The Cotton Run
by Daniel Wyatt
Published by Mushroom eBooks at Smashwords
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Copyright © 2009, Daniel Wyatt
Daniel Wyatt has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
First published in 2009 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Contents
Foreword
The American Civil War was not only a conflict that pitted brother against brother, state against state, American against American, Union against Confederate, Johnny Reb against Billy Yank. It wasn't only a struggle in support of preserving slavery, liberty, or the Union, although these motives were significant and honorable. The American Civil War was, for the most part, a fight for business interests and new markets. History unfailingly shows that there's money to be made in war, and the American Civil War was no exception.
The North had the advantage, the means to wage war. They had more people, more railroad tracks, more factories, more steel, and a much stronger economy. For example, the Gross National Product of the entire Confederacy was equal to less than one-quarter of New York State. The Confederacy, however, did have cotton, the commodity that had blessed the Southern states with rich bountiful crops for several decades. With King Cotton, the South thought it could rule the world. Before the hostilities of 1861-1865, the South's top customers were the Northern states, France, and England, the latter having one in four of its population employed in the textile industry. Lacking the means and power to produce enough manufactured products itself, the Confederacy depended on imports to anchor its economy. Shipping was crucial. The exchange of cotton for outside goods was the lifeblood of the South.
Within two days of the Confederates' firing on Fort Sumter to initiate the war, President Abraham Lincoln announced a naval blockade on the Confederate coastline with the intention of starving the fledgling nation into submission. The Southerners reacted the only way they could. With no industrial base and no merchant fleet of its own to speak of, the Confederacy relied heavily on British manpower and shipping interests. Immediately, the art of blockade-running sprang up, ushering in an infamous era of adventure, danger, greed, and deceit. From a handful of Southern ports, courageous sea skippers and their crews (a sprinkling of British and Rebel officers and sailors) ran the blockade, their ships stacked high with bales of cotton. They set sail for neutral ports to transfer their cargoes and return with military and domestic goods, reaping a hefty profit along the way.
The spring of 1863 saw four of the original Confederate ports still open: Galveston, Texas; Mobile, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; and Wilmington, North Carolina. The most strategic of these ports was Wilmington, for it was the closest by rail to the Confederate capital of Richmond and the crucial fighting in Virginia. The chief depot for Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the Wilmington docks carried the hopes of the Confederacy. From there, the neutral cargo-transfer destinations of the Bahamas and Bermuda were only three days away. These ports were the main sources of the South's communication with the outside world.
"Without firing a shot, without unsheathing a blade, we can bring the whole world to its knees before us. With equanimity, if needs be, the South could refrain for a year, or two years or more, from cultivating a basketful of cotton. But what would be the result? There can be no doubt. Old England would tumble from her proud industrial perch, the whole of civilization toppling with her, joining in her ruin. No sir, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dare make war on it. Cotton is King."
Senator James H. Hammond of South Carolina, March 4, 1858
Chapter one
Cape Fear, North Carolina - April 1863
The captain slid his hand through his reddish-blonde hair and sniffed, his tall, hard-muscled body absorbing the breeze. Rain was on the way. No doubt about that. He could smell it in the damp, heavy air. He turned west, where his weathered clean-shaven skin caught the last of the setting Carolina sun.
Time to move out.
Inside his cabin, Captain Joshua Denning switched from his white frilled shirt, black tie and black slacks into his functional, all-gray ensemble. Outside, the Silver Sally crew slipped the ship's cables on schedule at nine o'clock, and pulled away. In order to dodge the numerous sandbars at the mouth of Cape Fear, Denning preferred to depart Wilmington an hour or so early and make his escape just as the tide reached the high-water mark, which tonight would be shortly after midnight.
The southerly eight-knot cruise in the inky darkness gave the meticulous Denning time to check his last minute details and plot his strategy. Night had brought a gloomy hush to Cape Fear. Pressed in around him were seven-hundred pound cotton bales piled firmly on the ship's deck, so high that his tanned, well-built Southern sailors in similar gray garb to his had to stand on the bundles to perform their tasks. This was a lucrative cargo at their feet; a Confederate fortune of five hundred and sixty-four bales of American Sea Island, the finest-fibered cotton grown in the South, two hundred and seventy-five bales of the general purpose Georgia Bowed, and thirty cases of turpentine.
Skimming down the Cape Fear River, Denning now had one of two choices: New Inlet, off the port bow, with Fort Fisher and Fort Buchanan as covers, or Old Inlet, guarded by Fort Caswell and Fort Holmes, farther down river. The mouth of the river was divided into these two openings, only six miles apart and separated by the triangle-shaped Smith Island and numerous underwater sandbars, the worst of which were the Frying Pan Shoals.
The Silver Sally drew even with New Inlet.
Denning brought his telescope to his eye... and shook his head. Too many enemy gunboats for his liking. And they were too close. First mate Matthew Balsinger had a saying for it: as thick as fleas on a dog's ass. Denning didn't wish to take on the cross wind either. The escape route now had to be Old Inlet and the Frying Pan Shoals, no matter what was waiting for him.
As the Silver Sally slid on, the only sound aboard was the soft drone of the ship's powerful engines. Clouds from the southeast had blotted out the quarter moon. The mild breeze up the river before nightfall had peaked at twenty knots. From the port rail near the bridge, Denning watched the silhouettes of the pine and palm trees along the bank give way to the towering oaks and the weighty smell of the swampland along Smith Island. The moon poked through the clouds for a brief moment.
He checked his pocket watch, angling it to catch what little natural light there was. It was 11:25. Forty minutes till high tide.
Perfect.
* * * *
They neared the southern mouth of Cape Fear River.
