The Crescent Spy (33 page)

As for what she intended to do with this information, she’d started to contemplate writing a war memoir. Yes, it was hubris to imagine that a twenty-year-old would have cogent thoughts about what was developing into the most deadly and terrible military struggle since the Napoleonic Wars, but it was a story she had to write.

Though it had seemed certain that Farragut would attempt to storm past the forts right away, the mortar bombardment picked up again by late morning and continued throughout the day and into the night. Finally, on the evening of the twenty-third, two men came to Josephine’s cabin, where she’d fallen asleep on her writing desk over an open book of naval strategy. The lamp had burned out. When the two men led her onto the deck, she found sailors setting out buckets of water for dousing flames, and casting handfuls of sand across the deck to keep it from becoming slick with blood when the fighting started. Other sailors slouched against the squat, ugly-looking mortars, drinking coffee from tin cups and gnawing on hardtack. Carpenters worked sawing patches to plug holes from enemy shot. All this work was done by light of hooded lanterns, to hide the scope of Union actions on this moonless night.

Josephine took one glance at the preparations and then spotted servants and other civilians loading into a small launch. She backed away from the two men who’d led her up.

“Oh, no. If you think I’m going ashore now, of all times . . .”

“No, miss,” one of the men said. “Flag Officer Farragut wishes to speak with you.” The man pointed, and she saw Farragut with Franklin and his adjutants.

When she arrived, Farragut was muttering oaths about the captain of
Pensacola
, who was supposed to fall into position in the vanguard but claimed trouble hauling up anchor. Farragut looked up as she approached.

“You look as exhausted as the rest of us, Miss Breaux,” he said. “Someone get this woman some coffee.”

“Then you’re not sending me ashore?”

“Good Lord, no. Unless you want to, of course.”

“You’d have to drag me away.” Her words sounded brave, but her heart was dancing like a flatboat crew to a double-time jig.

Farragut gestured at Franklin. “Mr. Gray predicted as much. Promise me you’ll keep your heads down, the both of you.”

A light flashed over from
Pensacola.

“Damn you, Morris,” Farragut grumbled. “Get your anchor up and get in line or the devil take you.”

He stomped off, followed by his staff officers.

Left alone, the two Pinkerton agents made their way to the railing. Moments later, the long black shadow of
Pensacola
began to move at last. Together with six other ships, and the smaller
Cayuga
guiding, Captain Morris’s vanguard fleet began to ease slowly upriver. As soon as they had passed,
Hartford
’s boilers built a head of steam and led the second fleet up the river after them.

“Is it always like this?” Franklin whispered.

“Like what?”

“The tension. My God, I can’t take it.”

“You’re about to see the elephant.”

Her voice sounded hollow, lost in the mist that swirled up from the river to envelop the sides of the boat. The calm she heard in it belied the clenching and unclenching in her stomach, the racing pace of her heartbeat.

“When the arsenal blew up, I had no time to think, I just acted,” he said. “But now . . . I wish I’d put to shore. Damn it all, I’m a coward.”

Josephine reached out in the darkness and squeezed his hand. “You’re not a coward. There isn’t one person on this ship who isn’t terrified, Farragut included.”

He fell silent, and she didn’t know if she’d made him feel better or worse. His hand was trembling in hers, but she wasn’t convinced that she wasn’t the one shaking, and making him shake in turn.

For several minutes they slid silently upriver, not a light visible, only dark shapes, each one following the lead of the ship ahead. For one brief, desperate moment she thought that Farragut’s plan was to sneak by the forts undetected. Inside, the men of the forts might be too exhausted to notice, the watchmen all fallen into slumber. It might work!

And then the gates of hell opened before them.

T
he bummers of Porter’s mortar fleet opened up first. It was more of the same bombardment that had punished Fort Jackson for the past week, but now the firepower was directed at the water battery below. It lay uncovered, with no bombproofs, but boasted earthen breastworks and moats, and had six downward-facing guns that would have the first shot at the approaching fleet.

Mortars exploded over the water battery or landed directly within to illuminate the works like lightning in a storm cloud. For several minutes, the water battery absorbed this punishment. Then the guns responded. Lights flashed at
Cayuga
and
Pensacola
in the van. The warships bellowed a response. In an instant, the entire formation of Union steamers lay illuminated in the river in a garish tableau.

