muzzle of his gun, stepping back to give the loader room. He saw Bowater, gave him a half-smile, and then another shell hit the casement outside and Rawson’s chest seemed to explode as if a grenade had gone off inside him. He lunged at Bowater, a surprised expression frozen on his face, as something hit Bowater’s shoulder and sent him spinning to the deck.
“Sir! Sir!” Quillin was kneeling beside him.
“What the hell…?”
“It’s the bolts, sir! The bolts holding the iron plate! The impact of the enemy’s shells sends the nuts flying!”
Dear God… The nut would have killed him if Rawson’s body had not slowed it down. He struggled to sit up, with Quillin’s help, put his hand down in a pool of Rawson’s warm, slick blood. He struggled to his feet. The men were working like madmen in the gloom, apparently oblivious to the threat from their own vessel. They had their fighting blood up—Bowater recognized it—they would not be frightened by the proximity of death.
“Get some hands to clean this up! Try to keep the blood off the decks! Get the wounded out of the way!”
“Aye, sir!” The hammer blows fell against the Yazoo River ’s side; the ship staggered under the impact. Iron screamed across the casement, slammed into the wooden framework, but Bowater’s fighting blood was up too, and he took no notice as he climbed back up to the pilothouse.
Pensacola was nearly past them now, pushing upriver, working her way across the stream as if she had lost her bearings. “She’s too fast, sir, I couldn’t keep on her!” Risley shouted, and Bowater nodded. His shoulder hurt like hell but he did not think it was broken. He stared out the slot at the night and the smoke and fires.
Behind Pensacola came another of the big ships. A side-wheeler. Mississippi, Bowater had no doubt. Not too many like her in the navy anymore, her big paddle wheels so exposed and vulnerable. She was twenty years old, Commodore Perry’s flagship when he opened Japan; now she was an anachronism in the age of the screw propeller and the ironclad.
“Here is Mississippi! ” Bowater shouted, pointing to the bull of a ship charging upstream. “Right for her! We’ll ram her if we can!”
“Aye, sir!” shouted Risley, with the first hint of hesitation. But ramming was their only hope. Their pathetic battery could do little against the frigate’s thick sides.
Bowater looked at the telegraph. Risley had ordered slow astern to keep the Yazoo River where she was. He grabbed the handles, rang the engine room, shoved the indicator to full ahead. Ramming, like the ancient galleys, but with two condensing horizontal side-lever engines to take the place of the poor bastards chained to the benches, working the oars.
Bowater felt the speed build, felt the deck tremble, the Mississippi looming ahead. Her paddle wheels dug into the river and her broadside lashed out at the night, but her shot went high. Bowater fixed his eyes on the place abaft her paddle wheels where he would hit.
“Captain!” Risley shouted. “Look at that sumbitch!”
Bowater looked though the slot on the port side. A low hump in the water, the wake washing over her bow, the flash of gunfire glinting off her round, wet sides. The ironclad Manassas was steaming for the Mississippi, her throttles wide, smoke rolling from her stack.
“Come right! Come right!” Bowater shouted to the helmsman. They were on a collision course, Yazoo River and Manassas, would hit one another before either hit the Yankee.