Twenty yards. The Yankee’s side wheels churned, kicked water; the Yankee inched forward, tried to turn bow on. Bowater felt some bit of sanity return. It was not time to die, not yet.
“Tanner, take her side wheel out! Glancing blow!”
Tanner nodded, looked relieved. He spun the wheel to starboard, angled in, swung it to port. The Cape Fear was moving fast, carrying a lot of momentum. The ships were side to side, passing on opposite courses. The Cape Fear ’s bow struck the wheelbox, blew it apart with the impact, went right on through, spraying paddles, twisting paddle-wheel arms, as the side wheel destroyed itself against the Rebel.
They powered past. Bowater watched running Yankees, shouting Yankees, angry Yankees, so close he could see their faces. Small arms banged away. Bowater could hear the thud of bullets hitting woodwork. The Cape Fears fired back.
On the Yankee’s boat deck, a lone figure, an officer, leaning on the rail. Lieutenant S. P. Quackenbush. Bowater knew him well, had spent long hours on watch with him, in past years. Quackenbush doffed his cap and Bowater doffed his as they passed, as if the entire scene was not bizarre enough.
The Yankee’s forward gun went off, right into the Cape Fear ’s deckhouse, the muzzle not ten feet from the bulkhead. The proximity saved them; the shell just made a hole and kept on going.
“Come left, come left!” Bowater shouted, and Tanner spun the wheel and Bowater looked out over the wild melee on the river. Sea Bird was sinking fast, rammed by a Yankee gunboat. Ellis was side by side with a Yankee and they were going at it, hand to hand, but the Yankees carried marines on board, and they outnumbered the Rebels four to one.
The smoke lay like morning fog on the river, the gunfire was nearly continuous, the gunboats moved in and out of the clouds from their own guns. Boats whirled, steamed ahead, fired, slewed around in the wild dance on the water.
Bowater stood in the wheelhouse door. “Make for Ellis —let us see if we can come to her aid.” Full ahead. They were still going full ahead. He looked at Ellis. He did not think they would reach her in time.
Ellis’s crew was being pressed by boarders from two sides. Cutlasses flashed, small arms fired. Hand-to-hand naval combat. It was something from another era, like this entire wild ship-on-ship fleet action.
The Cape Fear staggered, as if shoved from behind, slewed sideways, and the aft end seemed to explode. Bowater turned to see splinters and bits of rail and wood flying as high as the deckhouse.
“Steady as she goes!” he shouted to Tanner, then ran aft, skirted the huge hole that had been the boat deck, stopped at the after rail. Quackenbush! His ship was disabled but his guns would still bear, and he was firing, had hit the Cape Fear square on the stern. The lovely rounded fantail was gone. The vessel ended three feet shorter in a jagged, gaping profusion of broken frames and shattered planks. But it was well above the waterline, and would not stop them.
Quackenbush! There was a sense of betrayal. Before, Bowater had fought anonymous ships, captains who might as well have been foreign enemies. But Quackenbush? They had laughed together. They had traded bottles of wine, for the love of God, and Quackenbush had displayed a surprisingly refined palate!
Both howitzers were knocked out, the guns on the deck, the carriages in half a dozen pieces. Three dead men lay scattered about, as if they had fallen exhausted, except that they were each missing one or more limbs. The rest of the gun crews were gone, forward, Bowater supposed.
Bowater pushed himself off the rail, ran forward again. Another shot, broad on the starboard beam; the deckhouse shook. Bowater stumbled, fell forward, broke his fall with his hands. He used the momentum to scramble back to his feet.
A Yankee gunboat had broken through the bank of smoke, was steaming down on them, a dark cloud roiling up from her stack. A screw steamer, no vulnerable side wheels. A cable length away, coming right at them with malicious intent.
Bowater ran back to the wheelhouse. “Come right, come right!” Tanner spun the wheel. Ellis would have to look after herself. Bowater glanced back at the tug. Too late in any event.
It was a jousting match once again, the Cape Fear and the Yankee, bow to bow and coming straight on.
Bowater stepped to the front of the boat deck. “Mr. Harwell, you see your target!”
“Aye, sir! I only have two more shells, sir!”
Bowater nodded. Two more shells. Howitzers gone. The only weapons left were the men and the Cape Fear herself.
“Use them now! We’ll ram and board her!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Madness! The fight was lost, it was a suicide run, take one of the bastards down with you. Pointless, but Bowater could think of no other option. Run for Norfolk? He could not do that.
“Merrow, run down to the engine room. Tell Chief Taylor I want the throttles open wide, and then all hands out of the engine room. Tell him to arm his black gang with pistols and cutlasses.”
Merrow repeated the basics of the order, hurried off. One hundred yards; the Yankee fired again, missed. Harwell fired and missed as well. Fifty percent of the Cape Fear ’s ammunition plunged uselessly into the river.
Samuel Bowater watched the water boiling under the Yankee’s bow, the plume of smoke from the stack, the determined, deadly, relentless onrush of the enemy, and for the first time since the first shot at Fort Sumter, he looked on the enemy and hated him.
Chief Taylor prowled. He looked at steam gauges. Creeping past twenty-five pounds, the boiler was pushing out maximum steam. He examined the fishplate, peered into the firebox. There was clinker on the grates, glass that formed from the melting sand in the coal, and it was impeding the draft of the fire. He frowned. They should wing the fire over to the other side of the firebox, break that clinker out of there. But now was not the time.
He prowled back to the engine, ran his eyes over piping, watched the motion of thrusting and rotating parts. All was well.
He was not so sure that was the case topside. They had taken a shell in the transom; he could see places where daylight shone through the hull. The deckhouse was so punched through there was more hole than bulkhead. They had been going full ahead, weaving, turning. That could not be good.
He lit his cigar, puffed it to life. He looked at the coal bunkers. Coal bunkers, by definition, were not always full of coal. Sometimes, such as now, they were only a quarter full. That made them, by Taylor’s lights, a piss-poor choice for the protection of a fighting vessel. Who ever heard of armoring that might or might not be there during a fight?
They were a quarter full now. That meant that for most of the vessel’s side, there was only a single layer of inch-and-a-half white oak planks over live oak frames standing between rifled ordnance fired at point-blank range and the ship’s boiler.
Don’t think about that, can’t think about that…
The Cape Fear heeled into a turn. Taylor staggered, his hand reached out, automatically fell on a nonhot surface to steady himself. Burgess dumped coal on the deck plates. Moses shoveled, flung it in the fire. Jefferson dead, Tommy laid up, they were short-handed.
A voice called down the fidley. Taylor looked up. Merrow standing in the door. He had not even noticed the door opening, so much of the sides, bulkheads, and roof were gone.
“Chief Taylor! Chief Taylor! Captain says open the throttle up and then all hands out of the engine room! Arm yourselves with pistols and cutlasses!”