The Sea Hunters Read online

  "Wherever you say, sir," the pilot acknowledged.

  A thick cloud of dusty black smoke poured from Virginia's big stack as she closed the distance at a ninety-degree angle toward the doomed Union ship. Moving at her maximum speed of 5-1/2 knots, like a giant fist punching through water, she broke past an outer layer of logs, erected around the hull of Cumberland as protection against just such an event. Her irresistible mass split the logs like toothpicks, and she crossed the remaining few yards to her target in seconds.

  After the war, when Buchanan reminisced about the battle, he recalled that the most inspired order he ever gave in his long naval career came when he shouted down to the engine room half a minute before the impact. "Reverse engines!"

  The big propellers stopped, reversed and bit in the rive,r, as the massive ram, thrust by nearly a thousand tons of mass, crushed through Cumberland's hull deep below the waterline just aft of the forward mast and below the berth deck, driving in timbers and opening a hole that some said later, "a horse and carriage could have driven through."

  At the same time, the deadly bow guns of Virginia belched fire and shot directly through the side of the mortally wounded frigate, killing ten men belowdecks. The masts of Cumberland swayed back and forth like pendulums as water gushed inside the stricken ship. For nearly a minute the two ships were tightly locked together, the Virginia unable to break free from the frigate's grasp. Cumberland's bow began to sink lower into the water. For a moment it looked as though the wooden frigate were going to drag the ironclad to the bottom with her. If Buchanan had not ordered his engines reversed before the collision, the Virginia would have surely embedded her bow more deeply in a death grip and gone down.

  Fortunately for Buchanan and his crew, the immense ram was ripped from its mountings while held fast inside Cumberland, and the ironclad broke free. Then Virginia pivoted until the ships were side by side.

  The mauled crew of the frigate found sudden encouragement now that they could train all the broadside guns on their venomous adversary.

  The gunners got off three broadsides that shattered the muzzles on two of Virginia's guns, smashed her smokestack, tore away her anchors and blew all but one of her lifeboats to splinters. Their fire was well aimed and deliberate, but an exercise in futility. Even at point-blank range, Cumberland's fire caused little if any serious damage to her enemy.

  On board the rapidly flooding ship was a scene of macabre horror.

  The gun deck was awash with the blood, entrails, and limbs of the decimated crew. There were so many dead scattered among the guns the living worked feverishly to pile them in heaps on the opposite side of the deck out of the way. The wounded, carried below to the berth deck to await medical attention, were powerless to save themselves as the water crept up from below and through the open hatches.

  A gravely injured seaman named Winston Humbolt was waiting to be tended by a surgeon. His good friend and shipmate, Tom Lasser, who had had a wounded hand treated and was returning to the fight, stopped by to offer a few words of encouragement.

  "TOm, are you going to leave me?" Humbolt whispered.

  Lasser cradled his friend's head in his lap. "No, Winny, I won't leave you."

  Lieutenant Morris was standing on the main deck as a final shot from the ironclad scored a direct hit on the stern gun crew nearby.

  The gun crew seemed to dissolve from the blast. Morris was struck dumb with shock. He stood frozen, splattered with gore and small bits of human remains, too dazed to move. The bile rose in his throat as he saw badly maimed gunner Karl Hunt, his legs shot off below the knees, crawl over to his gun and pull the lanyard for the last time, sending a shot against the ironclad that exploded in its smokestack.

  Selfridge, seeing the horror, rushed over, and helped seat Morris on a hatch behind the mainmast. "Stay with us, George. We need you.

  Morris grasped Selfridge by the arm. "I'll be all right in another minute. See to the guns."

  He suddenly came unsteadily to his feet and pushed Selfridge aside when he recognized a voice calling to him through the roar of the guns to surrender. He staggered to a railing and gazed down at the ironclad only a few yards away. From a hatch in the upper deck of the casemate, Buchanan repeated his demand. "Surrender your ship!"

  "Never!" Morris yelled back defiantly. "I'll sink alongside first."

  His reply was punctuated by a shell from one of Cumberland's nine-inch Dahlgrens.

  Like a struggling scorpion that refused to die, the few operational guns on Cumberland kept firing away at the invulnerable Virginia. The forward slant of the deck caused one of the huge rifled guns to break loose from its moorings. Lieutenant Selfridge watched in quiet abhorrence as the cannon careered down the sloping deck, crushing a young sailor. His agonized scream was choked off as he was pushed by the gun through a railing into the river. His lifeless body rose to the surface, floating face down, a human marker to the devastation.

  The guns were fired by their maddened crews until water came up the muzzles. The final shot of the dying warship was fired by seventeen-year-old Matthew Tenney as the river flowed around his knees.

  After his shell entered an open port of the Virginia and shattered the barrel of a gun run out to fire, Tenney attempted to scramble out through his own gunport. But the surge swept him back and he was never seen again.

  Only when the bow went under did Morris give the order, "Abandon ship! Those who can, help the wounded over the side."

  "The flag, sir?" a seaman asked Morris.

  He looked up at the stars-and-stripes fluttering in the sun.