Within minutes, the head of the formation was beneath the guns of Fort Jackson, whose guns roared again and again. Upriver, St. Philip let loose with her own devastating, enfilading fire. Shells tore through the masts and rigging. The ships returned their own punishing fire, but it looked as though they would soon be overwhelmed.

Smoke enveloped the van now, and Josephine could no longer see the forts or any of the other ships, only the continual flashes of light, behind, ahead, off port, and overhead. The boom and shake and fury of war was overwhelming. Between explosions, bells rang on the ship, warning of fire, ordering changes of course, giving directions to other ships in the fleet. How any man could think over the chaos was beyond her.

A shell slammed into the mainmast. Josephine and Franklin covered their heads as splinters came raining down. The ship leaned to starboard, and she thought they must be taking on water, but it was only a hard turn toward the right bank.

A flash of light burst over
Hartford
, together with a ripping explosion. Josephine was flat on her belly before she realized she was throwing herself down. Franklin was with her, asking if she was hurt. More explosions, as if the magazines had gone off. The ship felt like it was tearing itself to pieces beneath her, and she expected to feel the water sucking her down again. Belatedly, she realized these new roars were only
Hartford
’s guns answering fire.

Josephine rose shakily, and she and Franklin went over to help Farragut to his feet. The older man seemed more defiant than shaken, and glared toward Fort Jackson from where the shot had come. But shortly after, they had passed mostly beyond Jackson and were taking fire from St. Philip instead. Fortunately, the second fort was poorly positioned to hit them, and most of the shots went flying harmlessly overhead.

A fire raft came roaring down the channel, and the helmsman swung hard to starboard to get out of the way. But then the smoke cleared and they realized they were too close to the shore. Before the helmsman could correct, the keel drove into the mud, and the ship shuddered. They’d run aground trying to avoid the raft. Now right beneath St. Philip’s water battery, Josephine was close enough to hear the Confederates screaming orders through the smoke. Meanwhile, the fire raft, which had supposedly floated harmlessly downriver, began to cut upstream toward them. How was that possible?

When the smoke cleared, Josephine saw with horror that a Confederate tug had hooked it and was bringing it in alongside
Hartford.
The men of
Hartford
fired with rifles and deck guns, but were unable to drive away the tug before it had pushed the fire raft alongside. Flames shot skyward, and a wave of heat rolled over the deck. Within moments,
Hartford
’s entire portside was a bonfire, engulfed to the mizzen tops.

Men were crying for orders whether or not they should abandon ship, and Franklin grabbed Josephine as if to haul her to the opposite side, where they could leap into the muddy shallows and make their way to shore to surrender. The Confederate guns kept up a steady pounding. A blast of grapeshot crashed through the rigging overhead.

But Farragut’s men held firm. Two lieutenants raced along the deck, organizing a bucket brigade, and sailors manned the pumps. A man climbed into the rigging with a hose. Farragut paced the deck, shouting encouragement. Josephine and Franklin joined the bucket brigade.

But none of the effort would help if they couldn’t rid themselves of the fire raft. Three men raced up to the portside with twenty-pound shells, which they dropped overboard into the fire raft. The shells exploded as they hit the fire, one after another, and shortly the raft was sinking in the river.

Even as the fight against the fire continued,
Hartford
reversed her engines and broke free of the bank. The water battery continued to attack, but now
Hartford
was able to respond with a broadside, and shortly they were past it and continuing upriver. They fired more broadsides at St. Philip as they passed, and then they were into the open river above, where they emerged into another fight.

More fire rafts drifted downstream. Union ships were turned about, some having been confused by the darkness, the smoke, and the bends in the river. The enemy steamers were lined up against them, blasting away.

Louisiana
still lurked on the opposite side of the river, and let loose a barrage as one of the Union sloops passed. It returned fire, but the shells bounced harmlessly off its plating. Unfortunately for
Louisiana
, she couldn’t seem to hit anything in turn.

“Those guns,” Franklin muttered. “I knew they would be useless.”

But seeing the monster lurking there on the riverbank, she could only imagine what damage it could have done steaming up and down the river with full power and well-mounted guns. And if
Louisiana
had been joined by her sister ship
Mississippi
, still presumably under construction in New Orleans, the Union expedition would have been doomed.

“The ram!” someone screamed.