Through a thin path between two rows of bales, Denning observed Balsinger's solid figure in the night. Denning raised his hand - the signal. Balsinger slipped away and commanded the engineer below deck to stop the engines. They were getting too close to the opening of the river now to use the voice tube. Denning heard the defiant growl of the engines drop. The ship drifted, then slowed to a moderate crawl. He threw his partially smoked cigar in the water, then tapped the barrel of his revolver strapped to his thigh. It was loaded and ready. No Union captain was going to take him, not if he could help it. After several more minutes, the ship stopped altogether. Slowly, quietly, the anchor was lowered overboard. Denning eyed his watch again.
It was 12:05. Maximum high tide down to the last minute.
The ship rolled on the incoming waves. Still, Denning waited. He peered through the darkness for the vital sign from Fort Caswell, at the tip of Oak Island off starboard, a few hundred yards over the water. By now all lights aboard were snuffed out. The engine room hatches were covered with tarps. Smoking was forbidden. The hinged masts and telescope smokestacks were lowered. The Sally's signal officer, holding the coding apparatus, stood facing the fort. Denning and the officer could see the same danger that those in the fort saw. Two blockaders were combing the waters off the channel. Beyond the ships, a lantern-lit vessel, which Denning took to be the senior officer's ship, was at anchor. The Federals had always kept their distance from the Rebel shore batteries during the day. But now, under night's blanket, they were roaming closer toward the Cape Fear mouth.
At 12:11, Denning caught the all-clear lantern blink from the batteries. His signal officer identified the Morse Code and replied promptly. Through his powerful brass telescope, Denning studied the inside position of the Union gunboats just out of range of the Rebel guns. He would soon depend upon another arsenal of friends: stealth, speed, and tide. They were friends he knew well, and so far they were as faithful as his crew.
"Up anchor - and I don't want to hear it," he whispered his new order.
"Aye, sir." The nearest sailor telegraphed the order to the next man, who in turn whispered to the man next to him. And on it went, quickly.
No one made a sound as the sailors waited for the next cue from their captain who they knew would not hesitate to fire a pistol shot through the head of anyone who showed an open light aboard the vessel. Once Denning saw the anchor on ship, he quietly climbed the steps of the bridge and darted for the pilot house, midships under the smokestacks. Inside the house, a husky man was bent over the ship's helm, opposite a long, rectangular piece of glass facing the bow. He was intent on the cone-shaped cover placed over the compass, allowing him to plot his moves without light escaping. Across from him in the darkness sat the navigator, ready to plot a course to Nassau once they broke the line of gunboats. Silently, Balsinger brushed past a row of cotton bales and eased alongside the pilot house.
"All ahead two-thirds," Denning said calmly and quietly to his helmsman, Homer Cogswell. Balsinger nodded at Denning, then left to relay the order to the engineer and his stokers.
"Mind your helm. Hug the shoreline until I say so."
"Aye, aye, skipper."
"Keep your weather-eye open. Get us through, Homer."
"Aye, skipper."
Under the pressure of the engines, Cogswell was heading the ship into the teeth of the enemy. He steered around the underwater sandbar, Burch Shoal, off the tip of Smith Island. Despite her extreme length and burdensome load, the Sally handled smartly for him, as she always did. The tall lighthouse and the walls of Fort Holmes formed through the glass... and slid past to port. The jagged features of oak and pine tops drifted by. He guided the ship burdened with cotton into the region of the dreaded Frying Pan Shoals. The waves became choppy now, and no wonder. They were reaching the point where Cape Fear met the Atlantic Ocean, where the river ran to join the tide. Cogswell - the only Catholic officer aboard - made the sign of the cross with fervor.
Denning continued to study the warships.
Most remained at anchor. The others were cruising offshore near the horizon, eight to ten miles removed from the inner line. Cutting through the more heavily defended first line was always the most hazardous. From what he could determine, there was a gap to starboard, between both sets of Union positions. He watched it closely, his eye pressed to the long lens. After several minutes, he nodded, satisfied. The gap was widening out to sea.
"There's an opening, Homer," Denning said. "Two points off the starboard bow. Steady as she goes." With that, Denning bolted off to stand on a low stack of bales outside the cabin.
The Silver Sally veered away at half-speed from the safety of Smith Island, slicing through the dark waters, her engines no longer hidden by the sound of the pounding surf, her hull no longer camouflaged against the sand dunes. The only protection now was the low mist. On deck, the men hid behind the bulwarks. All orders now would be relayed in an organized set of whispers.
And God help anyone who messed up.
Less than a nautical mile from shore, Denning brought his telescope to eye level. He focused on the blackness, looking for any man-made objects that seemed out of place. The unmistakable outlines of three massive warships loomed ahead in the night, spread out in a semi-circle. No one aboard had to tell Denning that they were within gun range of all three blacked-out cruisers and the senior officer's anchored ship off port side. Earlier in the year, the runner skippers had been able to use the well-lit gunboats as guides. Then the Union officers realized their ships stood out like beacons and they switched to a method where only the senior officer's ship in the middle of the fleet was lit by just a single lantern. The runner skippers adjusted. They used the ships to get their bearings on the position of the rest of the squadron. Denning swore by the same strategy now, careful to observe that the senior vessel would often try to lure the runners into a shoal. But Cogswell was no idiot. He knew where the shoals were. He wouldn't be fooled.
Denning stood over the engine room, where he met Balsinger. "Stop engines," he whispered hoarsely to the engineer, trying to control his voice. "Now!"
"What's the matter, skipper?" Balsinger asked.
"Look! There!"
Balsinger focused his eyes to where Denning pointed, toward the dark image of a Union gunboat now turning toward them, a hundred yards off the bow. Denning feared that the Union captain had caught sight of something. If Denning could see them, it was possible the Yanks could see him. "Just hope he doesn't spot us."
Balsinger could only nod.
