“Helmsman!” Wilson shouted. “Make for the tug there!” He was pointing at the sinking vessel. “We’ll see if any of those poor bastards are still alive!”
The Abigail Wilson turned north, turned toward the blazing Yankee ship and the thundering fort beyond. The Confederate gunners in the forts had seen the Yankee man-of-war’s distress, were concentrating their fire on her, while she was hitting back as hard as she could. Jonathan could see men swarming around the flames, heard the hiss of steam as hoses played on the fire. On her stern he could read the name Hartford.
They came up with the sinking tug. Wilson stepped over to the rail, oblivious of the shells whistling past, the occasional minie ball hitting the deck.
“No one alive there,” Wilson said and turned his back on the sinking tug. Jonathan looked for himself. The vessel was a wreck, torn apart, sinking fast. There was no sign of life aboard, no one yelling for help. With one broadside the Yankee ship had reduced it to a complete wreck, as if a furious storm had been pounding the hull against a reef for two days.
“That son of a bitch is done for! Let’s get downriver!” Wilson shouted. It was not clear to whom he was speaking or to whom he was referring, but the helmsman put the helm over to port and the tug turned, plunging into the fight, the men at the bow firing at anything too big to be a Confederate vessel.
Jonathan Paine could not have imagined a scene such as the one around him. The Battle of Manassas seemed a well-organized, leisurely affair compared to this. It was madness, the dark night lit up only by cannon fire and burning ships, the war elephants of the Yankee fleet pushing upriver. Confederate vessels everywhere, ripping around the water, looking for their chance, or listing from shots below the waterline, or in some cases fleeing upstream. There were Rebel boats surrounded on all sides, blasting away at every point on the compass, Union ships hounded by gunfire on every quarter.
Into that madness the Abigail Wilson steamed, engine full ahead, her bow gun barking out as fast as the men could load and fire. Bobby was hauling on one of the train tackles now; three men lay dead or wounded against the bulwark. Minie balls were splintering the wood, a shell took off part of the boat deck as it screamed past.
Jonathan looked up. A big side-wheeler was passing them, firing into the night as it went. Most of the shot was high—perhaps the gunners were concentrating on the forts, perhaps it was the accidental shell that had hit the Abigail Wilson. It would take only one well-placed accident to end them.
“There!” Wilson shouted, slapping Jonathan’s arm, pointing.
Jonathan followed his arm. There was a boxy-looking ironclad, two hundred yards downstream, just visible through the smoke. She looked to be in some difficulty, did not look as if she was fully under control.
“What?”
“That’s her! That’s the Yazoo River! Your father’s ship!”
Jonathan sucked in his breath. After all this long journey, the proximity to his father seemed unreal, and suddenly he was afraid. He looked again at the ironclad. Smoke was coming from her stack, and from the many holes in her stack, and from her gunports it seemed. Jonathan could see the smoke in the bright light that seemed to pour out of her, and stupidly he wondered why they had her lit so bright below, how many lanterns it would take to do that.
The Abigail Wilson closed with her, and the shock of coming up with his father’s boat passed and with it the dull stupidity that had numbed Jonathan’s mind. Of course they were not lighting up the interior of the boat with lanterns. The ironclad’s gundeck was on fire.
46
A few moments after the attack commenced, and the enemy succeeded in passing with foreseen ships…the battle of New Orleans, as against ships of war, was over.
— Report of Major General Lovell, C.S. Army,
Commanding Defenses of New Orleans
Robley Paine opened his eyes to brilliant light and heat, and he thought for one confused moment that he had fallen asleep in the summer sun, on the bank of the Yazoo River, at Paine Plantation.
That thought passed quick, washed away by a wave of pain in his leg, an ache that seemed to encompass his entire left side. He pushed himself off the hard surface on which he was lying, moved by instinct, compelled to get out of the way.
It came into focus—the gun deck of the Yazoo River. His ship. It was on fire.
He grabbed on to the wheel of one of the broadside guns, pulled himself to his feet as if climbing a steep cliff. He turned, leaned against the gun. He could no longer ignore the pain in his left side. He made himself look.
He was burned, all along his side, his frock coat and shirt, his trousers charred and in some places burned away, revealing ugly, cooked flesh, black and red and raw, through the holes. He sucked in his breath as the pain came again, worse, somehow, now that he had witnessed the damage.
He had been serving as gun captain, he recalled, of the second gun aft on the port side, in the place of a man who had been decapitated by a flying bit of metal. He remembered reaching down for a cartridge, and nothing else.
Robley turned his attention from his wounds to his ship. The whole forward bulkhead, the two guns pointing forward, and the forwardmost starboard broadside gun were all engulfed in flames. The fire seemed to fill the gundeck, blazing and spreading, lighting up that dark place with a brilliance it had never seen. The white paint was curling, bubbling, dripping from the sides. He could see the dark shapes of bodies, motionless, resting in their crematorium. The casement was filling with smoke and the smell of burning paint and the sweet sickish smell of cooking flesh.
Robley looked around for an officer, a petty officer, someone to take charge. He found Quillin on the starboard side—his head and his shoulders, one arm, and a part of his torso. Where the rest of him was he did not know.
Ruffin Tanner was bleeding from his forehead but keeping his gun crews at their work, seemingly oblivious to the fire. Babcock, the boatswain, came running aft, carrying a bucket, leading a line of men carrying buckets, and they flung the water and sand at the fire, a useless gesture, as far as Robley Paine could see.
Midshipman Worley came racing down the deck, stopped, began to back away.
“Mr. Worley! Mr. Worley!” Robley Paine pushed himself off the gun, limped across the deck, grabbed the young man’s arm. Worley flinched, looked up at Paine, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.
“Worley, is the captain alive?” Paine shouted. The midshipman shook his head, but from the look of unreasoning panic in his eyes, Paine could not tell if the gesture meant the captain was dead or that Worley thought it incomprehensible that someone should ask such a thing at such a time.
“Is the captain alive, damn you?” Paine shouted again, shook the midshipman, who offered no resistance.
“We’re played out…we must strike…” Worley managed at last.
“Strike? We’ll not strike.”
Worley seemed to come to his senses, or whatever senses were available to his terrified mind. He jerked his arm from Paine’s grip. “We must strike!” he shouted.
Paine grabbed his arm again, leaned close. “Listen to me, Mr. Worley,” he said, and spoke as gently as he could and still be heard. “We will fight, and we will die if we must, but we will not strike!”