“What is the state of the engine, Chief?”
“Ready for fire. Coal boxes are full. Soft coal, not so bad. Shit, we been sittin here for three weeks with our thumbs up our collective asses. Managed to get some damned things done.”
Bowater just nodded and his eyes did not leave Taylor’s, and the chief thought, Damn, he got some fire in his belly. This Captain Samuel Bowater would not be so easily cowed. Hieronymus Taylor wondered if they might get deep into the monkey show after all. Maybe do some real fighting, put a shell through a Yankee or two. He felt a spark of hope, even through the immediate and thorough dislike he was harboring.
“When can you have steam up?” Bowater asked.
“Don’t you want to have a look ’round the ship first, Cap’n?”
“I am looking at the ship now, Chief. I want to know when you can have steam up.”
This ain’t goin so good. “Five hours.”
“Good. Make it so.” Bowater turned away, done with Hieronymus Taylor. The chief felt like an overseer being dismissed, sent back to the cotton fields.
“Lieutenant,” Bowater said to Harwell, “please have some hands help my servant with my things. You may show me the master’s cabin, if you will, then muster the hands aft for inspection. Then I will inspect the ship.”
“Aye, aye, sir. McKeown, Williams, bear a hand with the captain’s things! Please, this way, sir.” With that, Harwell and Bowater walked off down the side deck and disappeared around the corner of the deckhouse.
“Well, damn me,” Taylor said. He pulled his soggy cigar stub from his mouth, spit out the flecks of tobacco on his tongue. He scratched at his chin and the usual three days’ growth of beard there. He was never certain if he was growing a beard or not, it was a day-by-day decision. Finally he returned his violin to his case and snapped it shut. “Moses, get them darkies down t’the engine room and start buildin’ the fires. Y’all heard what Captain Samuel Bowater said.”
7
I reached Norfolk on the morning of the 19th instant and found the city in a state of great excitement…
— Major General William B. Taliaferro, Virginia Provisional Army, to John Letcher, Governor of Virginia
There was panic in the air. Commander James Alden thought he could smell it, like a whiff of smoke from a far-off fire. Far off, but closing.
The Gosport naval yard seemed wrapped in an intangible strangeness, as if all the people there—and there were not so many anymore—were mesmerized. They seemed to wander about, unsure what to do, not knowing who was in charge.
Alden paused at the Merrimack’s brow, looked around, unsure himself. The yard seemed bathed in a weird light. The colors were different. Brighter. Everything seemed more intense.
He shook his head, cursed himself silently. He would not be caught up in this nonsense.
That is not my affair… Alden clambered down the brow, stepped quickly across the yard, making once again for the commodore’s office.
The rumors had been filtering in: militia and Confederate Army troops massing in the city, thousands arriving by train, batteries going up on Craney Island and all the points that commanded the shipyard and the anchorage.
Those stories had been circulating since before he and Isherwood had arrived, but now they had a new momentum, and every hour brought fresh and more alarming news. Rumor built upon rumor until the people found themselves glancing up at the brick wall that surrounded the yard and half expecting to see Rebels pouring over it.
Head down, Alden paced off the steps across the cobbled shipyard. I’ll wear a path in these stones before I am free of this place…
The shipyard was McCauley’s concern. The Merrimack was his. His only thought was to get the frigate under the guns of Fortress Monroe at Old Point Comfort.
He stepped into the building that housed the commodore’s office. It was Thursday, the 18th of April, but it might as well have been a Sunday evening for all the activity there. Gone were the officers and warrants hustling in and out of the various offices, pleading for this or that, gone were the civilian engineers and shop stewards and correspondence secretaries and enlisted men. Gone was almost everyone, and more leaving by the hour.
Of those who were left, Alden was not sure whom he could trust. He hoped to soon be one of the gone himself.
McCauley’s office was open, and Alden entered without knocking. The old man had his frock coat on and was wearing sword and pistol. He was not alone.
Commodore Pendergrast, commander of the Home Squadron, was there. The Home Squadron had found itself at Norfolk when the trouble first began to simmer and had been ordered by Gideon Welles to remain and lend its weight of iron to the defense of the shipyard. Along with Pendergrast was Captain Marston, captain of the 1,708-ton sloop-of-war Cumberland, flagship of the squadron.
“Commander Alden, good you are here…should be part of this…” McCauley said, and his voice sounded even less promising than it had that morning. “Just discussing the strategic situation here…last report I heard, must be two thousand of these damned Rebels massing…”
“It would seem so, sir. Commodore, Merrimack has her head up steam. I’ve men enough to get her to Fortress Monroe, at least. I beg of you, sir, give me leave to go.”
McCauley threw a hopeful look at the other officers. “Pendergrast, what do you think?”
“Welles says to move the ship. It ain’t going to get any easier. Best do it now.”
Alden wanted to cross the room and hug the man. How clear and straightforward was his perception of the situation!
“Well…” McCauley sputtered. “You have men enough for this, Alden?”
“There are men enough in the engine room. If I can beg of Captain Marston thirty men from Cumberland —I’ll send them right back, soon as we’re under Monroe’s guns—then I have enough.”
Marston frowned, and the expression brought out a hundred more lines in an already craggy face, but he nodded his big head. “I can spare you thirty men, Commander, if you sent ’em right back.”
All eyes turned back to McCauley. The commodore breathed deep. Alden tensed. This is a lot of work just to get the old bastard to let me do what the Secretary of the Navy ordered me to, he thought, and then McCauley nodded as well.
“Very good, Commander. Take Merrimack out of here before these Rebels can get their damned hands on her.”
Alden straightened, and he felt inches taller. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said.
Marston stood up from the desk on which he had been leaning. “I’ll arrange for those men, Alden, march ’em over to Merrimack, ” and with no more ceremony he left McCauley’s office.
“Thank you, sir. Oh, and sir?” Alden turned back to McCauley. He felt he was pushing his luck, as if inching farther out on ice of dubious thickness. “Sir, the ordnance is all out of the ship. If I could have a couple of field pieces, something we could bring right up the brow, that should serve as battery enough for now.”
“Yes, yes, very well,” said McCauley. Now that the decision was made, he seemed to not want to hear more about it. “Go see Tucker about it.”
“Aye, aye, sir. And sir…you have done the right thing, if I may be so bold…”
“Yes, yes, yes, dismissed, Commander.” McCauley waved him away, did not meet his eye.
Alden fairly ran out of the commodore’s office, raced back to Merrimack and up the brow. Lieutenant Murray, first officer of the Cumberland, who had volunteered to help with Merrimack, was on deck. He was in discussion with Chief Isherwood.