Denning hid behind the rail with Balsinger and other deck hands. The paddle wheels cracked to a stop. The runner took some time to slide silently to a creep. Denning strained his eyes in the cloudy night. Then he saw it, through the thinning mist. His pulse quickened. The sound of the gunboat's engines swelled in the night, as they steered closer to starboard. Denning primed himself for a possible collision. They had never been this close to the enemy before. He felt so helpless. The gunboats were armed with potent deck guns that could blow any ship to bits in seconds. The Sally only had small arms. Hand guns.
Denning leaned toward his first mate. "Steady, Matt." Denning was already calculating where he'd be in the next crucial minutes, providing the gunboats, especially the nearest one, remained on their present courses. "Get to the pilot house. Inform Homer that as soon as he hears our engines start up, he's to steer to port, away from the nearest gunboat. Go." His voice was a mere caution. "And stay down, damn it."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Denning squatted over the engine hatchway, looking down at the sweaty, bare-chested engineer. "Stay sharp."
"Aye, sir."
Denning returned to the rail, barely making a sound. The enemy ship chugged closer. He could hear voices aboard. Northern accents! They couldn't be any more than forty yards apart now. He expected any second to see the captain fire a warning flare into the sky to alert the other ships. In minutes, a half-dozen warships could be hunting down the Silver Sally.
But to Denning's shock nothing happened. No collision. No shouts. No orders to pass the shell. The warship merely steamed on by, at one point only twenty yards away. They don't see us, Denning thought to himself, amazed.
"They missed us. How could they miss us?" Balsinger said, in a low voice.
"I don't know," Denning answered. "But they did." He watched as the gunboat slid off in the opposite direction.
"Start 'em up," he whispered down the hatch.
The engineer and stokers flew into action.
In a few minutes, the Sally was a safe distance behind the first line of gunboats. Denning worked his way forward on the ship and extended his telescope again. He saw the large gap in the second line that had presented itself earlier. It was still ready for the taking.
At the pilot house, he pointed ahead for Cogswell. "See it?"
The pilot nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Full speed!" Denning said to a sailor beside him. The order was quickly relayed by the other sailors to the engine room. The crew immediately positioned themselves in the proper places. Despite the darkness, they shot the masts and smokestacks up. The Silver Sally cut the water at an incredible speed, assisted by her streamlined body, a draft of only eight and a half feet, and a hull only five feet above the water line. At eighteen knots it didn't take long to leave the second line of enemy boats in her wake. There was no catching them now. Denning had poked a hole through the center of the Cape Fear blockade and got away with it for the eighth straight time.
Denning strolled toward the ship's stern, Balsinger by his side. The breeze filled the sails and stiffened the Bars and Stars Rebel flag. The feint smell of burning coal drifted down from the smokestacks. Beneath them, the engines rumbled a mechanical beat of a smooth sixteen knots.
A hard-working seaman with a rich bass voice, Balsinger was as tall as his captain, but thicker around the waist. Earlier in the evening, Balsinger's glassy dark eyes and exhausted expression had given him away again. He had been out on another drunk the night before, but that never bothered Denning as long as Balsinger made sure his in-port flair for the opposite sex and stiff liquor didn't get in the way of his obligation as the Sally's first mate.
"You play much chess, Matt?"
Balsinger shrugged. He thought he caught the captain smiling. "A few times, skipper. Why?"
Denning clenched his cigar between his teeth, the red fire lighting his face on an inhale. "I think I'd call that a checkmate. Wouldn't you?"
"If you say so, sir."
"I'm going to sack out for a spell. Fetch me if you have to."
"Aye, sir. We'll look after things."
* * * *
Denning lay on his bunk inside the plush cabin in the rear quarter-deck of the Silver Sally.
Joshua Denning's naval career had been a chain of ups and downs, much like his disposition of late. He had never been that interested in the Navy, per se. When he grew up, he had just wanted to get away from the farm and those damn chickens. He wanted to see the rest of his country, sail the oceans, and set foot on other countries. His father had the good sense to see that his son had no aspirations to be a Virginia chicken farmer and packed him off to the Navy academy at Annapolis where Joshua could fulfill his dreams of adventure on the high seas. At school, Denning had risen from an intelligent country boy to a bright young officer fascinated by politics and business.
After graduation in 1852, Denning had spent nine years on active service with the United States Navy. By February 1861, a frustrated Denning asked for a leave of absence. He felt he had spent a long enough time commanding an antiquated frigate. Three years as her skipper seemed like eternity. He was tired of navy life. He saw no future in it, except for a moderate officer's pension once he retired. He was irked by pompous, overbearing superiors who couldn't envision the changing nature of naval defense, with modern guns and metal hulls.
Where was the adventure he sought?
With his savings, he had sailed to Europe. It was an extended vacation to observe the world, to ponder his future as an unmarried modern man, closing in on forty years, with no definite plans in sight. He left behind him a splintered nation, states seceding and a harsh line drawn between North and South. He had been in Paris not even two months when the stunning news broke of the firing on Fort Sumter. Hostilities had begun. The news in the same week of a Union blockade on Southern ports and of Virginia seceding caught his attention.
Virginia separating! How could they?
Thousands of miles away, he had pondered the situation over. Coming out of Annapolis, he was one youngster in a throng of eager newly-commissioned officers. He had high hopes. The future was his. He had sworn allegiance to the United States of America, to defend her at all costs. Not anymore. Now his loyalties were to his native state of Virginia. Although his father had owned slaves for a time, slavery was never an issue with Denning. The blacks should be freed eventually, he had always felt. He was no abolitionist, either. The matter needed time, that's all. But for Virginia to leave the Union in support of slavery was absurd. If slavery was the reason.
Virginia seceding? Virginia had been the home state of seven presidents, such founders as George Washington and Andrew Jackson. The other states - North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Florida and the rest of them - what did they need independence for?
Independence from what? What was the matter with people?
