An Honorable War Read online

  3

  Eleven Months Earlier

  U.S.S. Newark

  Brooklyn Navy Yard

  4:45 a.m., Monday

  1 March 1897

  The high shrill of the bosun’s pipe cruelly pierced my slumber like a dagger. It was followed by the ominous bellow of the duty petty officer up on the main deck. “Anchor watch, trice up hammock cloths!”

  From up forward, I heard another petty officer rousing his detail. “Hammock stowers and musicians, up and out! Shake a leg, you misbegotten idlers and rascals!”

  Hearing all this, I knew precisely what time it was, a quarter to five. I’d overslept—a disagreeable start to the morning. Every moment of every hour of every day on a man-o-war is regulated, only varying in storm or battle. From apprentice seaman to captain, duty never disappears and must always be attended closely, on time, every time. There may be reasons for failure to do so, but there are no excuses. Adding to my irritation, my steward Slattery was considerably late with breakfast.

  “Nigh onto second bell of the morning watch, and a nasty morning it is, sir,” intoned a refined British voice as Slattery padded into my stateroom seconds later, lighting the desk lantern. “But at least we’re nice and snug on the dock.”

  “You’re late, Slattery.”

  “Aye, sir. A full fourteen and one half minutes, to be exact. I sincerely apologize, sir, but the wardroom cook had trouble with the stove coal. Seems it was smoking but not burning. It was the new stuff we got in Martinique, of course.”

  He wagged his head and frowned as he laid the tray of food down on my chart table. “But then, really, what do you expect of the French? Even their coal won’t burn! You can’t trust those frog-eaters to do anything right. It really is a wonder Napoleon ever conquered anybody.”

  “You’re late, Slattery.”

  The refined inflection quickly slid into working class lingo. “Right, sir. I was just explaining why, but hadn’t gotten to the most important part. Well, since the bloody wardroom galley was out of action, I went forward and found the chief petty officers’ cook up there in the Goat Locker. Oh, blimey, but wasn’t that old worthy in a damned foul mood this morning, until the bugger realized I was there for the breakfast of hizzoner the captain himself! Then, of course, he hopped to with a proper will. And that, sir, is why I was fourteen and a half minutes late this morning.”

  Slattery claimed to have been a gentleman’s gentleman somewhere in England, and occasionally displayed the manners and skills to prove it, when it suited him. Returning to his show of class, he half-bowed and elegantly raised an index finger, along with his crimson nose, in the air.

  “I must add the wardroom cook presents his deepest apologies and regrets, sir. The chief petty officers’ cook presents his respects and hopes you enjoy the fruit of his efforts. He was greatly honored we came to him in our hour of need.”

  We? I thought. At the end of his recitation, he flaunted a rather self-satisfied look. Clearly, he expected me to compliment his efforts. I, however, wasn’t game.

  There were several bizarre rumors about how exactly Slattery ended up in the United States Navy, most of which centered around escaping a criminal past involving fraud, but I never did learn the real story. Whatever the cause, Slattery was the type who always bore careful watching.

  “You’re quite the con man, Slattery.”

  “Aye, sir, that I am,” he admitted cheerfully. “And may I say I am profoundly honored to be your con man.”

  He bowed again, this time with the ghost of a sly smile, then laid out my breakfast on the chart table and announced, “Two hard-boiled Bahamian eggs, diced and mixed with the last of our Jamaican pickapeppa sauce; toast, with the last smidgen of the Barbados butter; black coffee from Colombia; and our last Martinique orange from the wardroom pantry, sir. A veritable West Indian feast, as is only right.”

  I climbed out of the warm bunk. It was damned cold in the stateroom, especially to someone who had just returned from five months in the Caribbean. “What’s the weather out on deck?”

  “Even nastier than when we arrived, sir. Thermometer says thirty-three degrees and is dropping fast. Wind is still northerly, right down the East River, and has piped up to a near gale. Feels even colder. Gale warnings on the navy yard mast. Constant squall lines and sleet turning to snow. Quartermaster predicts it’ll get into the bleedin’ teens by noon and below zero by sunset. Good day to be down in the black gang, sir. Pity the lads out on deck in the thick of it.”