  "Leave it there for all to see." Then he turned and helped a badly wounded man over a shattered bulwark.

  The rotund young drummer boy named Joselyn fearlessly remained at his station, beating the call to arms throughout the fight. Only now did he shove his drumsticks into his belt and leap into the water.

  Using his drum as a float, he began to dog-paddle toward the shore.

  The ship rolled to port and slipped down into the river. Below, on the flooding berth deck, the cries of the wounded were quickly snuffed out. Tom Lasser, still holding his friend's head in his lap, closed his eyes and accepted the inevitable. He and Winston Humbolt drowned together.

  Battered, beaten, but game to the bitter end, Cumberland's keel sank into the muddy bottom of the James River, her masts still above water, her flag still flying, her fight forever over.

  To a man, the crew of the Virginia agreed, "No ship was ever fought more gallantly."

  Of the 326 men on board Cumberland at the start of the fight, 120 were dead.

  Hearing the sounds of gunfire during the court-martial, the captain of the ill-fated ship, William Radford, left the proceedings, leapt on his horse, and rode the ten miles back to his ship like an army of ghosts were after him.

  Reaching the low cliffs above the James River, Radford dismounted his horse, which was frothing at the mouth and coated in a foam of sweat.

  He stared in horror at the men struggling and drowning in the water.

  Nothing was left of his once proud ship except the masts rising from the water. He noted with no small degree Of satisfaction that her flag was still flying.

  Behind him, his horse wobbled unsteadily on rubber legs and began shaking like a leaf in a stiff breeze. Then the horse dropped to the ground, its tongue falling from its open mouth and its eyes becoming glazed, exhausted to the point of death by a wild ride that came too late.

  Battered though his ship may have been after conquering Cumberland, Old Buck Buchanan and Virginia's men had more than enough fight left in them. They now turned their attention to the next ship in line.

  In a vain attempt to reach water too shallow for the ironclad to follow, Congress ran toward shore and grounded, her stern facing the middle of the river. Buchanan merely stationed his impregnable ship a short distance away and hammered away at the helpless frigate until her captain was dead and his second in command raised the white flag and surrendered.

/>   Buchanan lowered his only boat that would float and sent an officer to receive the surrender. But the crusty old commander of the troops and artillery ashore allowed that the ship may have surrendered, but he hadn't, and ordered his men to keep up their fire.

  Standing with his officers on the casemate deck for a better view, Buchanan was seriously wounded, as were several other men near him, when he was struck by a rifle ball in the thigh. As he was carried below, angered that the shore troops had ignored the white flag of surrender from Congress, he ordered Lieutenant Catesby Jones to destroy the Union frigate.

  "Burn the ship, burn her down to nothing!" he growled through the pain from his wound.

  Jones took him at his word and shouted down to the gun deck.

  "Fire hot shot!"

  The iron cannon shells were placed on grates above a furnace and heated until they were almost red hot. Rolled into buckets and carried to the guns, they were rammed down the muzzles and shot into the helpless frigate. Within minutes, Congress was blazing from stem to stern.

  Through a gunport, Jones watched the conflagration with great satisfaction. The fire had reached the dying ship's guns, and they were discharging on their own, one by one, as if directed by the ghosts of their crew.

  Nothing went right for the Union fleet that day. Raising her sails to go to the aid of her stricken sister ships, St. Lawrence ran aground. The mighty Minnesota suffered the same embarrassment. In an attempt to join in the battle, she too became firmly entrenched in the mud. And to add insult to injury, Roanoke lay impotent with a severed propeller shaft.

  The final three ships of the Union fleet lay like tethered sheep, waiting for the appearance of a tiger.

  Jones approached Buchanan, who was having his leg bandaged by the ship's surgeon. "Do I have your permission to resume battle, sir?"

  Buchanan stared at the bandage around his thigh, which was already turning red. "I'm told Minnesota and St. Lawrence have run aground."

  Jones nodded. "They appear to be stationary. Particularly Roanoke.

  Our spies report she has a broken shaft."

  Buchanan stared through the door of his cabin at the light coming in through an overhead hatch. "It will be too dark to see in another half hour. I think it best we break off all action and head back to the dock.

  Cumberland put up a good fight and caused damage that requires repair before we attack again."

  "I agree," said Jones. "They'll still be at our mercy tomorrow.

  We can finish them off then."

  "Yes," said old Buck Buchanan, a foxlike grin on his face.

  "Tomorrow is soon enough."

  Jones returned to the helm and directed the pilot to come about for Norfolk. Turning its stern on a scene of destruction never before witnessed in American waters, Virginia began steaming across Hampton Roads to her dock. Behind, she left some 250 Union sailors dead and over 100 wounded, at that time the largest single loss in United States Navy history.

  Just after sunset, the fire aboard Congress reached her powder magazine, and she exploded in a fiery burst of fireworks before joining Cumberland on the bottom of the James River. Buchanan and Jones knew they had won a great victory, and looked forward to an even greater one the following morning. They had accomplished the unthinkable with a loss of only two men killed and eight wounded.

