Sahara (2 page)

Semmes nodded and handed him a folded flag. “The stars and stripes. You’ll need it for the masquerade.”

Tombs took the Union banner and held it under one arm. “I’ll have it run up the mast shortly before we reach the Union artillery emplacements at Trent’s Reach.”

“Then good luck to you,” said Semmes. “Sorry we can’t stay to see you cast off, but the Secretary has a train to catch and I have to return to the fleet and oversee its destruction before the Yankees are upon us.”

The Secretary of the Confederate navy shook Tombs’ hand once more. “The blockade runner
Fox
is standing by off Bermuda to recoal your bunkers for the next leg of your voyage. Good fortune to you, Commander. The salvation of the Confederacy is in your hands.”

Before Tombs could reply, Mallory ordered the carriage driver to move on. Tombs raised his hand in a final salute and stood there, his mind failing to comprehend the Secretary’s farewell. Salvation of the Confederacy? The words made no sense. The war was lost. With Sherman moving north from the Carolinas and Grant surging south through Virginia like a tidal wave, Lee would be caught between the Union pincers and forced to surrender in a matter of days. Jefferson Davis would soon be broken from President of the Confederate States to a common fugitive.

And within a few short hours, the
Texas
had every expectation of being the last ship of the Confederate navy to die a watery death.

Where was the salvation should the
Texas
make good her escape? Tombs failed to fathom a vague answer. His orders were to transport the government’s archives to a neutral port of his choosing and remain out of sight until contacted by courier. How could the successful smuggling of bureaucratic records possibly prevent the certain defeat of the South?

His thoughts were interrupted by his first officer, Lieutenant Ezra Craven.

“The loading is completed and the cargo stored, sir,” announced Craven. “Shall I give the order to cast off?”

Tombs turned. “Not yet. We have to take on a passenger.”

Craven, a big brusque Scotsman, spoke with a peculiar combination of brogue and southern drawl. “He’d better make it damned quick.”

“Is Chief Engineer O’Hare ready to get underway?”

“His engines have a full head of steam.”

“And the gun crews?”

“Manning their stations.”

“We’ll stay buttoned up until we meet the Federal fleet. We can’t afford to lose a gun and crew from a lucky shot through a port beforehand.”

“The men won’t take kindly to turning the other cheek.”

“Tell them they’ll live longer—”

Both men swung and stared toward the shore at the sound of approaching hooves. A few seconds later a Confederate officer rode out of the darkness and onto the dock.

“One of you Commander Tombs?” he asked in a tired voice.

“I’m Tombs,” he said, stepping forward.

The rider swung down from his horse and saluted. He was covered with road dust and looked exhausted. “My compliments, sir. Captain Neville Brown, in charge of the escort for your prisoner.”

“Prisoner,” Tombs echoed. “I was told he was a passenger.”

“Treat him as you will,” Brown shrugged indifferently.

“Where is he?” Tombs asked for the second time that night.

“Immediately behind. I rode out in advance of my party to warn you not to be alarmed.”

“Is the man daft?” muttered Craven. “Alarmed at what?”

His question was answered as a closed coach rumbled onto the dock surrounded by a detachment of riders dressed in the blue uniform of Union cavalry.

Tombs was on the verge of shouting for his crew to run out the guns and repel boarders when Captain Brown calmly reassured him. “Rest easy, Commander. They’re good southern boys. Dressing up like Yankees was the only way we could pass safely through Union lines.”

Two of the men dismounted and opened the door of the coach and helped the passenger through the door. A very tall, gaunt man with a familiar beard stepped tiredly to the wooden planking of the dock. He wore manacles that were attached by chains to his wrists and ankles. He studied the ironclad for a moment through solemn eyes, and then turned and nodded at Tombs and Craven.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he spoke in a voice pitched slightly high. “Am I to assume I’m to enjoy the hospitality of the Confederate navy?”

Tombs did not reply, he could not reply. He stood there rooted with Craven in blank disbelief, their expressions matched in total mystification.

“My God,” Craven finally murmured. “If you’re a fake, sir, you’re a good one.”

“No,” the prisoner replied. “I assure you, I am the genuine article.”

“How is this possible?” Tombs asked, completely unprepared.

Brown remounted his horse. “There’s no time for an explanation. I have to lead my men across the river over the Richmond bridge before it is blown up. He’s your responsibility now.”

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Tombs demanded.