  The ship’s bell struck twice—five a.m.—and the bugler sounded reveille. It seemed a bit more plaintive this morning, and I guessed his lips were numb. Within seconds, the ship came to life, for even if a man weren’t on a duty watch, the day was beginning and the time for rest had ended. There was work to be done, on watch or off watch. Work never ended on a ship.

  Petty officers began rousing the crew up forward in the division berthing areas, faint insistent voices. The one nearest to my stateroom was the gunnery division, located forward of the wardroom and the officers’ cabins. This morning the men were being greeted by Chief Gunner’s Mate Doyle O’Conner. Behind his back, O’Conner was commonly called Foghorn, for the incredible volume of his voice, a compensation for the gradual loss of hearing over the years from the concussive effect of his beloved guns. O’Conner didn’t let it slow him down. He always operated at full speed. This morning he wasn’t waking the men gently, but he did add a touch of sailor’s mocking humor.

  “All hands! Up and out! All hands! Up and out! Shake a leg, you lazy bastards. Trice and stow hammocks! Smoking lamp is lit for them what have it and rate it. Smile, me hearties, it’s another beautiful morning in Uncle Sam’s blessed Navy. There’s nary an enemy in sight but our dear Mother Nature—and I have work for you to be done!”

  The ending part elicited groans and curses by the men in the hammocks, which only made Foghorn laugh and roar, “Tardiness is next to cowardice, you skulking lubbers! Now move quickly my little darlings, or I’ll think you don’t love me anymore!”

  Finishing breakfast a few minutes later, I heard Foghorn make his next announcement, telling the men in the time-honored phrases to start their morning duties of cleaning the ship.

  “Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms! Give the ship a good clean sweep down, both fore and aft! Sweep down all weather decks, all lower decks, all ladder backs and passageways! Chippers and scrapers, Mother Nature is awaiting topside and I know who you are, so lay forward to the foc’s’l to get your weapons and do battle with the evil ice and snow!”

  My first official visitor of the day arrived right about then. Commander James Southby was Newark’s executive officer and number two in command. He already looked weary—executive officers are the hardest working officers on a warship—as he sat in the chair near my desk.

  He laughed quietly and said, “Morning, sir. I hear Foghorn thinks it’s another beautiful day in the navy. The old boy’s in rare form this morning.”

  “That’s because he won’t be out on the weather decks chipping and scraping. Inside of ten minutes, he’ll be drinking coffee with the other salts up in the Goat Locker.”

  “True. I’ve got him scheduled for main gun maintenance later, though. Muzzle tampions and locking gear need to be greased.”

  “Good. Say, did they ever get the wardroom stove working?”

  “No, sir, not yet. Lots of grumbling about it, too. Heard the petty officers’ cook did your breakfast. How was it?”

  “Pretty good, actually.” A whimsical thought entered my head. “Maybe we should steal him from them?”

  Southby got into the spirit. “It would be fun, though I worry about what they’d do in return.”

  “Something Machiavellian to ruin our careers when we least expect it, no doubt. Maybe we’d better not.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, sir. I suppose we shouldn’t. Never mess with the CPOs
. Evil-hearted bastards.”

  I liked and respected my number two. A soft-spoken but iron-willed descendant of Indiana farmers, James went through the naval academy in the late 1860s and stayed in the navy to escape rural life, see the world, and experience adventure. For thirty years he’d sailed the world and trained for a war which never came. A member of the Naval Institute since it started in `74, graduate of the Naval War College in `88, former commanding officer of a gunboat on China Station in `93, observer at the Sino-Japanese War in `95, fluent in Spanish and well-versed in the Caribbean, he was exactly the kind of intelligent, decisive officer who would be needed when the horrors of modern warfare were eventually unleashed on our navy.

