Honorable Mention Read online

  DeTar smiled and raised a thin finger slightly for emphasis in his acknowledgement. “Most correct, Captain. A realistic understanding of the situation that I wish more captains displayed, sir.”

  DeTar opened the desk drawer by his right knee and extracted three file folders marked “Deck,” “Gunnery,” and “Steam Mechanics.” Spreading each open on top of his desk, he ran his finger down the lists of men written on the reports. The chief yeoman pursed his lips and sighed as he looked up from his lists of available manpower.

  “Now we are very short, of course, because that yellow jack hit this whole damned squadron in the last three months. Some of the ships are in worse condition than your Hunt, sir. Did you hear about the Chambers? Almost all of them dead or dying. Sent her up to Philadelphia.”

  Wake had heard all about the schooner Chambers. Two months over three quarters of her crew were sick, dying, or dead of yellow jack. “I heard about her. Have there been any drafts of new men from up North lately? I haven’t heard of any.”

  “No, that rare blessed event hasn’t happened lately. Last one was five months ago in May. Not a lot of folks volunteering to come down into the fever squadron, and Admiral Farragut’s gotten the last two drafts of men since May that were originally headed here. Our admiral was not happy about that, I can tell you, but who can compete with Farragut? Man’s got more newspaper correspondents with him than we have ships! ‘Most famous sailor in the nation,’ they call him. And us? We’re famous for having that damned fever worse than any other squadron.”

  Wake was tiring of DeTar’s rambling and couldn’t care less about Farragut’s newspaper image. This meeting wasn’t successful at all so far, but perhaps the old veteran petty officer could find him some men somewhere. Wake knew that he had to be patient. There were a few men in the squadron with importance beyond their apparent rank or position, and DeTar was one of them. Suddenly the chief yeoman’s brows furrowed and he looked at Wake with a nod.

  “Yellow jack . . . hmm, let me peruse that sick list.” He pulled another folder from the drawer. “Ah ha! I thought so. A hidden treasure trove just for you, sir. I do have some sailors coming out of the marine hospital who have recovered from the fever. Surgeons there have promised that these boys will live to fight and die for their country. Four seamen—ordinary seamen, I believe. Let that Irish pirate of a bosun, Rork, know he owes me one for sending him these four, sir.”

  DeTar paused a moment to revel in his triumph of finding seamen for Wake, then he plunged into a further reply to the request for more men. “No able seamen available for you though, sir, Captain Nickerson got the last of them. As for the gunners, I’m afraid that my old friend Durlon is out of luck—none unassigned in the squadron. We have three in the hospital but they’re not on the surgeons’ release list. I’ll keep an eye on one of those just for the Hunt, though, sir, and let you know when he’s available—if they live.”

  Wake nodded, thankful that he was getting at least a few men to help work the ship. “Thank you, Chief Yeoman. I’ll certainly pass that along to Rork and remind him on the next shore liberty to look you up.”

  DeTar laughed and held both his hands up.

  “Well, sir, please tell him to stop by here to find me. I am most definitely not going down to that poxy trollop-hole the squadron’s bosuns languish in. Yeoman have standards, sir, and we do not frequent establishments of that sort.”

  Wake laughed too at the thought of a yeoman walking into the Anchor Inn and emerging unscathed. DeTar got back to the business at hand, frowning as he continued.

  “And speaking of yeomen, sir, there aren’t any of those available either. All are assigned to the larger ships. I don’t even have enough here at the squadron offices to do our work. I am sorry, Captain Wake, I wish I could find you one.”

  Wake hadn’t held much hope for obtaining a yeoman, and nodded his appreciation for DeTar’s comment.

  “About the steam mechanic people, sir. I do have a coal heaver named Chard who is six months past his enlistment and raising all Cain to be returned to his station of recruitment. Boston, of all places. Well, sir, the lad isn’t going to Boston. He’ll be lucky to get to a vessel bound for Charleston or Norfolk. He just might ship over for another enlistment if your engineer was to ask him and say it was your ship. His last captain put him ashore and he’s doing duty at the station boiler shop by the wharf until he gets a transit north. Worth a try there, sir.”

