The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks Page 14

  * * *

  On board Patapsco, the fourth Union ship in line, the view ahead was already becoming clouded with smoke. To an untrained eye, Patapsco and Weehawken looked similar, except for color. Weehawken was lead gray and Patapsco basic black, but Patapsco carried a surprise. She had the massive 15-inch Dahlgren, but her 11-inch smoothbore had been replaced by a 50-pound rifled Parrot gun that had the ability to lob a round over a mile with accuracy.

  Slowly, like an old man turning his head, the turret on Patapsco rotated. And then the Parrot sang.

  * * *

  Major Elliott was standing on the upper gun deck of Fort Sumter when he heard the high-pitched whine of a rifled round. It slammed into the base of the fort, showering brick dust high into the air. Elliott felt a sting on his cheeks like the bites of many tiny ants. Wiping the lens of his spyglass clean, he ordered the fire returned.

  * * *

  It was 2:41 P.M., some ten minutes after the first shot had been fired from Fort Sumter, and aboard New Ironsides, DuPont was seeing his carefully crafted plans unraveling. The line of Union warships was straying out of formation. As he peered through the smoke ahead, it looked as if Weehawken was slowing.

  New Ironsides was eight hundred yards from Fort Sumter and was inside the curtain of fire from both Fort Moultrie to the north and Sumter dead ahead. A volley of Confederate shot rang out. DuPont was flung to the deck, as New Ironsides took the fourth of the ninety-three hits she would suffer in the next three hours.

  Rising from the deck, DuPont trained his spyglass on Weehawken.

  Captain Rodgers had felt what he thought was a sea mine exploding beneath his hull. The line of sea mines, known as torpedoes, brought more fear to the crews of the Union gunboats than did the guns of Sumter and Moultrie. The forts and their guns could be seen; the torpedoes were hidden assassins lying in wait for the unwary.

  “Full astern,” Rodgers shouted through the speaking tube to the engine room.

  Passaic, second in line, slowed. The Union formation began to deteriorate.

  On Sullivan’s Island, Confederate gunners at Battery Bee and Battery Beauregard added to the fire coming from the parapets of Fort Moultrie. Across the water, the Sumter gunners were hurling several shells a minute in a relentlessly orchestrated symphony of loading and firing. A curtain of smoke blew from the gun decks and was carried by the breezes past the Union fleet. A rain of lead fell from the sky.

  “Sir,” the pilot of New Ironsides said to DuPont, “we are having control problems.”

  DuPont knew his command was unwieldy. The vessel had been designed and built in a frenzy by a Union navy anxious to meet the threat from Confederate ironclads. Unlike the monitors, she had been designed on the old tried-and-true hull of sail and steamships, and her hybrid design of steam, sails, and armor had never truly worked efficiently.

  “We’ve been struck forty times,” DuPont noted. “I don’t doubt there are problems.”

  “I fear we might run down one of the monitors,” the pilot noted.

  DuPont turned to the signalman. “Make the signal to disregard motions of commander-in-chief.” The man scampered away. Next DuPont turned to the pilot.

  “Take us out,” he said quietly. “I’ll be damned if I’ll sink one of my own.”

  From last in line to first. As the formation broke apart, Keokuk bravely steamed to the front of the line. For her brave actions, she would pay a stern price.

  “Sir,” Keokuk’s signalman reported, “New lronsides asks we disregard her movement.”

  Commander Rhind nodded absently. He had more important things to contend with. In the last thirty minutes, Keokuk had taken eighty-seven hits. The ironclad was holed in nineteen places above and below the waterline. Her gun towers and smokestack were riddled with holes through which one could see the fading daylight, and his aft gun had been disabled before it could ever fire a round.

  The forward gun had gotten off five shots — then it, too, was disabled. Rhind was in command of a vessel that was now completely defenseless. Then the engines stopped.

  Weehawken had been struck nearly fifty times by the Confederate guns. One cannonball had jammed the turret, making the gun unusable. The pilot backed away, then turned to starboard to retreat. The ship’s engineers ran to the turret. After great effort, they managed to get it to rotate. Weehawken withdrew from the battle with the dangerous torpedo raft, which was left to drift ashore.