Denning had remained in Europe until the spring of 1862, then sailed across the English Channel for Great Britain, where the shipbuilding yards of Clydeside in Scotland, and Liverpool in England, had finally opened Denning's eyes to an opportunity he couldn't ignore. The industrial dry docks were swarming with Confederate government agents supervising the construction of a fleet of new and radical ships called blockade runners. Denning pictured himself commanding a runner. Not only could he help his fledgling country by running cotton through the blockade, but he could also make a profit, far more than his navy pay could provide. It was the law of supply and demand in wartime. His country was threatened by an enemy, regardless of the fact they were fellow Americans from the North. There was a civil war across the ocean, and it was his duty as a Virginian to fight in it in the way he could. Of course, he sided with the South. He could not comprehend raising his hand against his relatives, his friends, his home. Never mind his Navy oath.
By this time, Denning was out of money. Fired by a combination of patriotism, profit, and adventure, he convinced a large British bank that had invested heavily in the cotton industry to finance the purchase of one of these light, slender, pencil-shaped paddle-steamers. And he would be the ship's commander. He demanded one of the longest and fastest runners ever built, with a beefed-up keel, and a new, revolutionary steel hull which was lighter and stronger than all the other hulls. He knew that any strong magnetic compass aboard the ship would give inaccurate readings over long distances and would have to be compensated for. A good navigator worth his salt would take care of that and make the adjustments. Denning's ship had to have the most powerful of engines. Eighteen knots under a full load was an absolute necessity.
The finished product was a seven-hundred ton rakish runner measuring two hundred and seventy-seven feet by thirty-six feet by fifteen feet with three telescope smokestacks, one more stack than considered normal. The Sally was one of the newest ships - a super runner. Under the cloud of war, Denning had entered the newfangled world of paddle-wheeled, steam and steel ships.
Denning's investors were impressed with his leadership experience on frigates and his five-year expedition surveying and mapping the Atlantic coast for the United States Navy, including the first detailed excursion to Cape Cod. As part of the agreement, the English bank had its own demand for collateral. Half the crew had to be English until the ship was paid for. Denning wasn't certain whether British sailors would accept orders from a Southerner. The bankers insisted. After some hesitation, Denning agreed. He knew they had him by the short hairs.
It took only three successful return trips through the Union blockade for Denning to open his own foreign bank accounts in both Hamilton, Bermuda, and Nassau in the Bahamas. From his profits, he reimbursed the forty-five thousand pounds he owed the banking firm for the ship. He immediately replaced the English crew members with Southerners, mostly locals from Cape Fear who knew every channel, beach, swamp, and submarine sandbar in the area. The crew was thirty-three in all, from seventeen to fifty in age, all well-paid, splitting over twenty thousand dollars in gold per trip.
With his full Southern complement, he also demanded that the officers and enlisted men all be armed and ready to fire their weapons with accuracy when ordered, something the English sailors couldn't do. It had annoyed Denning that the British had faced the fewest risks. The Union policy of the war at sea assured them of that. When blockade-runners were captured, the foreigners were set free. The Southerners aboard became prisoners of war and were banished to a Northern prison where the chances of living beyond a year were slim to none. Denning simply wanted to provide his fellow Southerners with the incentive to succeed, as well as being able to defend themselves. He was glad to see the British off his ship. They were risks he couldn't afford. Once they were gone, Denning was in total control.
The only way he wanted it.
Captain Joshua Denning blew the oil lamp out and looked up to the ceiling. He was going to play this game through for what it was worth. What was to become of him? He didn't know. His mind drifted. The academy came to mind.
Then he thought of him. Again. Damn. Why? How many times was it that week? Carlisle. That son-of-a-bitch Bobby Carlisle. Where was he? Still in the navy? And did it matter? To hell with him.
Denning closed his eyes and listened to the beat of the engines.
And he fell asleep in minutes.
Chapter two
Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina
Less than two hundred miles up the coast from Wilmington rests Hatteras, a long, low sandbar of an island forty miles in length, split in half by an inlet on one end and a bulging cape in the middle. The region is home to sharp reefs and thousands of shipwrecks dating back to the middle 1500s. Early in the nineteenth century, Hatteras had been claimed by a gang of ship wreckers who would snuff out the Cape's lighthouse flame to lure ships to the reefs and the nearby Diamond Shoals in order to commit acts of plunder, murder, and illegal salvaging. By 1851, an east coast naval captain had summed up Hatteras by saying that "she was cursed by both God and Satan by mutual consent."
When the war began, the ship wreckers vanished without a trace.
As he sat impatiently outside the office of his superior, Captain Robert Carlisle agreed silently with those good men who sailed the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" before him. He was familiar with the Cape's reputation as an inhospitable land. The place was indeed cursed, a miserable place for a Union port.
Carlisle snapped his officer's cap under his arm and made a weak attempt to fix his wiry, untamed hair this muggy evening after being summoned to the headquarters of the 514th Blockading Squadron of the United States Navy. For twenty minutes, now, he had been contemplating the reason for the meeting. It had better be good because he was in a foul mood, suffering from another migraine headache, the third one of the week.
Carlisle heard muffled conversation beyond the closed door to the private office. Hearing his name mentioned, he leaned forward as much as he dared, but he couldn't distinguish the rest. Out of the corner of his eye, to his right, he saw the waterway through the window. USS Connecticut, his ship, named after his home state, was in dock. It had been undergoing an engine overhaul for the last eight days, allowing Carlisle and his crew some time off. There wasn't a lot to do on leave except drink. They were slated to head out to sea in two days on another patrol. Since joining the competitive squadron in January 1862, their patrols had not netted them a single blockade runner. This irritated Carlisle, as it did his stiff and starchy navy-man father, according to his once-a-week letters from Washington. The two other ships that Captain Carlisle could see in the inlet had each caught two blockade runners in the same space of time. Perhaps the squadron leader was going to relieve him of command or demote him. Or both. The Connecticut was his first sea command. He didn't want to lose her. It would look bad on the family. He licked his dry lips. He thought longingly of the flask under his coat. What he wouldn't give for a drink right now.
