“We start wid a fine malecotony soup today, and for de main course, roast leg of lamb on a bed of pomme de terre a la Maitre d’Hotel and fresh asparagus, followed by a claret jelly and fresh fruit.”
“Excellent, Cook,” Bowater said, and the chef nodded, as if there was no question, then snapped his fingers and the servers disappeared down the ladder, with St. Laurent following behind.
“Well, hell, Captain, I don’t know how I managed to find the one darkie cooks all this Frenchified stuff. Don’t even know how to make a decent gumbo or fried chicken,” Taylor said.
“Hardly a failing. Was he really the chef at the Chateau Dupre Hotel?”
“Aw, hell no. He was the fella mixed up the sauces or something. He’s jest putting on airs. I reckon he learned a thing or two about cooking, jest watchin them real chefs.”
“He did indeed. So how did he happen to come with you?”
“They was some mess he got himself in. Something to do with the wife of one of the cooks there at that hotel. I never did get the whole story. Just knew he had to get the hell out of New Orleans, but fast. I was heading to Wilmington, took him along.”
Bowater nodded. “You were friends?”
“He used to shovel coal for me. Paddle wheeler we used to work, New Orleans to Vicksburg on a regular run.”
“I see.” Samuel could sense the layers upon layers of story that formed the bedrock of their acquaintance, Hieronymus Taylor and Johnny St. Laurent. He wondered briefly if there was anyone who would come to him if they were in dire need of help. No one that he could think of.
“Sir?” Harwell interjected. Bowater looked at the luff and could see that he had something to say and was ready to burst if he did not say it.
“Yes, Mr. Harwell?”
“When I was ashore this morning, sir, I found out what they are planning for the old Merrimack.”
“Oh, yes?” Judging from the lieutenant’s expression, it was something more than just rebuilding her as a steam frigate.
“Go on, Lieutenant,” Taylor said. “I am like to perish with anticipation.”
“Well, sir,” Harwell said, addressing himself only to Bowater, “it appears they are going to rebuild her as an ironclad.”
“Do you mean like that French monstrosity, Le Gloire ?”
“No sir. No masts at all. More like a floating battery, but with engines. They will use Merrimack ’s old engines. An iron casement and bows and stern, submerged I believe.”
For a moment, no one said a thing, and in silence they considered that. An ironclad, with no sailing rig. A self-propelled floating iron battery.
“She’ll look like a damned turtle,” Taylor observed and grinned at the thought. “Be just like a turtle, slow and strong.”
“She will be a vulgar monstrosity,” Bowater said. Merrimack, with her shortened masts and her tall, black, ugly stack, was no beauty herself. All of these steam vessels, these hermaphrodites, half sail, half steam, lacked the grace and beauty of the old sailing navy. Was there any steamer that could compare to the beauty of a sailing frigate?
Once, not long after his graduation from the Navy School, Bowater had seen from the deck of his ship the USS Constitution underway, a full press of canvas to topgallant studding sails. The image was clean in his mind, like an etching. There was nothing else made by the hand of man that could compare to that for grace, beauty, and silent and unassuming power. She was from a different time, a more elegant time, and the men who sailed ships like that were very different from the men who mucked about in dark and filthy engine rooms.
“She will be ugly, Captain, but she will be lethal as well,” Taylor said. “I’ll take power over beauty any day.”
“Of course you would, Mr. Taylor.” It was what Samuel Bowater would expect from the engineers and mechanics of the world. A new direction for mankind, a rhumb line to the end of civilization.
“Anyway, they should have guns enough for her,” Taylor said through a mouthful of lamb. “Don’t reckon we’ve hauled away everything the Yankees left behind.” Then, in another tone, sotto voce, he added, “Reckon there should be guns enough for any boat in the navy…”
Bowater stiffened. It was not the words—he had not heard for certain what Taylor said—but the tone. Insinuation? Was the engineer hinting at something backward in Bowater’s nature?
“What are you saying, Chief?” Bowater saw Harwell tense.
“I’m saying, if there was a gun on this here tugboat, we might stand a chance of getting into some fightin’.”
Bowater leaned back, eyes on Taylor’s unshaven face, his carefully arranged look of innocence.
What am I supposed to say? He had been pleading with Forrest since the flag officer’s arrival to mount a gun on the Cape Fear’s foredeck, but Forrest had refused him every time, told him they could not waste ordnance arming tugs.
But Bowater could not tell Taylor that. It was none of Taylor’s affair. He did not wish to set the precedent of inferiors asking after the captain’s business. But neither could he let Taylor think he was shy about wanting to get into the fight.
Checkmate…with one question he has trapped me…
“Chief, these questions are not the business of the engineering division. But let me say that I am attempting to improve our armament by way of the proper channels.”
Taylor grunted, made a laughing sound. “Proper channels ain’t gonna get you a goddamned thing, we both know it.”
“And so that is an end to it.”
“Is it?” There was a smoothness to Taylor’s tone, like a snake-oil salesman, and it made Bowater wary and intrigued all at once.
For a long moment they sat there, silent, each holding the other’s eyes, each needing the other for his existence and hating it.
Bowater spoke first. “Go on,” he said. He said it softly, as if afraid to speak loud, afraid to admit that he wanted to listen. Here was forbidden fruit, Bowater could sense it. It frightened him, attracted him. He wanted to arm the Cape Fear, wanted it more than anything he could recall. He could feel that he was about to cross a line. He did not know what to think.
The ordnance house reminded Samuel Bowater of a buffet table laid out for the gods of war.
All of the guns that the retreating Yankees had spiked and rolled into the river had been recovered and the spikes removed from their vents. Stretched out in great rows were gun upon gun, some in carriages, some lying on the granite floor. There were massive 9-inch and eleven-inch Dahlgrens, howitzers of every size; twenty-four-pound, twelve-pound, six-pound. Long, sleek rifled barrels were lined up like fish on ice at the market, from the enormous, crushing hundred-pound Dahlgren through thirty-pound, twenty-pound, twelve, and ten.
There were James rifles and mortars and old smoothbores of antiquated design, the venerable thirty-two-pounders, and twenty-four-pounders, once the mainstay of the sailing navy’s broadside. There were twelve-pounders, nines, and fours. But like the smoothbore rifles that so many of the infantry were carrying, North and South, those guns were of another age, quickly being eclipsed by the rifled barrel and the exploding shell.
“Well, damn, Cap’n Bowater,” Taylor whispered. “I do not know where to begin.” He said it soft. They had no business doing what they were doing.
“Not with the Dahlgrens, I shouldn’t think,” Bowater said. Taylor nodded. All the reinforcement in the world would not render the bulwark and decks of the Cape Fear strong enough to support one of those monsters.