“Keep him confined on board your ship until you receive orders for his release. That’s all I’ve been told to pass on.”

“This is crazy.”

“So is war, Commander,” Brown said over his shoulder as he spurred his horse and rode off, followed by his small detachment disguised as Union cavalry.

There was no more time, no more interruptions to delay the
Texas’
voyage to hell. Tombs turned to Craven.

“Lieutenant, escort our
passenger
to my quarters and tell Chief Engineer O’Hare to send a mechanic to remove the manacles. I won’t die as commander of a slave ship.”

The bearded man smiled at Tombs. “Thank you, Commander. I’m grateful for your kindness.”

“Do not thank me,” said Tombs grimly. “By sun up we’ll all be introducing ourselves to the devil.”

Ever so gradually at first, then faster and faster, the
Texas
began to steam downriver, helped along by the 2-knot current. No wind stirred, and except for the throb of the engines, the river ran silent. In the pale light of a quarter moon, she slid across the black water like a wraith, more sensed than seen, almost an illusion.

She seemed to have no substance, no solidity. Only her movement gave her away, revealing a spectral outline gliding past a motionless shore. Designed specifically for one mission, one voyage, her builders had constructed a marvelous machine, the finest fighting machine the Confederates had put afloat during the four years of war.

She was a twin-screw, twin-engined vessel, 190 feet in length, 40 feet of beam, and drawing only 11 feet of water. The sloping 12-foot-high sides of her casemate were angled inward at 30 degrees and covered with 6 inches of iron plate backed by 12 inches of cotton compressed by 20 inches of oak and pine. Her armor continued under the waterline, forming a curled knuckle that extended out from the hull.

The
Texas
carried only four guns, but they had a vicious bite. Two 100-pound Blakely rifled guns were mounted fore and aft on pivots that allowed them to be fired in broadside while two 9-inch, 64-pounders covered the port and starboard.

Unlike other ironclads whose machinery had been stripped out of commercial steamers, her engines were big, powerful, and brand new. Her heavy boilers lay below the waterline, and the 9-foot screws could push her hull through calm water at 14 knots, the nautical equivalent of 16 mph—tremendous speed unmatched by any armored ship in both navies.

Tombs was proud of his ship, yet saddened too, knowing that her life might well be short. But he was determined that the two of them would write a fitting epitaph to the closing glory of the Confederate states.

He climbed a ladder from the gun deck and entered the pilothouse, a small structure on the forward section of the casemate that was shaped like a pyramid with the top leveled off. He stared through the eye slits at the darkness and then nodded toward the strangely silent Chief Pilot, Leigh Hunt.

“We’ll be under full steam the entire trip to the sea, Mr. Hunt. You’ll have to bear a sharp eye to keep us from running aground.”

Hunt, a James River pilot who knew every bend and shoal like the creases in his face, kept his eyes focused ahead and tipped his head upward. “What little light comes from the moon is enough for me to read the river.”

“Yankee gunners will use it too.”

“True, but our gray sides blend with the shadows along the bank. They won’t pick us out easily.”

“Let us hope so,” Tombs sighed.

He climbed through a rear hatch and stood on the casemate roof as the
Texas
reached Drewry’s Bluff and surged through the moored gunboats of Admiral Semmes’ James River Fleet. The crews of her sister ironclads,
Virginia II, Fredericksburg,
and
Richmond,
sick at heart as they prepared to blow their ships into the air, suddenly broke into wild cheering as the
Texas
swept past. Black smoke spewed from her stack and obscured the stars. The Confederate battle flag stretched out taut in the breeze from the ship’s forward thrust, presenting a stirring sight that would never be seen again.

Tombs doffed his hat and held it high. It was the final dream that would soon become a nightmare of bitterness and defeat. And yet, it was a grand moment to be savored. The
Texas
was on her way to becoming a legend.

And then, as suddenly as she appeared, she was gone around the river’s bend, her wake the only sign of her passing.

Just above the Trent’s Reach, where the Federal army had stretched an obstruction across the river and dug several artillery emplacements, Tombs ordered the United States colors raised on the mast.

Inside the casemate, the gun deck was cleared for action. Most of the men had stripped to the waist and stood at their guns with handkerchiefs tied around their foreheads. The officers had removed their coats and quietly strode the deck in their undershirts beneath suspenders. The ship’s surgeon passed out tourniquets and instructed the men on how to apply them.

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.”
*

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, 5½ 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.
t

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
Onondaga’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.