Excerpts from Chapter One - Rogue
Before leaving I secretly met a last time with young Laura, now wearing adult clothes better fitted to her blooming figure, and I swore I would be faithful to her forever. I elicited the same promise from the very young woman, and we imagined how our lives would permanently be entwined and we would live happily together the years of our future.
I was a callow seventeen then, still idealistic.
My time in Europe was instructive on one level, less so on another. My aunt kept me sheltered from the more free culture of France. I'll tell you about that sometime, but I want to get back to my coming to South Carolina.
Charleston, you see, was not my intended destination.
I spent the summer and winter in Paris, an ocean and half-year away from my Boston home and the woman I knew I loved, into whom I had poured all my anticipation of life. Then we toured Italy with my aunt and her mature female companions. I sent Laura many letters expressing my continued faithfulness and longing, but got none in return. I had planned to stay another year in Europe, but my sojourn was cut short when a letter reached me while in Belgium, I the grieving and lonely lovesick fool. I was missing two women, Mother and Laura, the only two women in my world.
My father was ill, and he wanted to see me as soon as could be. Included was a bank draft for the money to travel back home to Boston.
As rapidly as I could manage, I booked a cabin on a sail-steamer and left Le Havre in mid-summer of 1860.
My passage was not an easy one.
The first days were placid as the wheels of the steamer plied the dark waters when the wind was against us, and the sails carried us when it was fair. The vast unmarked waste loomed as background in my tumultuous mind.
My hours spent on deck when the sun was out were periods of reverie and dreams of my impending marriage to Laura, standing before her mother to declare our love and taking my inheritance to establish our home. I could find work as a tutor at first, until I found an apprenticeship at an engineering house where I would continue my studies in structure design. We would live on what my father left me, and on love, and build our world.
I was in one such ponderous daydream as I gazed at the regular rippling waves of six feet in height spreading into the distance, finally to be lost as they flowed over the curvature of the world, when I saw far to the south a strange and shocking vision.
Without apparent cause, at about a mile distant the water had shifted. A deep trench in the sea reversed itself and a dune of rolling ocean had lifted to an enormous height in a freakish wave. It arose from the bottomless void below and advanced, moving and growing, a monster shifting the waters and approaching our vessel obliquely.
Some of the crew saw it and called to the captain who was below decks. He jumped onto the deck and urgently ordered the ship's sails trimmed and the bow turned toward the freak wave. All hatches were quickly sealed.
The fluid ridge did not tarry but grew to more than a hundred feet above its neighbor waves in a great rush of water. I knew not what it was, and thought it might portend the end of the world.
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Excerpts from CHAPTER 8 - STRAWBERRY TEA
The music washed over us all. I have always found it intriguing that a tune can generate moods and emotions sometimes not appropriate to the time.
When the pianist had completed his work he was roundly applauded by his audience, and he accepted a glass of claret. Then all glasses were charged and a toast was called, “Damnation to the Yankees!”
There was an immediate apology for allowing profanity to fall upon the assumed innocence of the women. Some blushed, most grinned and sipped their glass. The high spirits and good feelings of the evening were too strong to be upset by that simple breach of etiquette.
Again, I heard the term “Yankee” as if it referred to disparaged foreigners from another land, not Americans. I had grown up thinking it a term of honor.
The chaperons, mostly matrons with an elder spouse or two, were seated against a wall near the fireplace and nodded approvingly as the different young men approached and greeted the women visiting their house. The promises of new configurations of planter dynasties were forming in the giddy air.
One of the older men suggested a reading. There was a quick response and the favorite recitist, young Timmy, gave forth with a popular Tennyson poem. Many of these men had by now memorized the work, and it was not unknown to me from my readings to my dying mother.
Tim’s slight figure and gentle posture transformed into something martial and strong. His high voice took on a timbre and resonance which demanded attention. He spoke with authority, this child, and before our eyes became a captain:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward
All in the valley of death
Rode the six hundred….
The group stayed silent, rapt by the cadence, the imagery, themselves believing how these very young men in the room around me would, when called, demonstrate a heroism as great as the doomed Englishmen on that battlefield at the end of the world.
...Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred….
Every young man there imagined himself on that field, achieving the glory he knows is within him, soon if needed, to chase the Federals out of Sumter and build their new nation. This small, gentle and effeminate youth reciting the tale of the great deeds of that Crimean afternoon became a stern vessel of Truth, of Gallantry, pouring the fire of brazen manhood of the martyrs into his speech…
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Excerpts from CHAPTER 40 - SEARCH BY SMOKE
“She’ll be within easy range soon, Captain.”
As the sailor spoke, I saw a flash of fire from the other ship. As I watched, a puff of smoke in the distance dashed away from its side. Then we heard the crying shriek as a ball sped past close to our bow.
“Fine shooting,” stated the captain.
A passenger named Jones was having none of this praise. “Captain, we cannot countenance cannon fire! We must surrender! There are women aboard!”