Five minutes later the door slowly slid open and a tight-mouthed adjutant appeared, flowing with an air of contrived importance. He faced Carlisle, taking in his flat nose, droopy moustache, and unruly hair. "Captain Carlisle. Squadron Leader Baines is free now."
Carlisle snapped to attention. Conscious of his bothersome limp, he stumped bow-legged to the wide office opening and stopped near the adjutant. Carlisle reminded himself to speak clearly. Don't mumble. Be confident. Be a Carlisle.
"Captain Carlisle to see you, sir," the adjutant announced.
"Fine. Send him in."
Carlisle entered the room and cracked off an excessive, perfectly performed salute. The adjutant clicked the door closed.
"At ease, Carlisle." Squadron Leader Baines sprang up from his chair behind his plain wooden desk and folded his arms. "Sit down."
"Thank you, sir." Carlisle found a chair in the small office. He did not feel intimidated by the imposing presence of his superior. From past encounters, he knew the methodical Baines to be a strict but fair man. "You wished to see me, sir."
Baines stood by his desk, stroking his bushy white sideburns. He wore his uniform as if he had been born into it. "Yes. You have new orders. A special assignment. You'll be kind of a roamer on the high seas, for lack of a better word. You'll be on different patrol routes, for example, not stuck to one assignment. You're to be somewhat of an experiment. If this works out, then who knows what?" He smiled. "Sorry. I realize you're probably confused."
"Yes, sir, I am," Carlisle admitted.
"Carlisle, we're discovering by experience that the two squadrons patrolling Cape Fear can't support each other. It's almost as though they're... well... they're working against each other. Some ships, like yours, might have to be more... mobile. And cover more of the sea. Become a little more free to hunt. Are you understanding me now?"
"Yes, sir. I do believe I am."
"First off, I have asked for and received permission from the Department of the Secretary of the Navy for your ship to sail into neutral waters in search of ships carrying contraband goods bound for the Confederacy. Unofficially, you understand. I know this is usually the area deployed by our naval base at Key West. However... there are no printed orders sent through the chain of authority. This is word of mouth only."
Carlisle relaxed. He was not going to be relieved. It also smelled of his father's influence. "I understand, sir."
"Of course, we have to be careful in how you deploy your new assignment. The cargoes have to be ultimately destined for the Confederacy, which means no runner can be overtaken sailing into the close proximity of Bermuda or the Bahamas. Do you understand?"
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Outbound is another case entirely."
"Can we anchor inside their harbors, sir?"
"Yes and no."
"I don't follow, sir."
"If you wish to get that close, then yes. You need not, however. You cannot conduct search and seizure inside neutral waters, only on the open sea. Therefore, you might as well stay out of their harbors."
"Of course, sir," Carlisle said. "I understand."
"Remember, under international law, belligerent warships entering neutral ports must leave within twenty-four hours or be interned."
"By whom?"
"The British. So, don't provoke them."
"I see. But I heard tell that they don't have the forces in the Bahamas and Bermuda to enforce the international policies."
"Never you mind," Baines warned. "Even then, there will be a legal fine line here. The international law of the sea will certainly be bent to the limits. The war will be our excuse if the British decide to file any complaint. We can conduct our business in the name of urgent national interest at a time of crisis. Great Britain does not wish to wage war with us. And we certainly don't want a war with them."
"Carlisle," Baines went on after a long pause. "I know that you've been plagued with some mighty bad luck lately. That's why I wanted to speak to you personally." He paused again. "Some new ships will be in service this year. We've come a long way from two years ago when we had only ninety ships in the entire national blockading fleet. Now we have hundreds, with more coming. Would you like one when we've got one ready and shipshape?"
"Yes, sir. I'd be much obliged, sir." Carlisle's reply was enthusiastic.
"I'll see what I can do. Our Navy is growing stronger and more proficient all the time. In the meantime, keep your head up."
"Aye, aye, sir. I will," Carlisle said, noticing that his migraine had lightened up. This was good news, better than he had anticipated. He liked Baines, one of the good navy desk men. Good old Baines.
"One other thing."
"Sir?"
"Load up with as much coal as you can. You'll need it."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Dismiss."
They saluted each other.
Baines turned and sat down behind his desk. He waited until Carlisle thumped to the door frame. "And good hunting, Carlisle."
Carlisle smiled, glancing at his superior, who had returned to his paperwork. He wanted to ask if his father was behind this, but didn't dare. That wasn't done in the Navy. "Thank you, sir. Thank you very much."
* * * *
Carlisle trudged his way to the gray two-story house commandeered for military use as Union officers' quarters. The long walk bothered his knee and he swore to himself. From higher ground, Carlisle caught a glimpse of the docks, Fort Hatteras, and the waterways winding back to the Atlantic Ocean on his left, and Pamlico Sound on his right. It was very quiet. A slight breeze. Set before him was a broad view of the United States Navy operation at Hatteras Inlet. Thirty miles beyond the mist and the horizon lay the mainland of North Carolina.
Carlisle was born into a decorated US Navy family, who had set high goals for themselves, a tradition the youngest Carlisle - Robert - found difficult to live up to. Most of his life his standard identification was that he was the son and grandson of the famous seafaring Carlisle clan. His paternal grandfather, Lindsay Carlisle, was a hero of the War of 1812, during the Battle of Lake Erie, in which he and his gunboat of men had held off three British ships until help arrived. He later retired as Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Navy. Carlisle's father, Wilbur, a current advisor in the revamped Navy Department in Washington, had organized and led the American troop landings on the California coast during the Mexican War. Once that had been accomplished, he oversaw the blockade of the Gulf of Mexico until the war ended. Both father and grandfather had climbed the naval ranks faster than the third generation Carlisle - now in his late thirties - had.