  Patapsco was taking a drubbing. The guns of Fort Moultrie were pounding her starboard side. The pilot was doing his best to position his ironclad so the guns could not find their range, but he could barely see through the smoke, and Union ships were everywhere. With the line of attack in deterioration and fully half the Union ironclads in retreat, only the chaos of an action gone wrong was visible out of the viewing port.

  Smoke rolled across the water. Plumes of water shot into the air like just-spouted fountains, as missed shots plunged into the water. The few Union ironclads still engaged were trying to return fire to the forts, but that merely added to the noise and confusion. Along with the scream of shells flying seaward and back to the forts was the din of steam engines, boilers, and chains. There was no quiet on an ironclad. The metal hulls reverberated with the smallest sound and echoed like the tolling gates of hell. When the hull or deck armor was struck by Confederate shot, the sound for the crew was akin to having their head inside a church bell being rung.

  Along with constant noise was constant heat. Even though the temperature outside was mild, in battle all ports were closed and battened down. With no breeze coming inside, the air became superheated.

  Then the smells. Gunpowder, fuses, metal, and grease. Paint and cotton batting. Food from the galley, odors from the head compartment, unwashed sailors. Fear. It was a cacophony of sights and sounds, a sensory overload for the captain and crew.

  Disabled and battered, the pilot steered Patapsco from the line.

  On the deck of New Ironsides, Rear Admiral DuPont could see that it was hopeless. The battle was three hours old, and the Union fleet had not managed to accomplish much. Keokuk was battered and barely moving.

  Weehawken and Patapsco had been hit many times.

  The Union monitors Nahant, Nantucket, Montauk, Passaic, and Catskill had all taken numerous blows. DuPont’s flotilla was in disarray and deteriorating minute by minute.

  DuPont gave the order to withdraw.

  The Union fleet retreated the way they arrived, south down the ship channel past Morris Island. But it was a different picture from when they had steamed north to engage the rebels. The monitors showed spots where the paint had been jarred loose, and their armor was dented like a tin can hit by a golf club. Uneven streams of smoke trailed from their stacks as engineers struggled to keep the battered boilers operating. Two of the seven monitors were leaking. For now, the flow of the water into the hulls was being dissipated overboard by the pumps. Still, the weight of the water before it was discharged was causing both to list slightly. The armada came crawling back past Morris Island resembling a boxer after a losing match. Later, it would be learned that the fleet had suffered a total of 493 hits.

  The powerful Union force had been beaten like a borrowed mule. Keokuk had gone from last in line to first and back to last again.

  Commander Rhind climbed through the hatch into one of the towers. He could use only one arm — the other was peppered with wooden shards that went inches into his flesh.

  Keokuk’s experimental armor had proved a failure. Designed with alternating horizontal rows of wood interspersed with metal strips, the mishmash failed to provide adequate protection. The truth was that the design of the armor was as practical as making a bulletproof vest without sides. When a cannonball struck the iron straps on the hull, it was repelled. But what of the wood hull inches away? That usually exploded in a hail of splinters and wood chips. Rhind’s arm was proof of that.

  Staring fore and aft, Rhind assessed Keokuk’s damage.

  The forward
tower was pounded to pulp — it looked as if a giant had beaten it with a sledgehammer. The crew inside the forward tower were all wounded. The aft tower, where Rhind was standing, was not much better. The gun had been disabled after only five shots, but the crew had fared better. Only a little more than half had been wounded.

  Between the two towers stood the remains of Keokuk’s smokestack.

  The stack was riddled with so many holes, it looked like a tin shed hit by a shotgun blast. Smoke rose along the outline of the pipe until reaching a hole. Then it puffed out of the holes in rings, like those from the lips of an accomplished smoker.

  While Rhind watched, Keokuk rolled over a wave. Just then, part of the ornamental top of the stack broke loose. It struck the deck before being washed overboard.

  Rhind’s ship was coming apart.

