“Aye, sir. Waiting your reply, sir.”
“Go fetch my steward. Tell him I need paper and pen.”
Four minutes later the steward came hurrying aft, the midshipman leading the way. No one was slacking off in the old man’s presence tonight.
Pope stood and wanted to groan but would not in front of his subordinates. He smoothed the paper out on the wide quarterdeck cap rail and the midshipman snatched down the lantern and held it up for the captain, maintaining a discreet distance. Pope dipped the pen and wrote:
SIR: You say your ship is aground. It will be your duty to defend your ship up to the last moment, and not to fire her, except it be to prevent her from falling into the hands of the enemy.
He paused in his writing, looked at the note. He knew the words he wished to use in the second paragraph, but he could not write them. It was not fitting for an officer and a gentleman to write the sort of thing he was thinking. Instead, he continued in a more even tone.
I do not think the enemy will be down tonight, but in case they do, fight them to the last.
You have boats enough to save all your men. I do not approve of your leaving your ship until every effort to defend her from falling into their hands is made.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,
John Pope
He folded the note, handed it to the midshipman, said, “That is for Captain Handy.”
The midshipman saluted, hurried away. Pope stepped across the deck, looked out over the dark water at the glowing lanterns on Vincennes ’s deck.
…Crippled ship and worn-out men…Shall I burn her when I leave her? Good God…
“The damned Rebels have the grit and the will to come down and attack us in paddle wheelers and towboats armored in cotton,” Pope said out loud, certain that no one was near, “and that idiot Handy wants to abandon and burn a ship more powerful than the whole Rebel fleet because he is tired and stuck in the mud!”
Pope shook his head. Dear God…here is why this damned war will not be over anytime soon.
29
After twenty rounds from the Fort the ammunition became exhausted and the entire garrison, under the command of Capt. Barron, late of the United States Navy, surrendered, and were made prisoners by Butler and his vandals…
— Richmond Whig, August 31, 1861
Samuel Bowater stared at the face in the mirror over the washbasin in the master’s cabin of the CSS Cape Fear. Thinner, more tired, lines more prominent. His facial hair shot through with considerably more gray. But overall, not too bad.
Da, da-da, da-da-da-da-daaa…
He smoothed his mustache and goatee and hummed the strains of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quintet in C Major. In two hours’ time, he would be sitting in the cramped, drafty, not excessively clean theater, a block from the waterfront in Elizabeth City, a theater generally relegated to minstrel and burlesque shows, and enjoying an uncertain performance of the work as interpreted by the Norfolk and Elizabeth City Quintet.
Da, da-da, da-da-da-da-daaa…
Samuel did not expect great things from the Norfolk and Elizabeth City Quintet. If they could come at all close to the sound he heard in his head, he would be content.
Those reservations aside, he was eager for the performance. It had been a long, long time since he had enjoyed real music. He was so starved for the genuine article that he would catch himself turning his ear to his cabin window, actively listening to Hieronymus Taylor’s violin, Moses Jones’s singing. He found himself tapping his foot to the tune of “ Maryland, My Maryland,” waving an imaginary baton to coax out the strains of “The Leaving of Liverpool.”
They were very good, Taylor and Jones, Bowater had to admit. Such a waste of talent. What a fine Don Giovanni Moses could make. With some work, Taylor could be a first violin. First violin for the Norfolk and Elizabeth City Quintet, certainly.
A blast of wind hit the Cape Fear, whistled around her superstructure, made her dock fasts groan. It was mid-November, cold and bleak. Hard on one’s optimism, with the gales coming in off the Atlantic, churning Albemarle Sound into steep chop, gray water capped with marching rows of white horses, cold, driving rain.
They were dockside at Elizabeth City, just in from a week’s patrol of the sound, running supplies down from Norfolk to the 3rd Georgia, dug in on Roanoke Island, taking long shots at the Yankees in Pamlico Sound. Uninspiring, miserable business, but Samuel was glad to be back at it. There had been moments enough during the past two months when he thought he might never step foot on shipboard again.
It was more than two months before, on August 29th, that Fort Hatteras was surrendered to the Yankees. The ten-inch shell from Wabash that had destroyed the fort’s Number 8 gun carriage, killed one of the gun crew, shattered Lieutenant Murdaugh’s arm, and knocked Flag Lieutenant Sharp galley west had nearly done for Samuel Bowater as well. He was tossed into a sea of hurt. He lost a lot of blood.
He had, besides the wounds to thigh and shoulder and arm, three broken ribs, a fractured humerus, and a mild concussion. He could not remember most of what had happened that morning at Fort Hatteras, even less of the trip back to Norfolk. He recalled some sort of shouting match between Hieronymus Taylor and the lockkeeper at the Great Dismal Swamp Canal locks, but little else.
The first sensation that he felt, once the doctor had backed off the laudanum a bit, was anxiety.
The Cape Fear, he was told, had been sent back to Albemarle Sound to join with the little fleet defending Roanoke Island. Roanoke sat square in the middle of the single passage between Pamlico and Albemarle Sound. It was the key to Albemarle Sound and so the key to control of the rivers that wound their way into North Carolina—the Roanoke, the Chowan, and the Pasquotank, as well as the inland passage between Elizabeth City and Norfolk.
It was inconceivable that the Yankees would not push up Pamlico Sound, fast and in force, and capitalize on their victory at Hatteras Inlet. Indeed, it was no more than half a victory if they did not.
While Samuel had no doubts about Lieutenant Harwell’s enthusiasm, he was deeply concerned about the luff’s ability to command the ship in his absence. Every day Bowater asked for the news from North Carolina. And every day the news was the same. The Yankees were in possession of the inlet, the Confederates held Roanoke Island, and they all seemed content to stay where they were.
Finally he stopped asking, and contented himself with the newspapers.
Jacob, whom he had kept to aid him during his convalescence, was dispatched daily for the Richmond Examiner or the Whig, in which Bowater read, “Whose fault it may be, that the little garrison at Hatteras was so poorly provided with ammunition, we leave the proper authorities to enquire. We take it for granted that the marauders will not be permitted to stay long where they are.”
Bowater smiled. If you had stood in that rain of shells, sir, you might not take that so much for granted.
When he could find it, Jacob also picked up the New York Post or Tribune. Samuel read the gloating headlines:
THE WAR ON THE COAST
GOOD NEWS FROM BUTLER’S FLEET
FORT HATTERAS BOMBARDED
SURRENDER OF THE REBELS
CAPTAIN BARRON AND 300 MEN TAKEN
THE TRAITORS OUT OF POWDER
He read about the panic and dismay that had seized the South in the wake of Hatteras, the first successful Union invasion of the Confederacy. From the highs of Manassas to this new low.