So what was the problem with Robert, the family wanted to know.
Carlisle thought of his nine-year-old son, Jonathan, back home in Connecticut, at boarding school. He had already decided that his only offspring wouldn't have anything to do with a navy career if he didn't want to. No damned academy for him. He'd be better off forgetting about the navy altogether. Maybe he could be a banker, or a doctor, or a newspaperman, or a lawyer. All honorable professions.
Carlisle reached the steps of the house and lowered himself into a veranda chair. At least his headache had finally dispersed. He rubbed his knee and withdrew the flask from inside his uniform jacket. Uncapping the container, he tilted it, and held it long to his lips. The brandy stung his throat, but he savored the taste with aggressive delight. He had been relying on his brandy more often now since his wife had died a painful, untimely death in February. He had loved her deeply, but always doubted if she had ever loved him back. He fixed her in his mind in an instant, then erased her just as quickly. He took a second swallow. His friend Bottled Brandy was helping.
Blockading was hell, he reminded himself. He wiped his mouth. For what? Thirty dollars a month pay. Freeze his ass off in the winter, and bake his skin brown swatting mosquitoes in the summer heat. Carlisle considered his crew. It was even worse for those of lower rank in his command. Sixteen dollars a month to be part of an excursion that sometimes lasted weeks, in which they had to stand watch for hours. Tempers flared frequently. A sailor's day at sea consisted of long bouts of boredom interspersed with short periods of excitement, if any. So far, the moments of excitement had been few and far between for Carlisle and his crew.
Why couldn't the higher powers increase the pay? But, then again, the mere thought of having to fight and die in some vicious land battle in some horrid place no one had ever heard of before was enough to make Carlisle appreciate his calling. If one could call the Navy a calling. In addition to being safer, the Navy had more to offer than the Army. There was still the chance of catching a blockade runner. There was still the hope of sharing with the crew a piece of the valuable booty at a Northern auction. Besides, a promotion coupled with the possibility of a new ship was attractive. He might have better luck now outside neutral ports. He knew the international naval laws concerning neutrals would be observed only when it suited the warring nations. Neutral rights on the open seas were often ignored.
Then, suddenly, the anger toward his Rebel adversaries grew within him, and he swore under his breath. He had loathed Southerners since his academy days.
"Filthy bastards!" he muttered to himself. "They're the cause of all this."
He guzzled twice more, and wiped his chin. Then he popped the cap on the flask before thumping into the house for dinner.
Chapter three
Washington, D.C.
By the third year of the war the United States of America was caught in the thick web of a martial law dictatorship. Trouble was, most citizens didn't know it. It was a time when thousands of Northerners had been jailed on suspicion without cause, unable to seek legal advice. Only a favored few had rights, depending on who they were and who they supported politically. Military courts had replaced civil courts. All transportation had been nationalized, and it was rumored that all telegraph communication might be forced into the same fate. The two men behind this terrifying consolidation of power were about to meet for one of their regular gab sessions in a corner of a Washington hotel dining room.
Edwin Stanton finished his afternoon meal and ordered the wine once he saw Colonel Lafayette Baker arrive in the lobby. Stanton peered over his small, wire-rimmed spectacles at his younger associate moving towards the table.
"You're late," he frowned, as Baker neared the table.
"I was busy at the office."
"Is that so," Stanton remarked.
The two bearded men waited for a servant to clear the table. Stanton poured the newly-arrived wine for both him and Baker. Stanton was an ill-tempered, chubby, fidgety man, a lawyer by trade. A former director of the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company, he entered federal politics in 1860 as attorney general to then-president James Buchanan. Although a Democrat and a fierce rival of the current President Lincoln, Stanton was appointed by Lincoln as secretary of war two years later in a move that stunned political circles. Washington quickly saw Stanton as an opportunist, preoccupied with his own growing power, someone who took advantage of every situation dumped in his lap. In one short year, Stanton had taken the backroom reins of the country with the help of Baker, a man of questionable reputation, and never let go.
And Stanton still wasn't finished.
Colonel Baker had risen to his position almost as rapidly, but by other routes. A roughneck from a low-to-middle-class background, he had been a founding member of the infamous 1856 Vigilante Committee of San Francisco that had policed the city during the wild California Gold Rush. The talk was that the group had cleaned up the town. But insiders said they had crossed the line. The Committee ran the city their way, making up the rules as they went along, looting and confiscating where and when they saw fit, all in the name of the law.
Later, Baker moved east and established connections in Washington. When the war started, Baker was made a special agent in the War Department and was sent to the Rebel capital of Richmond to gather information about the enemy. The Rebels sent him back, believing he was spying for them. At the Second Bull Run battle he rode a hundred miles through enemy lines to deliver a dispatch from Stanton to Union General Nathaniel Banks. When the Internal Revenue Act of 1862 was passed as a war measure, Stanton hired Baker, who in turn hired detectives to collect from defaulting taxpayers and imprison them if they failed to pay. The jails were soon filled to capacity. Baker's position was merely a front for his own federal secret service, the National Detective Police. Baker now had a force of two thousand NDP detectives and spies under his iron-fisted control. Next to Stanton, Baker was the most feared man in Washington.
"Anything new from your agent at the front?" Stanton inquired, glaring at Baker.
"Haven't heard from him in days. But I do know that both Hooker and Lee have moved out from their winter headquarters."
"So what?" Stanton said. His eyes held Baker's without blinking, as he measured the detective's words. "The newspapers have already reported that! Your man is supposed to be there for the inside information, Baker."
"I know it, sir. But the spring campaign has just started. He won't let me down."
"I should hope not."