  But James was thinking of leaving the navy, fed up with the sycophantic toadying at headquarters, the fiefdoms and petty personalities of the senior officers, the bureaucratic inertia of the navy’s support functions, and the faked reports of readiness some ships and bureaus presented so their officers could look good. He, and I, and several other officers in the navy, knew we weren’t ready for a war with a European power, even a weaker one like Spain. And the army was in far worse condition than the navy. The jingoists, press moguls, and politicians who called for war had no clue what they were talking about, as ignorant as they were arrogant.

  Putting a pile of reports and mail on my desk, Southby said, “We got in last night just in time, sir. According to the duty officer in the yard this morning, they’re getting reports coming from up and down the coast of ships in distress. Had a barge sink in the Hudson. Hell of a trip up the East River, wasn’t it? You impressed all hands with that maneuver. Talk of the ship this morning. Spinning her from the stern in a confined area with a foul wind and tide, on a lee shore. I’ve never seen anything like it done. Didn’t even know it could be done!”

  I hadn’t known it could be done either. “We were damned lucky. Now, let’s go over the paperwork this morning. What’s the schedule for us from the yard?”

  The ensuing discussion centered on the long list of overhaul and refit from the yard workers. Southby had it all well in hand and I had only to periodically provide official approval, but my mind wasn’t in it. I kept thinking about what he’d said earlier about the night before.

  Our voyage from Martinique ended when we finally moored at Brooklyn Navy Yard at midnight, after a harrowing transit up through the Narrows dodging fishing smacks in a nasty nor’easter. Entering the East River, a deluge of rain from a squall line hit us. But the very worst part of the entire two thousand-mile voyage came in the last mile before our destination.

  A chill went through me as I remembered how close I’d come to killing hundreds of my men, and probably a fair number of civilians, only five and a half hours earlier.

  4

  The Last Mile

  U.S.S. Newark

  East River, New York

  11:30 p.m., Sunday

  28 February 1897

  It happened right after we steamed northbound at five knots under the Brooklyn Bridge. A small ferry suddenly dashed out of the gloom from the Catherine Street dock in Manhattan, bound right across our course for the Main Street dock in Brooklyn. I immediately backed both engines full emergency astern, something which always incurs the barely submerged wrath of the senior engineering officer since he knows he’ll need to repair the inevitable gear damage. As she began to slow and go astern, I ordered Newark into a turn to port.

  It worked. We missed the small craft’s stern by less than ten feet, our deck crew giving the ferry passengers a spontaneous education in nautical terminology not found in any book. Reducing the engines to slow astern, I then stopped them and glanced at the ferry as she plowed across the river. The stupid ferry captain was blissfully waving at me from his wheelhouse. As angry as I was at the idiot, there was no time to vent my indignation. Our emergency maneuver had saved the ferry, but put us in grave peril.

  The ebb was flowing rapidly, increased by the north wind funneling down the river, and Newark had ended up broadside to current and wind, with the Brooklyn Bridge a scant five hundred feet to leeward. All eyes in the wheelhouse locked onto mine as the bow continued to swing west, then southwest, with the ship inexorably sliding sideways toward the massive bridge piers on the Manhattan side. It was too late to turn back to the starboard. We were about to hit the docks and there was no room.

  I saw only one option in the three seconds I had to make a decision.

  Keeping my voice steady, I risked the command: “Full right rudder. Full astern on port engine. Half ahead starboard engine. Sound the collision alarm.”

  By rote instinct, the officer of the watch dispassionately echoed my orders and the petty officers acknowledged carrying them out. Luckily, the lee helmsman was a quick thinker and signaled the engine room on the annunciator the instant I gave the order. Several excruciatingly long seconds passed before the shafts were engaged and the propellers bit the water.

  The bow spun around fast, and quickly pointed directly at the bridge pier, suddenly only fifty feet away. The steam horn blared out the seven long blasts of the collision signal, echoing off the surrounding buildings and the bridge’s deck high above. A crowd of dockworkers from the Manhattan side railroad ferry docks rushed to line the shore and watch the disaster.