  Nineteen shells had penetrated Keokuk’s armor. Several of those were below the waterline. Rhind knew that the engineering crew was hard at work just keeping the vessel afloat. Thirty-two of his crew were wounded, but thankfully no one had died.

  Rhind opened the hatch and climbed back to the main deck. Keokuk was out of range of the Confederate guns; his crew was now concentrating on keeping afloat.

  Thirty-two wounded, but no dead. Soon there would be a death, but it would be the death of Keokuk As the sun set in the west, the cigar-shaped craft limped toward her anchorage off Morris Island. Commander Rhind had no illusions about the battle. He and the rest of the Union fleet had been savagely pummeled, and his ship had suffered the worst. Climbing down into the hold, he shouted to Engineer Wheeler, who was near the bow supervising the plugging of a leak.

  “How bad is it?” Rhind asked.

  Wheeler was covered in grease and sopping wet. Wiping his hands on a grimy rag, he walked closer. “It’s not good, Commander,” Wheeler said. “I count nineteen holes in the hull, and more than half are below waterline. The pumps are keeping up, but just barely. The engines keep cutting out, and the forward turret is useless. To make matters worse, half my engine-room crew is wounded, so we are having trouble keeping up with all of the problems that are cropping up.”

  “I’ll send down some of the gun crew and deckhands to help,” Rhind offered.

  At that instant, Keokuk rolled over a wave and the hull flexed. A bolt that held the planking to the ribs shot across the hold like a minié ball and stuck in the far wall.

  “We need to anchor,” Wheeler shouted, as he ran to inspect the damage.

  An hour later, four miles from Fort Sumter and two miles off Morris Island, Rhind ordered the anchor dropped. The engineers mounted a brave defense, but Keokuk’s short life was over. Throughout the night, the weather was calm with fair seas. And for a time it seemed that Wheeler and his crew might save the battered vessel.

  Fate, however, had another plan. The winds kicked up at 5 A.M. It was nothing that a healthy ship would even notice, but Keokuk was far from healthy. As the vessel flexed, the cotton batting that Wheeler’s crew had stuffed between the planking became saturated, then worked loose. Keokuk began sinking farther into the water.

  Rhind reacted by ordering parts of the damaged towers and smokestack cut loose, but the action did little to stop the inevitable. It was a battle that could not be won.

  The sun broke on April 8, and with it came stronger winds.

  “Signal for assistance,” Rhind said. “We need tugs to evacuate the wounded.”

  Wheeler climbed the ladder to the main deck. From shoes to belt line, he was soaked. He had gone twenty-four hours without sleep, and his face was etched with exhaustion.

  “Sir,” he said, saluting Rhind, “the water’s rising faster than we can handle.”

  Rhind pointed to a trio of approaching tugs.

  “Help is here, just keep her afloat until we off-load the wounded,” he said.

  “It will be an honor, sir,” Wheeler said, as he made his way back to the ladder, “but I estimate we have twenty minutes and little more.”

  It was 7:20 A.M. when Rhind and Wheeler stepped from the deck of Keokuk. As soon as the tug cast off, the ironclad began her death spasms. First she shifted bow-down, as water borne by the wind entered through her hawse pipe. Then the ironclad shuddered as the immense weight of the water settled in the lower hold and sprang the already battered planking. The second the water filled the hold, Keokuk burped a cloud of coal dust like the last gasp of a diseased smoker.

  Then she settled to the seafloor in fifteen feet of water.

  Her battered smokestack was partially visible. Keokuk had lived but six weeks.

  * * *

  Philo T. Hackett spit tobacco juice at a nearby anthill and watched the tiny insects struggle to free themselves from the sticky mess. At fourteen, he was too young to be chewing, but he was also too young to be hiding on Morris Island under a makeshift covering of brush and limbs. Hackett had been hiding since yesterday evening. First, he had watched the battle, then he had observed the Union ironclad struggle to stay afloat before dying.

  Hackett’s father was stationed on Fort Sumter, and his mother was home, worried sick about her missing son. Crawling from his hiding place, Hackett made his way to his rowboat hidden on the lee side of the island.