Baker said nothing. He knew Stanton hated spies. He considered them sneaks and bloodsuckers. But Lincoln insisted on them. Spies were good for the North only as long as they were of use. Spies could also turn against their masters and become double agents, like he did to the Rebs.
"Lee has to be defeated," Stanton continued. "The sooner, the better. For all of us, the South included. Put them out of their misery. Lincoln wants to let the Reb states back in the Union after the war. He told me that under his plan as long as only ten percent of a state's population agrees to an oath to the United States, then they're in."
"What kind of oath?"
"They must promise to support the Constitution of the United States and obey all federal laws concerning slavery. He's even thinking of pardoning all Reb military and political leaders. Can you imagine, Baker?" His eyes grew larger. "Let Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Davis off dirt free?"
"What can we do about it?"
"Plenty." Stanton's face twisted. "A few choice Republicans are concocting postwar reconstruction plans to divide the South into five conquered military districts controlled by a military governor for each district. These are our kind of people, Baker. They won't allow any Southerner to vote unless he takes the oath to the Union. We'll make the Rebs pay."
Baker knew that Stanton stood to gain the most. The governors would answer to a Washington controlled by Stanton. It would make the secretary more powerful than ever. "Who are these so-called choice Republicans?" Baker asked.
"Senators Chandler in Michigan, Wade of Ohio, Conness from California, and Representative Davis of Maryland, to name three."
Baker wondered what lay beneath the surface of the Republicans' proposals. The NDP chief saw the proposals as a plan for the Republicans to stay in power and create a Southern branch of their party by relying on Negro votes. They wanted to keep their Congress gains of 1860 - free homesteads, high tariffs, subsidies to railroads, a banking system favorable to the big business empires in New York. If the Southern-based Democrats returned to power, they would oppose the Republican reconstruction plans.
"Does Lincoln know what these men are up to?"
"Yes, unfortunately," Stanton said. "And he'll veto any such bill. That I know. He can't win the next election. He'll destroy everything we're putting together. Right now, he doesn't have much support anywhere. And he had to bring the emancipation thing into the picture. The troops are now fighting to free the slaves. And they don't like it. Neither does our Republican round table in Washington. However," Stanton grunted, "if we win the war by next year, or at least manage some great victories on the battlefield, it's likely that Mr. Lincoln could win again."
"So, we're stuck."
Stanton nodded. "Yes, Baker. Stuck."
* * * *
Forty minutes later, deep in the basement of the Treasury Department, not far from the White House, Colonel Baker was preparing a coded dispatch for his agent in Wilmington, North Carolina. This machine was not for military purposes, but for Baker's personal business. By using it, Baker had an excellent control of the clandestine flow of shipments - cotton, meat, guns, and medical supplies - between Washington and Richmond. His connections on both sides in the conflict were of great advantage to him. He was also becoming very wealthy, very quickly.
Baker walked up to a subordinate in the busy office, a young man unfamiliar with the message's true contents. "Barkley?"
The man turned around. "Yes, sir."
"Drop what you're doing and send this through our channel in Richmond."
The man looked at the sheet for a moment. "It's in code?"
"Of course it's in code. Get to it."
"Yes, sir."
Wilmington, North Carolina
Eli Jacoby slowly opened his hotel room door.
"Yes, what is it, boy?"
"Mr. Jacoby," said the young telegraph messenger. "Message for you, sir. From Richmond."
Jacoby gave the young man a gold sovereign and took the sealed envelope. He locked the door, then spent the next few minutes deciphering the message by using his cipher-code book and his own notes. He soon discovered that all secret shipments expected to cross the Potomac bound for Wilmington were still to be grounded. Jacoby frowned, wondering when it would pick up again. He was losing money.
Born a Southerner, Jacoby was no respecter of Southern ways and customs. He had high-level contacts in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia, a network of Northern commodity speculators in the Union war effort. This group had been making a killing selling to Rebel interests on the side, and at the same time they were all making money on the transfer of cotton north. It was made to look perfectly legal by the sinister misuse of cotton and border passes issued by both the Lincoln and Davis governments.
Jacoby appraised his image in the mirror, which reflected an influential citizen of the South. He was not the most handsome of men, with his slight paunch, square face, and cold gray eyes. Balding on top, he had long hair on the sides and back, and a patchy beard speckled with gray around a thin mouth. But he was the best-dressed man in town. He liked that distinction.
Today, he needed a hair trim and was impatient to be doing something. The barber shop was just around the corner, a good place to pick up useful war gossip.
Chapter four
Chancellorsville, Virginia - May 1863
The sun climbed over the wilderness clearing where Major Luke Keating shaved closely around his thick moustache and chin whiskers. Finished, he put his mirror away and threw his dirty cavalry coat on. Then he began to make his rounds, his spurs clinking as he went.
The major heard the familiar early morning noises amid the piercing reveille. Tents were sparser this year. Most of the men had slept on the ground, wrapped in bug-ridden blankets. The sounds of yawns, stretches and curses began, as they did every morning. The coughs were heard over everything else. Deep, raspy coughs, the result of braving the outdoors for nearly two years. It never failed to fascinate Keating how the camp could rise, snort, and cough almost in unison. Some soldiers were smashing their rifle butts into their coffee beans as they continued to cough and clear their throats. They were the lucky ones. Most soldiers didn't have the luxury of coffee, only substitutes such as potato or peanut brews. Within a few minutes, breakfast was on and the smells drifted over the camp. Over the last two years, rebel camp life had become an alarming struggle for proper food, shelter, and clothing.
And it was getting worse.
