Fire buckets were spaced about the deck. Sand was spread to soak up blood. Pistols and cutlasses were issued to repel boarders, rifles loaded with bayonets fixed on their muzzles. The hatches to the magazine rooms below the gun deck were opened and the winches and pulleys readied to hoist the shot and powder.
Pushed by the current, the Texas was doing 16 knots when her bow crushed the floating spar of the obstruction. She surged through into clear water with hardly a scratch on the iron ram bolted to her bow.
An alert Union sentry spotted the Texas as she slipped out of the dark and fired off his musket.
"Cease fire, for God's sake cease fire!" Tombs shouted from the roof of the casemate.
"What ship are you?" a voice from shore came back.
"The Atlanta, you idiot. Can't you recognize your own ship?"
"When did you come upriver?"
"An hour ago. We're under orders to patrol to the obstruction and back to City Point."[1]
The bluff worked. The Union sentries along the shore appeared satisfied. The Texas moved ahead without further incident. Tombs exhaled a deep breath of relief.
He'd fully expected a hail of shot to lash out against his ship. With that danger temporarily passed, his only fear now was that a suspicious enemy officer might telegraph a warning up and down the river.
Fifteen miles beyond the obstruction, Tombs' luck began to run out as a low, menacing mass loomed from the blackness ahead.
The Union dual-turreted monitor, Onondaga, 11 inches of armor on her turrets, 51/2 inches on her hull, and mounting two powerful 15-inch Dahlgren smoothbores and two 150-pounder Parrott rifles, lay anchored near the western bank, her stern aimed downstream. She was taking on coal from a barge tied to her starboard side.[2]
The Texas was almost on top of her when a midshipman standing on top of the forward turret spotted the Confederate ironclad and gave the alarm.
The crew paused from loading coal and peered at the ironclad that was hurtling out of the night. Commander John Austin of the Onondaga hesitated a few moments, doubtful whether a rebel ironclad could have come this far down the James River without being exposed. Those few moments cost him. By the time he shouted for his crew to cast loose their guns, the Texas was passing abeam, an easy stone's throw away.
"Heave to!" Austin cried, "or we'll fire and blow you out of the water!"
"We are the Atlanta!" Tombs yelled back, carrying out the charade to the bitter end.
Austin was not taken in, not even by the sudden sight of the Union ensign on the mast of the intruder. He gave the order to fire.
The forward turret came into action too late. The Texas had already swept past and out of its angle of fire. But the two 15-inch Dahlgrens inside the Onondaga's rear turret spat flame and smoke.
At point blank range the Union gunners couldn't miss, and didn't. The shots struck the sides of the Texas like sledgehammer blows, smashing in the upper aft end of the casemate in an explosion of iron and wooden splinters that struck down seven men.
At almost the same time, Tombs shouted an order down the open roof hatch. The gun-port shutters dropped aside and the Texas poured her three guns broadside into the 0nondaga's turret. One of the Blakely's 100-pounder shells crashed through an open port and exploded against a Dahlgren, causing a gush of smoke and flame and terrible carnage inside the turret. Nine men were killed and eleven badly wounded.
Before the guns from either vessel could be reloaded, the rebel ironclad had melted back into the night and safely steamed around the next bend in the river. The Onondaga's forward turret blindly fired a parting salutation, the shells whistling high and aft of the fleeing Texas.
Desperately, Commander Austin drove his crew to up anchor and swing around 180 degrees. It was a futile gesture. The monitor's top speed was barely above 7 knots. There was no hope of her chasing down and closing on the rebel craft.
Calmly, Tombs called to Lieutenant Craven. "Mr. Craven, we'll hide no more under an enemy flag. Please hoist the Confederate colors and close the gun-ports."
A young midshipman eagerly sprang to the mast and untied the halyards, pulling down the stars and stripes and sending up the diagonal stars and bars on a field of white and red.
Craven joined Tombs atop the casemate. "Now the word is out," he said, "it'll be no picnic between here and the sea. We can deal with army shore batteries. None of their field artillery is powerful enough to make more than a dent on our armor."
Tombs paused to stare apprehensively across the bow at the black river unwinding ahead. "The guns of the Federal fleet waiting for us at the mouth of the river are our greatest danger."
A barrage burst out from shore almost before he finished speaking.
"And so it begins," Craven waxed philosophically, as he hurriedly retreated to his station on the gun deck below. Tombs remained exposed behind the pilothouse to direct the movement of his ship against any Federal vessels blocking the river.
Shells from unseen batteries and musket fire from sharpshooters began to splatter the Texas like a hailstorm. While his men cursed and chafed at the bit, Tombs kept the gun-ports closed. He saw no reason to endanger his crew and waste valuable powder and shot at an unseen enemy.
For two more hours the Texas endured the onslaught. Her engines ran smoothly and pushed her at speeds a knot or two faster than she had been designed. Wooden gunboats appeared, fired off their broadsides, and then attempted to take up the chase as the Texas ignored them like gnats and dashed past as if they were stopped in the water.
Suddenly the familiar outline of the Atlanta materialized, anchored broadside-on across the river. Her starboard guns poured forth as their lookouts recognized the unyielding rebel monster bearing down on them.
"She knew we was coming," Tombs muttered.
"Should I pass around her, Captain?" asked Chief Pilot Hunt, displaying a remarkable coolness at the helm.
"No, Mr. Hunt," answered Tombs. "Ram her slightly forward of her stern."
"Smash her to the side out of our way," Hunt replied in understanding. "Very well, sir."
Hunt gave the wheel a quarter turn and aimed the Texas' bow straight toward the stern of the Atlanta. Two bolts from the ex-Confederate's 8-inch guns drove into the rapidly approaching casemate, cracking the shield and pushing the wooden backing in almost a foot and wounding three men by the concussion and splinters.
The gap quickly closed and the Texas buried 10 feet of her heavy iron prow into the Atlanta's hull and then drove up and through her deck, snapping her stern anchor chain and thrusting her around in a 90-degree arc as well as forcing her deck under the river's surface. Water gushed into the Union ironclad's gunports and she quickly began to slip out of sight as the Texas literally rode over her.
The Atlanta's keel sank into the river mud and she rolled onto her side as the wildly churning screws of the Texas spun within inches of her upturned hull before thrashing into the clear. Most of the Atlanta's crew rushed from the gun-ports and hatches before she went under, but at least twenty men went down with her.
Tombs and his ship hurtled on in their desperate effort to reach freedom. The running battle continued as the Texas shrugged off the constant fire and the pursuing Union gunboats. Telegraph lines strung along the river by Federal forces hummed with news of the ironclad's approach as a mounting wave of chaos and desperation increased among army shore batteries and navy ships determined to intercept and sink her.
Shot and shell continuously plunged against the Texas' armor with thumps that made her shudder from bow to stern. A 100-pound bolt from a Dahlgren mounted high above an embankment at Fort Hudson bashed into the pilothouse, stunning Chief Pilot Hunt from the concussion and leaving him bloodied from fragments that flew through the viewing slits. He gamely stayed at the wheel, keeping the ship on a straight course in the middle of the channel.
2
The original Monitor was only the first of her class. Almost sixty more were built of varied design as late as 1903.