Mrs. Jones was made of sterner stuff. “Hush, Willie. Let the captain do his work.”
Then Mrs. Jones stood on tip-toe to view the pursuing ship. She was dressed in white that morning, and Willie stood beside her, crouching and shielding their daughter. The ten-year-old struggled to get a glimpse of the attacker.
The captain moved serenely to the very bow of the ship and trained his glass upon the sea before him. Charles and I watched the approaching craft as the sun slowly climbed toward its zenith.
More shots followed. Charles spoke, and I listened to his soliloquy of muzzle velocity, ballistic arcs, how cannon barrels are rifled to improve aim, and even of methods of gunpowder storage. How does one learn all these things? When broken into the abstract, the flying iron around our boat was not so frightening, except when another thudded into one of the large bales of pressed cotton on deck.
“More coal,” commanded the captain, “more pressure.”
The sun hung like a beckoning lantern higher above the eastern horizon.
The Federal bow-chaser barked again, and the ball splashed a few yards to the side.
Everyone was ordered below deck, and I complied. The well-proportioned Mrs. Trent remained above to converse with the captain and he allowed her company.
“Two points starboard,” called the captain, and the wheel turned.
The Gawain responded and became more lively.
We had almost no exhaust coming from the boiler burning the heavy and expensive Welsh or Pennsylvania coal. Its cost depended on prices from coal smugglers plying between Northern ports and Bermuda or Halifax, then to Nassau. Lower grades of coal released plumes visible for miles, easy to spot by the blockaders who constantly searched for tell-tale smoke.
Our ship the Gawain was designed in Liverpool for invisibility as much as was possible. It was low to the sea and painted like fog, though its cargo of cotton bales bulked its profile. It was powered by a large steam plant that drove sidewheels, which allowed fine maneuverability in port and pretty good speed on a calm sea, about twelve knots. But it was not really a match for some of the Federal blockading fleet, loaded as it was.
The captain had no choice but to run further east for the open sea. We were given chase and the pursuing ship was gaining.
I heard the captain call for “cotton,” which when soaked in turpentine can replace coal as the fuel for the boiler, and can quickly increase the temperature of the boiler. We carried an unlimited supply of cotton and about four hundred barrels of turpentine.
There is always a danger of disaster on a ship driven by fire, especially if it carries a cargo of turpentine. Breaching the first keg of the liquid added a dimension of risk, and running the steam drive at a temperature and rate of motion beyond its design heightened the thrill. I think there weren't any folks aboard who enjoyed this level of excitement. I went below, more to avoid the immediate challenge of the contest than for any other reason.
As the rhythm of the motor increased, I heard a “thump,” which I guessed was another shot from the other boat, once more hitting its mark, though I hoped only absorbed again in one of the bales above. It is amazing to me that the gunner could estimate the range, elevation, and motion of his and our ships to the degree that he could place the ball aboard us.
I heard deep splashes as the engine shafts whined at a higher pitch, and sidewheels thrashed the waves.
The steely Mrs. Trent came below with a wild grin, her eyes glowing with the rush of her blood. “The captain is lightening the ship by casting adrift some of the cotton! What a chase!”
Yes, what a chase.
She was more elated than concerned. To lighten the load the captain ordered bale after bale cast overboard; thousands of dollars bobbing in the open sea. I wonder sometimes what became of those cotton rafts, the result of hundreds of hours of planting, tilling, harvesting, ginning. I expect some that may have drifted close to shore were salvaged and sold, slightly the worse for wear. The others, thousands over the period of the war, perhaps became homes for seabirds and comfortable fiber for nests.
Our ship was less lofty now, like a snowdrift melting in spring sunlight.
As each ton of fine cotton was set adrift the speed of the straining Gawain increased, though the pursuers were still gaining.
I returned to the deck and witnessed the quiet efficiency of the crew as they dumped the cotton overboard A trail of white treasure bobbed in our wake. The smoke stack was hot and poured a radiant heat to the sky as wheels churned the water. A band of cloud appeared on our port beam, and the sky seemed to have grown darker. By then the day was progressing toward noon.
Another shot flew overhead missing Gawain by more than a hundred feet.
The Federal warship was growing larger, and I could see the bow wave, white against the dark sea.
The captain changed course again, and drove us more northerly, still eastward. The engine drove yet faster.
Another bale splashed sternward.
Like all blockade runners, Gawain had no arms other than the captain's revolver which could easily be dropped overboard. Any blockade runner captured with arms aboard could be charged with piracy, and the attendant penalties involving twisted hemp were not worth the slim chance of winning a battle of arms against a U.S. warship.
“Six more bales, from the bow,” ordered the captain.
The heavy bales were dragged and levered into the waves, and bobbed in our wake as Gawain shuddered to a faster pace.
With increased speed of the engine, danger of boiler explosion also increased. A boiler explosion in the open sea could mean only doom for most all on board. But that was the challenge.
This was the cost of profit.
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