It was
Manassas
, the low-slung turtle with its huffing stack, bearing down on them. Now that Josephine was on the receiving end, the ram didn’t look so harmless. Not like a cucumber at all, but a black metal spear point. For several seconds the impact looked inevitable, a slow-motion blow backed by thousands of pounds of force and momentum that would cut
Hartford
in two. But
Manassas
’s poor maneuverability was the decider, and
Hartford
slipped by unscathed. She fired a broadside at the ram in passing. A few shells bounced off
Manassass
’s back, and the rest plopped harmlessly into the water.

Hartford
now found itself in the middle of a ferocious battle between Farragut’s sloops and the mosquito fleet upriver, which was mounting a spirited and desperate struggle to keep the Union forces bottled up in range of the forts. If kept from breaking free, the wooden warships would inevitably be sunk or driven off by the guns at their rear.

Two more fire rafts came floating down the river.
Hartford
maneuvered between them and continued upstream to join
Pensacola
, which was blasting away at two Confederate ships.
Hartford
swung wide and released her own broadside. For several minutes, the four ships fired back and forth, with another of Farragut’s sloops joining. The smaller, weaker Confederate ships couldn’t sustain the fight and were soon fleeing the battle upstream, pursued by a federal gunboat.

Meanwhile, so many Union ships were piling up in the river that they were struggling to keep from shooting at each other. A burning Confederate ship drifted downstream, while other crippled ships of the mosquito fleet had run against the bank to be scuttled.

Dawn had arrived at last. Downriver, the gunfire from the last division of Farragut’s fleet and the two Confederate forts continued unabated. Within twenty minutes the last few Union stragglers arrived. The bulk of the fleet was safely above the forts, and the enemy had been destroyed or driven from the river.

While the fleet organized itself for emergency repairs and to tend the wounded, Farragut called up the band, who came onto the charred, blood-streaked deck of
Hartford
and played “The Star-
Spangled Banner.” A great cheer came up from the exhausted, powder-
stained crew, which quickly spread from boat to boat.

J
osephine fell asleep on deck in the shadow of
Hartford
’s side-wheel. Exhausted men slept all around her. She woke when the sun cut through her shady spot, and found Franklin squatting nearby, holding her satchel. He handed it over.

“There are carpenters working in your room. I thought I’d retrieve your possessions.”

“Thank you,” she said. A quick glance inside showed everything in place, including the Colonel’s Oriental box. “What time is it?”

“Afternoon. We’ll be heading upstream shortly. Word has it there’s fighting at Quarantine. Farragut will want to seize its battery before we continue on to New Orleans.”

She rubbed at her temples to ease the headache settling in. By now, New Orleans would know that the fleet had passed the forts. She imagined that General Lovell would be organizing the militia, but apart from that, she couldn’t decide if the people would be defiant or panicked.

“There’s one other thing,” Franklin began hesitantly. “A prisoner. He heard you were on board and wants to speak with you.”

“Is it Fein?” she asked, feeling suddenly nervous.

She hadn’t seen him since they’d been rescued from the wreckage of the rowboat. By now he’d no doubt heard of her perfidy, and she was afraid to face him. He had always treated her fairly, yet she had lied to him repeatedly, had taken advantage of his trust to smuggle Franklin out of New Orleans.

“No. It’s an officer from Fort Jackson, captured when he led a group of men attempting to free one of the enemy boats that had run aground. An old friend of yours. Major Dunbar.”

Josephine chewed on her lip. Her first inclination was to refuse. What could Dunbar do, other than accuse her of treachery? To spit in her face and promise that she would forever be seen as a villain and symbol of Northern aggression?

But that was the coward’s way. Even angry, he might still give up information about the condition of the forts, the attitude of the remaining defenders. Would they surrender? Fight on until food and powder ran out?

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Franklin said. “I told Flag Officer Farragut, and he said—”

“No,” she interrupted, “you don’t need to say anything more. I’ll go see the major.”

T
hey had lodged Dunbar in a small cabin not far from the flag officer’s own berth. There was only a single guard posted, who inclined his head when Josephine entered. She shut the door behind her to keep the guard on the outside.

The major was lying on his bed, his hands behind his head, staring up at the wood beams of the ceiling. His face was heavily stubbled, his hair a wild mop, and his shirt was splattered with mud, but somehow he maintained his dignified appearance.