  Wake pondered it all for a moment. He had authorization to obtain replacements for open billets aboard his ship. Knowing that he could never get a full complement, he had asked for the minimum needed to work and fight the ship, as requested by his ship’s subordinate leadership. That amounted to seventeen men—or a third of his allowed complement. He was receiving five. He set his jaw and looked at DeTar.

  “Any hidden away, Chief Yeoman? You know I won’t waste them. I’ve got a steamer now and suspect I’ll be even a bit more busy than I have been in the past. Any man sent to me will be used well.”

  DeTar sighed again and smiled. He knew what was in Wake’s mind. “Captain, I know that. I wish I could send you more, but I have thirty-three ships to man. I’ve got to keep some available for the others as well. All the captains are having to go short now, with the men doing double duty on the muster bills in order to work and fight the ships. The whole squadron is in the same situation, sir. I’ve heard the other squadrons have similar problems, but I think ours are the worst.”

  Wake knew it was time to take what he could and be thankful. He stood and offered his hand, which DeTar took while speaking in his slow soft manner. “Good luck, Captain. With Rork and Durlon aboard you’re already well manned. I’m looking forward to hearing what endeavors you’ll accomplish with that steamer.”

  “Thank you, Chief Yeoman DeTar. As always, a stimulating conversation and a productive visit. I appreciate that you were able to get me any men at all in these difficult times.”

  As Wake turned to leave he saw another officer in the hallway by the door. It was Lieutenant Jeff Nibarger, commander of the Sullivan, and he had the same worried mien that Wake had had when he had arrived at DeTar’s office.

  “Good luck, Jeff,” said Wake to his friend as he strode down the hall and out the building, glad to be in the sunshine and fresh air after the damp, musty windowless room. Wake marveled that DeTar’s office smelled just like below decks in a ship—even having the same navy-issue lanterns with their distinctive rancid-smelling oil.

  The walk to the officers’ landing was short, but long enough for him to think through his manning problems and realize that he needed to have a meeting with his officers and petty officers immediately upon returning to the ship. Wake would give them the grim news, and together they would find a way to ready the Hunt for sea, and work and fight with what they had.

  The officers’ harbor launch was already crowded, but they waited for Wake to clamber aboard. Today the steamer Marigold had the duty of providing the harbor launch. The sweating sailors strained at their oars with their eyes gazing aft at the water as the launch’s coxswain steered to the various ships according to the seniority of the officers present. Wake, as a lieutenant, was taken to his ship before the two masters and the one ensign—but after the lieutenant commander of the gunboat Sagamore and a senior lieutenant from the steamer Proteus.

  The sun was starting its descent when they turned toward the Hunt, anchored on the far side of the harbor, and headed for her. Wake surveyed her as they came closer. She was unlike any other vessel he had ever sailed in, much less commanded. Objectively as he could, he reviewed her characteristics as he examined the ship.

  The Hunt was a screw steam tug, brought into naval service six months earlier at Philadelphia, where she had been built in ’59. Because she had a draft of only six feet for her eighty-five-foot length, she was ideal for the shallow waters of Florida, and in a rare logical decision from Washi
ngton, she was actually sent to the squadron based there. Upon her arrival she was armed with two twelve-pounder howitzers that were placed on her foredeck and amidships, abaft her stack.

  Wake thought about that stack. It was a tall stack and made her look ungainly, to his sailing man’s eye. That stack produced a belching cloud of cinders and ash that befouled the deck and threatened to ignite the rigging of her two masts. Not a sail was bent to those masts, they were meant for signals and for hauling cargo aboard. The only sail on the ship was a steadying sail for dangerous weather. Wake hadn’t been in that type of weather on her but could imagine the shallow hull rolling perilously without the balance of real sails. He wondered if the steadying sail really helped.