  “Midship the rudder. Emergency full astern both engines.”

  The officers and men gripping the rails, tables, and bulkheads around me were no longer watching my face. They were looking up at the bridge pier looming above our bow. It was a frightening, mesmerizing sight. The bridge pier, which held up the suspension towers and bridge itself, had a low seawall jutting out around it. We would hit that first, ripping our hull open, then ride up and smash into the giant pier, possibly bringing down the entire bridge. Without orders, everyone instinctively knelt down and braced for the impact. Only the quartermaster at the wheel, myself, and Commander Southby remained standing.

  Newark’s decks and bulkheads rumbled and shook from the immense strain on the shafts and propellers as they dug into the water. Pencils and dividers rattled off the chart table. It felt like Newark was going to shake apart. We were stern-first into the wind and current by then, with seas washing over the transom.

  It took forever for the full 8,900 horsepower of her engines to take hold, but at last she checked her forward motion toward the seawall and bridge. The bow was so close I couldn’t see the seawall below it, and the bridge pier looked as if the bow lookout could reach out and touch the damned thing. But the old girl did it.

  Then, ever so slowly, as if she were teasing us, Newark began to move astern against wind and tide. When I reduced the shaft revolutions to half speed she still made sternway, and we continued in this undignified fashion all the way up the river past the navy yard to Corlear’s Hook on the Manhattan side, where the East River bends.

  Only then, when I had the relatively larger area of Wallabout Bay to leeward, did I dare to turn the ship around and steam ahead into the docks at the yard. The entire agonizing time I waited for an engine or gear failure, with the anchor detail standing by to let the main hook go, but Newark, and her engineers, did their work well.

  At midnight we moored with our bow fifty feet behind the ancient supply and barracks ship Vermont, on the west wall of the Cob Dock, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As soon as the lines were doubled, everyone’s nerves visibly calmed. When all was secure, I descended to the engine room and had the entire watch assemble to witness my compliments to the chief engineering officer on the outstanding work of his men. To say my accolade to them was profoundly heartfelt, is an understatement. They were the heroes of the ship.

  Thirty minutes later, I lay completely fatigued in my bunk, but keyed up and drenched in sweat despite the bitter cold. Only the dreamy image of my dear wife Maria, and the knowledge I would soon be with her on a two-month leave after a fourteen-month absence, eased me into blessed oblivion.

  Maria and I,
both previously widowed, had been married only forty-three months by then. Our marriage was unusual in the hidebound aristocracy of the navy’s officer corps, for Maria was Spanish and Catholic. This, of course, made for some wildly creative gossip during the years of increasing tension with Spain over Cuba. It didn’t bother me a bit. I had never been part of the naval social strata, not having graduated from the academy and never having been accepted as an equal. Let the old fools gossip. Maria was beautiful and smart and loving. And all mine.

  I had been at sea for a total of thirty-two months since our wedding, but my time in Newark was ending soon. I knew my next assignment would be duty at a shore station somewhere, for regulations required it. A shore job would allow us to be together at last. What I didn’t know was where and what my assignment would be. Maybe it would be some soft billet commanding a naval station in a warm clime, or heading an advisory board. I’d more than earned one of the navy’s easy jobs for a couple of years. I fell asleep among fantasies of enjoying a comfortable life at some pleasant place, living well in spite of all we’d been through.

  5

  The Pleasure of Your Company

  U.S.S. Newark

  Brooklyn Navy Yard

  Monday morning

  1 March 1897

  Southby and I completed our administrative business by the time “Colors” was sounded at eight bells for the hoisting of the national ensign at the stern staff. Once he departed for other duties, I made my daily morning tour of the ship. This time it included the Goat Locker, where I found Foghorn telling the others a sea story. Judging by their expressions, it was of dubious veracity. He stopped in mid-sentence when he saw me in the passageway looking in. They all rose to attention.

  “Beautiful morning, isn’t it, Gunner?”

  “Aye, sir. A fine navy day!” he said with a grin.