  Then he quietly rowed across the water to report to General Beauregard.

  “I WANT THOSE guns,” Beauregard said.

  Adolphus La Coste nodded.

  La Coste was a civil engineer. However, in a war where all were called, he was not one to shirk responsibility. He stared at the aging lightship at the dock in Charleston.

  “I think we can do it, sir,” La Coste said, “but it is not without peril. We will be operating right under the nose of the Yankees.”

  “How long will it take, Adolphus?” Beauregard asked.

  “With the right help, a couple of weeks,” La Coste answered.

  “Whatever you need,” Beauregard said, walking away. “I want those guns.”

  Outfitting the lightship with tackle and hoist required a week. True to his word, Beauregard had given La Coste all he needed. The tackle was new, the ropes unused. A half-dozen divers sat on the deck amid a pile of freshly oiled saws, pry bars, and levers. Now it was time to do the impossible.

  A driving rain was making visibility nonexistent.

  Diver Angus Smith climbed up a Jacob’s ladder onto the deck of the lightship. His leather gloves were in tatters and his hands cut from his labors. Smith barely felt the pain, because the cold from being immersed in the chilled water had permeated his very being. For seven nights now, Smith and the other divers had rowed out on small boats to labor a fathom below the water. To avoid being seen, they used no lights. To avoid being heard, they were careful not to bang tools against the metal. Before first light, the divers retreated; each evening they came anew. Four days into the operation, they reported to La Coste that the guns were free from their mounts and that openings in the turrets had been hewn. Tonight was the first time the modified lightship had visited the site.

  “We’re doing this all by feel, sir,” Smith said. “It’s as black as night down there, but I think we have everything attached as ordered.”

  La Coste nodded, then stepped into the pilothouse near a single burning candle and stared at his pocket watch. It was nearly 4 A.M. Attaching the lines had taken longer than expected. Soon it would be light, and the minute the Yankees saw the lightship on station above Keokuk, they were sure to come. He stepped back out of the pilothouse.

  “Are all your divers out of the water, Smith?” La Coste asked.

  Smith did a quick count of the men on deck. Four were sleeping, still in their diving gear; one other had disrobed and stood in his long johns, peeing over the railing on the lee side.

  “They’re all accounted for, sir,” Smith said laconically.

  “Power to the turnstile,” La Coste ordered.

  Four Confederate sailors began walking in a circle. Their hands were gripping the oak arms of the turnstile. Slowly the thick lines were tightened unti
l the 15,700-pound weight of the first gun was being supported only by cable and rope and chain.

  The cannon rose slowly through the water. Inch by inch by inch.

  La Coste stared at the wooden derrick on the bow. The wood creaked in protest as the joints rubbed, but it held fast. “Grease the fair ends,” he whispered to a sailor, who slathered animal fat on the lines. Then he staggered as the deck of the lightship settled from the immense weight being transferred. Almost imperceptibly, the cannon rose.

  Wiping water from his beard, La Coste peered into the depths of Keokuk’s grave.

  And then he saw it. The merest edge of the outer tube of the cannon.

  “Harder, boys,” he said a little too loudly.

  The cannon was almost at the top edge of the tower — a few more inches and it would be free. Then it stopped.

  “Mr. La Coste,” a deckhand whispered, “the tackle’s together. We can’t go farther.”

  Inches from salvation and miles from success. And the sky was becoming lighter.

  “Damn,” La Coste said. Soon they would be visible. Once they were spotted, this operation would be finished for good. “We need to move all the weight we can to the stern. That should raise the bow enough to give us the small space we need.”

  A little more — but not enough. The dangling gun muzzle clung stubbornly to the wreck. La Coste stared east — it was growing lighter. A few more minutes and he would need to abort the mission to escape detection. A span thinner than a slice of bread.

  Then the sea came to the rescue.

  Perhaps there was a storm a hundred miles offshore. Maybe somewhere the earth had trembled. Whatever the case, a large wave came from nowhere. It rolled across the placid surface of the water like a bedsheet being straightened.