  She was so different from what he was used to in his years at sea. Her reason for being was located within her hull—her steam engine. It took tons of filthy coal to feed that engine so it would make the steam to enable her to travel, and it took almost twenty officers and men just in that department of the ship to keep her steam engine running.

  From the assistant engineer officer in charge of the operations of the steam machinery, to the firemen who tended the boilers, to the coal heavers who fed the monster, those men were all a completely different breed. They weren’t like real sailors. They lived and worked below decks in the suffocatingly hot engine room and coal bunkers. They were constantly grimy and greasy—known as the “black gang” to regular sailors. Where the deck sailors lived in an outside world of orderly cleanliness, holystoning the decks everyday to a dazzling whiteness—the steam mechanics and coal heavers lived in the dark dirty world below and did not understand the anger that their soot and grease created when it coated the upper decks. Wake wondered if other steamship captains had to constantly calm each side of that dilemma—he suspected they all did.

  And then there were the deckhouse and wheelhouse. Boxes really. No pretty lines like his schooner St. James. Hunt was a hull with a long box that had two signal sticks and a funnel standing out of it. She had none of the soul of a sailing vessel. On the Hunt there was no steering from aft—her helm was in a wheelhouse just twenty-five feet from her bow, atop a long deck house stretching aft to end before a large afterdeck. Used to steering from the stern and being able to look up and around at the trim of the sails, Wake felt unnaturally confined in the wheelhouse. He had always steered a ship out on a deck where he could feel the wind and watch the sails and gauge the seas.

  The stern deck of the Hunt was taken up by a massive double sampson post towing bit, six feet across and four feet high, with a cable’s length of thick hawser flaked down and ready to use. This was Rork’s bailiwick—the seamanship required in managing a tow. Hunt could tow almost any ship by herself. The engine was powerful but the gear reductions to her five-foot wide propeller were such that she was designed for thrust, not speed. Her very fastest speed without a tow was nine knots and she usually moved at six or seven.

  Yes, it was all so different from what he had known in his years at sea. Canvas was the motive equipment he was used to. Now it was a metal monster below deck, with a hole in the hull for a screw. Wake shook his head at the thought of it all.

  The navy was changing, though, and he would have to also. Wake was determined to learn the ways of his steamer and use her well against the enemy. He knew that he was very lucky to get this command. Many other regular officers with more seniority would have jumped at it. The jealousy was unsaid but palpable at the squadron offices, for Wake was one of those few volunteers who had been given a regular commission. Though he was technically now one of them, he knew he would never be accepted as an equal by the officers who were naval academy graduates. He had even heard that some of his brother officers were speculating that Wake wouldn’t be able to understand and command a steamship, and would be replaced within four months.

  It was not only his regular commission that had them talking. His love affair with and marriage to Linda Donahue, a woman from one of the most vocal of the pro-Confederate Key West families, had had them talking for some time. Though she did not share her family’s views, she was tainted with that stain. The two of them had been ostracized by both factions when the word went out that they had married—the navy didn’t trust her and the Rebel islanders hated him as an occupier of their home. But all the turmoil had just brought them even closer. Linda was the best thing that had happened to him in his life, and he missed her terribly. He pictured her up the coast on Useppa Island and wished he could be there.

  The call of the stroke by the coxswain brought Wake back to the present—and the serious problem he faced of having such a shorthanded ship that was going to sea in the morning. Hunt’s men were going to have to adapt to the situation—all of them, both deck and engineering. Wake had always taken the morale of his men into consideration in his previous commands, and had worked to improve their well-being. But this was different, and whatever morale problems the crew had before his arrival this week, they were secondary to accomplishing the mission given them by the squadron’s chief of staff, Fleet Captain Morris.

  The launch was still a hundred yards away when the coxswain called out “Hunt,” the traditional warning to a crew that the captain of their ship was coming aboard. The scurry of activity among the sailors on watch on the quarterdeck reminded Wake of what had caused the morale problem.

