The lead Yankee ship staggered under the hammer blow from the fort but did not stop, did not even slow. Her sides flashed with gunfire as she hit back, wooden warship against fixed fortification. Fort Jackson began to blast away, and then the next Yankee ship in line, and the next. In less than half a minute a full-scale battle had appeared, right under their bow.
Below, Bowater could hear his officers and petty officers shouting, could hear the tramp of 150 men rushing to battle stations, but he remained, transfixed. He considered sending for Jacob, having him fetch his frock coat and hat, but he rejected the idea. Too hot for that. He wondered at himself. There was a time when he would not have considered going into battle without his proper uniform, despite the heat.
And then he remembered that Jacob was no longer aboard. He wondered about him and Moses and the other Negroes, if they had made it through or were caught up in that.
No, they had had time. They would have made it through.
Robley Paine turned to him, one side of his face lit with flickering orange light. “Our time has come,” he said.
“It has indeed,” Bowater replied. “It surely has indeed.”
45
On the morning of the 25th the enemy’s fleet advanced upon the batteries and opened fire, which was returned with spirit by the troops as long as their powder lasted, but with little apparent effect upon the enemy.
— Major General Lovell, C.S. Army, Commanding Defenses of New Orleans
There was no plan, no organized waterborne defense. There were not enough Confederate ships to warrant it, and with the River Defense Fleet doing what it wished to do in any event, it had never seemed worth trying. Sally forth and fight, that had been the only plan. Captain Bowater rang up half ahead, called down to Lieutenant Asa Quillin to slip the stern anchor which held them head downstream.
The noise of the chain running out came rattling through the deck. The bitter end went overboard and the Yazoo River twisted in the stream, free of the muddy bottom. The quartermaster, wide-eyed with the shock of being roused from sleep by cannon fire, still trying to button his pants, turned the wheel with one hand, held his pants with the other, brought her on a heading for the battle.
Risley, the pilot, climbed up to the platform beneath the pilothouse. Without a word he took the wheel, let the helmsman get his pants in order. “Heading, Captain?”
Bowater watched the battle for a moment before replying. It was as if the night had exploded, great flashes of red and orange, the concussion of the great guns making the casement of the Yazoo River shudder, even half a mile upstream. In just a few moments of fighting the smoke had become thick enough to make some of the gunfire look muted, dull bursts of color in the dark and the gloom.
Quillin appeared in the pilothouse looking for orders.
“You recall, Mr. Risley, Horatio Nelson’s words, just before Trafalgar?” Bowater said. “‘No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.’ That must be our strategy tonight, because I think we’ll get no instructions from the flag. So let us plunge right in.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Risley said. The quartermaster took the helm again. “Find the closest damn Yankee and steer right for her,” the pilot instructed.
More footsteps on the platform and Hieronymus Taylor appeared, ubiquitous cigar in mouth, his frock coat open, his hands in his trouser pockets. “Forgive my intrusion,” he said. He looked forward, out the slit of a window, at the panorama of violence under their bow. “Ho-ly God…”
“What is the report from the engine room?” Bowater asked, irritated. He was irritated about the Negroes, irritated about Taylor’s being there in the pilothouse, irritated in general with the man.
“All’s well, Cap’n Bowater. Boilers blown down, fires are clean, grates are clean, steam’s up.”
“You have coal heavers enough?”
“We have coal heavers enough.”
Bowater turned back to the fight before him, tried to ignore Taylor. The rest of the mosquito fleet was scrambling, slipping anchors, steaming downriver. Risley ordered a hard turn to starboard to avoid collision with one of the River Defense Fleet. It was helter skelter, with no organized line of battle, and Bowater wondered if there wasn’t as much danger of colliding with friend as there was of being run down by their enemies.
“Well, reckon I’ll crawl back in my hole,” Taylor said, and when Bowater failed to respond, added, “Captain?”
Bowater turned. Taylor wore a strange look on his face. Not contrition, not arrogance, not apology. Something else. A touch of sentiment, perhaps.
“Cap’n Bowater, we have been through quite a bit together, you and me. I got to say it now. You are one cold, patrician son of a bitch, but you got grit. It’s been a pleasure.”
Taylor extended his hand, and the words and the gesture were so genuine that Bowater was taken aback. He would not have credited the man with such sincerity.
Bowater took the extended hand, enveloped it in his two hands, and shook. “Chief Taylor, you are one insufferable pain in the ass, but you are a hell of an engineer.”
Taylor smiled around his cigar. “Cap’n, if you live through this here jaunt, and I don’t, I would surely admire it if you could see that put on my headstone.”
“It’ll be done.”
Taylor regarded the men in the pilothouse. He snapped a crisp salute. “Morituri te salutamus,” he said, then turned, disappeared into the gloom of the ironclad’s lower deck.
They had halved the distance in the time that he had spoken with Taylor, the fast-flowing Mississippi River sweeping them down on the enemy. The fight had mounted in its intensity, the smoke and noise and gunfire building on itself. The first of the Yankee ships was just now coming between the forts, blasting away with both broadsides, pushing on upriver.
And the forts were giving it back. Five days of shelling seemed to have made no difference. The big guns were blazing away so that the walls of the forts might have been on fire, so solid was the sheet of muzzle flash.
The smoke rolled over the river, more and more smoke, hanging like an acrid fog, glowing orange. And through that smoke the ships moved, the big, slow-moving Yankee screw steamers, the little ships of the Confederate defenders. Into that hailstorm of iron, Samuel Bowater pushed the Yazoo River.
He turned to the midshipman, Mr. Worley, and said, “Go below. Tell the gun captains to fire at any target on which their guns will bear. They are to fire at will.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” the mid said, a bit too loud and high-pitched, and he hurried off.
A gunboat was leading the Yankee line, a schooner-rigged screw-driven craft, 150 feet or so in length. “There! Steer for her!” Bowater said, pointing through the slot, and as he did a tugboat appeared out of the gloom, crossing their bow, starboard to port. In the flashing gunfire Bowater could make out the Confederate flag on her stern. He got out no more than the first syllable of a helm command before they struck.
The men in the pilothouse staggered as the two vessels hit, and Quillin shouted, “Damned idiot!”
Bowater looked out the slot. The tug was hung up on their bow and men were rushing along her deck, shouting, waving arms. The gunfire was so continuous now that the whole scene was lit in orange, the tug silhouetted against the flames of Fort Jackson’s barrage.
Bowater grabbed the telegraphs, gave a ring, shoved the handles to full ahead. No time for this horseshit… The engines responded immediately, the Yazoo River surged ahead, pushing itself into the tug. With a snapping and crunching sound, audible over the gunfire, the tug peeled off the Yazoo River’s bow, bumped against her side, disappeared astern, and the ironclad was once again racing toward the fight.