Keating had received his orders before sunup. Today his unit in the North Carolina cavalry would move out and engage. They would do battle and good men would fall. He tried to picture how many fewer campfires there would be tomorrow morning. He wondered how many more men would die in the coming campaigns until their political allies in Europe would step in and assist the Confederacy. The situation was desperate. No longer was the cavalry hailed as dashing cavaliers on horseback who rode light-heartedly through the countryside. That was a popular story in 1861. Only a story. This was no pleasant little romp in 1863. The cavalry were as starving and as ill-equipped as the other soldiers in Lee's army. However lean they were, Keating's Confederate unit were still part of a proud, formidable force, feared by the Yankees as excellent fighters. With good reason. The cavalry had been instrumental in most of the Rebel victories so far.
They were the eyes of Robert E. Lee.
* * * *
Keating was stiff after the walk. The steady pounding on his frame was getting too much for him. For months, he had felt much older than his thirty years. For months, his bones had been whispering in voices of exhaustion that his brain was trying to ignore. Although he usually made a habit of keeping to himself, this morning he took up a tin of hot, strong coffee and stood with other officers, all junior in rank to him. In appearance, they weren't much different than Keating. Their uniforms were the same homespun butternut or gray, with black facing, broad-brimmed dark hats, long riding boots, along with gray or filched Yankee blue short jackets and trousers. The difference was the more youthful faces.
The second son of a well-to-do former North Carolina senator who had made his fortune in cotton, Keating had been in the Union peacetime army only a year before dropping out and joining his father in business. He had officer experience, a scarce commodity in the Rebel army when war erupted. He quickly joined up again. So far, Keating had taken part in all the great campaigns of Stonewall Jackson, his general commanding. In two years he had been a witness to some terrible bloody battles and some awe-inspiring victories such as their last major skirmish at Fredericksburg in December past, where the Union forces lost three times as many men as Robert E. Lee.
Keating watched as a piece of hardtack floated on the surface of his coffee. Two little boll weevils, which had worked their way into the biscuit overnight, bobbed about. He skimmed them off, then coughed, and guzzled. One look around the camp left Keating with nagging doubts. How could Lee's army continue under such appalling conditions? Where were the proper supplies in this ragged army? Pay was low and erratic if not nonexistent. Scurvy, typhoid, measles, mumps, dysentery, and pneumonia ran rampant. More soldiers were dying from diseases than bullets. Keating knew that the blockade runners couldn't supply them with all the military necessities. According to letters from home in Wilmington, the blockade was tougher to break with each passing month.
* * * *
Lieutenant Franklin Taylor's nerves were strung taut as a deer. He had been up for more than an hour since daybreak, circling behind his own Rebel lines on a narrow path through the forest. Even the birds weren't making noises this morning. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? Taylor's youthful face showed his worry. He had lost track of his critical lifeline - the telegraph wires - coming out of Fredericksburg, and he wondered how he would get word to his base if he had to. At the same time he kept his eyes open for those Union snipers, the best damn shots in the army.
Taylor barely resembled the man he had been when he joined the Army of Northern Virginia the previous summer. His tattered and patched butternut-colored Signal Corps uniform hung loosely on him. Before the war, he had been round and full in the body, living in relative comfort near Charleston, Virginia, a part of the state that contained people with a strong Union sentiment. In less than one year, Taylor, ill-fed on depleting Southern rations, had lost almost forty pounds. Sores covered his face, his scruffy beard matched the rest of his unkempt hair. The lice on his body no longer upset him.
His unsightly appearance was typical of the majority of soldiers in the still-haughty Army of Northern Virginia. What separated him from most of the others was one outstanding possession. He still owned a pair of boots, and Yankee boots at that. The right big toe was beginning to wear through, it was true, but he was fortunate. Half the remaining soldiers in the Signal Corps, not to mention most of the entire Army of Northern Virginia, were barefoot.
As a Signal Corps telegrapher, his duty was to keep a close watch on the Reb and Union troop movements. He knew that since the end of April, Union commander Joe Hooker had marched east from his winter headquarters at Fredericksburg, leading four corps of his 130,000-strong Army of Potomac. Hooker then ordered seventy thousand of these men behind Robert E. Lee, while the rest were left to face the Rebs across the Rappahannock River. It was a dangerous spot for Lee and his much smaller total force of only sixty thousand men. However, Franklin knew Bobby Lee had yet to back down to any Union commander. Hooker would be no exception. Lee had split his forces to shore up his flank. Portions of the two great armies had already clashed yesterday, sending Hooker into a defensive position in the Wilderness clearing around a two-story white brick building called Chancellorsville House. Taylor believed that this particular piece of ground only six miles from his Signal Corps tent at the edge of Lee's army would be where Hooker wanted to face Lee to defeat him.
A fierce battle was coming. He knew it. He could smell it.
Taylor also differed from his comrades in another way. When ordered to send coded messages along the telegraph wires and flag signals between units, he did so. But when he had the chance, he also sent what he felt were essential messages to a Union telegraph office based in northern Virginia. The latter was his all-absorbing job. Thousands of Union lives were depending on his dispatches. Taylor's employer was not the Army of Northern Virginia, but the National Detective Police headquartered in Washington. His code name was Yankee. Once a month one thousand dollars in gold would be deposited by a high-ranking detective into a secret account opened under Taylor's assumed name. The account had been growing for many months. Taylor would be filthy rich by war's end.
While his southern friends were fighting their hearts out for the Confederacy, Lieutenant Franklin Taylor was a Union informant inside Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. And he had been getting away with it for a year.
Chapter five
Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina
The Connecticut should have put out to sea that morning, but it didn't look anywhere near ready to go. Now, Robert Carlisle was concerned about morale - his crew's as well as his own. He wanted the ship out and hunting pirates.
One of the engine mechanics, smothered in grease from his face down to the rolled cuffs of his blue coveralls, stepped from the ship to the pier. Carlisle approached him.
"How much longer?"
The mechanic shook his head. "Not today, sir. Not for a few days. We need some parts from the mainland."
Carlisle turned in the direction of the officers' quarters on the rise and pounded away on his stump. "What a piss-poor way to run a navy," he said to himself.