  Hunt had been in the squadron only a few weeks when yellow fever went through her unacclimated crew and decimated it to the point where the men could barely operate the ship. She lay at anchor for two weeks, with the sick and death toll rising each day. Sailors made morbid wagers as to who would get sick next, and whether they would die. They sat there, waiting and watching each other for signs of the sickness. The fever was gone now, but the men’s malaise had lingered as they wondered if the sickness would return. Wake had seen what yellow fever could do to a man, and he understood the despair and the terror that seized even strong men. Some were never the same again, even if they did survive.

  As he climbed up the side of the ship he was determined to replace the despondency with discipline and success. That would be the cure for fear, and the sooner the better. The bosun’s mate’s pipe called, and all hands on the side deck faced Wake as he returned the salute of Master Stephen Emerson, his executive officer. Wake got right to the point.

  “Mr. Emerson, I want all of the officers and petty officers in my cabin in five minutes. We need to meet about the crew and the mission of this ship.”

  Emerson, the same age as Wake at twenty-six but with a little less sea time and one rank junior, snapped his lean frame to attention. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “And Mr. Emerson, see if the steward can find any of that fruit juice for the meeting. I think that would go well this afternoon.”

  Emerson was pleased to hear the request—it meant the meeting was not about some sort of trouble or a failing by the crew. He was still getting used to the ways of Captain Wake, but had heard of his exploits and was glad to be serving under him, even if it was on just a lowly tug.

  “Aye, aye, sir. Fruit juice for the meeting.”

  Moments later, as the officers and petty officers started to arrive in his cabin, Wake reflected on the best privilege of his new command. It was the cabin itself, which stretched across the beam of the deckhouse’s after end. Unbelievably, it had standing headroom, a first for Wake. It was the most luxurious cabin he had ever occupied on any ship, naval or merchant. A real bed was built into the bulkhead, accompanied by a desk with chairs, and an actual table for meals and charts. It even had a skylight that opened for ventilation and sunlight. As large as it was though, it quickly grew crowded and stuffy with all of the Hunt’s leaders jamming themselves into the cabin.

  The officers were seated—Wake at the desk, with Emerson, Ensign Terrance Rhodes, and Third Assistant Engineer Albert Ginaldi in the chairs in front of the desk.

  All three of his officers were volunteers in the navy for th
e duration of the war. None had indicated that they would make it a career when the fighting stopped. Rhodes was a young man of friendly deportment, a new volunteer officer who had served on Ohio riverboats but never been to sea. Ginaldi was older, more worldly, and had been an engineer on a New York tug. Ginaldi was the only officer aboard Hunt with tug experience, but as an engineer he was junior to all line officers like Emerson and Rhodes. The officers were not the original ones that had arrived in Key West aboard Hunt—they were all dead or incapacitated by the yellow fever, a fact that was not lost on any of the men in the cabin.

  The petty officers were standing in a tight semicircle around the seated officers, senior petty officers in front with their junior assistants in the back of the crowd, near the companionway. The bosun of the ship was Sean Rork, who had served under Wake on two other ships and was a man to be relied upon, with many years of experience. Two of his bosun’s mates, Curtis and Jones, stood next to him. The third, Hamilton, was on watch out on the deck, keeping curious ears away from that skylight and the cabin ports.

  The gunner, Mark Durlon, another former shipmate of Wake’s first command, was there with his sole gunner’s mate, Walker. The engineer petty officers, McKinney and Schnieders, wore their cleanest working overalls for this unusual occasion of being called out of their below decks lair up to the captain’s cabin, and stood slightly apart from the others, looking nervous in such company.

  Dirkus the steward made his way through the mass of men and laid a tray with a pewter pitcher and cups on the desk, then exited. Dirkus was a quiet man with an odd way about him that was slightly disconcerting, as if he were constantly evaluating whomever he was serving. Having evidently run off to the navy to avoid some financial and legal unpleasantness, Dirkus never gave reason for complaint, but did give the impression he wanted to be anywhere but in the navy. He was far from being a dimwitted servant though, and Wake decided to keep him as his steward. After Dirkus’ departure Wake looked at Emerson and nodded.