  But unknown to them, their ultimate triumph was to be snatched away.

  Before the black smoke from the Virginia's shot-riddled stack drifted over the rays of the setting sun, and the final blast from the death throes of Congress rumbled across the dark water of Hampton Roads, a strange, ominous vessel materialized out of the mists creeping in from Chesapeake Bay.

  In what has to be the most incredible coincidence in recorded history, the Union ironclad Monitor had arrived. On the following morning, the crew of Virginia, still called Merrimack in the North, were ready for another day's glory. They were stunned when what one of them called a "cheese box on a raft" steamed into view from behind the hull of Minnesota. The little Union ironclad made straight for the Confederate behemoth and fired her two big eleven-inch Dahlgren guns.

  Virginia replied, and the world's first battle between armored ships was launched. A few hours later, it ended in a stalemate.

  Neither ship absorbed much punishment and both claimed victory.

  History had been made and naval warfare was never to be the same again.

  Barely two weeks after the epic battles of Hampton Roads, a salvage diver by the name of Loring Bates investigated the remains of Cumberland to discover if she could be raised and rebuilt. He found the wreck lying in sixty-six feet of water at a forty-five-degree angle and in complete disarray. He determined that she was too badly damaged to warrant the expense of raising her.

  Sporadic attempts by salvors to recover supplies and equipment of value and fights over who had the legitimate salvage contracts continued until the late 1870s. Despite the glory of her fight and the heroism of her crew, Cumberland and her grave in time became lost, unknown, and forgotten. It was not until 1980 that men came to find her bones.

  She-Devil of the Confederacy

  November 28, 1864

  The evening was clear, with a full moon, and the ship cast a spectral shadow over the water. One year and seven months had Passed since Cumberland went down fighting only a few hundred yards down river just off the town of Newport News, Virginia. The small crew of eight seamen who were guarding the ship did not expect trouble, and most of them were asleep. Only two assistant engineers, attempting to repair an auxiliary pump, were still awake. An army transport ship had accidentally sideswiped the moored vessel, the resulting collision loosening hull planks and causing minor leakage.

  Shortly after midnight, a lone man rowed toward the ship from shore.

  He stared up at the black hull looming above him. Quietly riding into town, he had left his horse tied to a tree along the shore and "borrowed" a rowboat. No soldiers stationed nearby or civilian residents could witness the act he was about to perform. Climbing up the boarding ladder, a leather bag clutched in one hand, he moved like a wraith across the deserted deck of the ship. The guns did not seem ominous and menacing in the eerie moonlight, but looked like great dead beasts.

  He stepped into the captain's cabin and admired the handsome mahogany doors and bulkheads. Then he walked through the ward room and past the dispensary before dropping into the engine room. He saw the engineers laboring over the faulty pump and avoided them by moving around the backside of one of the big boilers. The intruder was an engineer and appreciated the ship's machinery. Running his hands over the brass gauges, he stared at the cold boilers.

  "You're a beautiful ship," he said aloud, the soft-spoken words out of place on the silent vessel. "Forgive me for what I am about to do."

  Heavy of heart, he opened the bag and retrieved a large wrench.

  Using it as a lever, he twisted the plugs from the valves that allowed the water to gush into the bilge. When he had removed the last plug, he dutifully waited until the water was gurgling and rising from the bilges.

  He listened as the ship creaked and groaned, her timbers flexing from the increasing internal weight. It was as if she were pleading with the engineer to save her.

  The engineer closed his mind to the eerie sounds and struggled up the ladder to the engine-room hatch aft of the big seven-inch pivot gun.

  As he hurried across the deck to the boarding ladder, he deeply regretted his clandestine mission of sending the beautiful little ship to the bottom, but orders were orders.

  Dropping down the ladder to his boat, he cast off and quickly rowed toward shore. After shoving the boat into the river, he watched it vanish with the current. Then he walked to his horse, untied it from the tree, and rode off without a backward glance.

  Alarmed at the sudden increase of water in the engine room, the men who had been repairing the auxiliary pump awakened the chief engineer, William Lannan. After checking the rising water, he was stunned at the dram
atic flow. Every effort was made to halt what appeared to be the ship's immnent sinking, but the water rose faster than it could be expelled.

  A tug was called to tow the ship into shallow water, but it arrived too late. By 7 A.M. she was plunging down, her masts and yards clawing futilely at the sky. Her death song came as the air inside compressed from the pressure of the incoming water and hissed from the ports and hatches.

  Her hull vanished under a cloud of protesting bubbles. Then her keel sank into the soft bottom and the murky water became her death shroud.

  History's first great raider of the seas was no more. She settled into the soft ooze to wait out time.

  Two and a half years earlier, on March 22, 1862, Thomas Dudley, United States consul at Liverpool, England, stood on a seawall and watched as Oreto put out to sea. He wiped the lens of his spyglass with a handkerchief and peered at the ship through the drizzle of a March storm blowing from the north. He was always on the lookout for vessels built by British shipyards and then clandestinely sold to the Confederate States of America despite maritime law that banned the outfitting of warships for belligerent foreign nations.