Charleston (33 page)

The morning after Alex landed at Nassau, New Providence Island, she called on the Henry Adderly Company, shipping agents for the Confederacy, and explained her need to reach Charleston. Adderly's man suggested Capt. James Jolly.

“A piratical sort, but he ain't under contract to the Richmond government. Sets his own schedule. He's in port with
Osprey
. This time of day you'd likely find him at the Royal Victoria, drinking champagne.” Alex wondered about a master who imbibed at ten o'clock, but she couldn't be choosy. She thanked the man and set off for the hotel.

The war had transformed Nassau from a sleepy Royal Navy coaling port to a rough boomtown. Despite the hour sailors crowded grogshops, while others slept off binges in garbage-strewn alleys. Officers wearing Confederate gray mingled with merchants, stevedores, and a multitude of strolling whores, white, black, and shades in between. A seaman mistook Alex for one such. A whack of her cane sent him packing.

Alex was forty-eight, still slender, with erect posture she maintained at some cost. She wore a front-laced whalebone corset to relieve pain in her back. Her Washington
doctor attributed the pain to neuralgia, a popular catch-all diagnosis. No one would have guessed she suffered, seeing her march along so straight and tall.

She wore a simple pearl-gray tunic with Turkish pantaloons under a short skirt; Mrs. Bloomer's hygienic costume. An Indian-patterned shawl woven in Paisley, Scotland, draped her shoulders. A wide-brimmed straw hat shielded her face from the August sun. After winters in the North she relished the heat.

The piazza of the Royal Victoria had a splendid view of the busy piers, Hog Island, and the sheltered harbor between. The harbor was crowded. Steamers without a berth anchored in the blue water; cargo lighters darted between ships and the shore. Alex had never seen so much baled cotton. Northern papers said Confederate monetary instruments were largely worthless, but the South still traded cotton for arms, food, and medicine.

She found James Jolly easily. Resplendent in blue and braid, he sat with a spyglass at his eye. A champagne flute and a long brown cigar smoldering in a dish lay at hand. Jolly was stout, florid, perhaps ten years her junior. Alex introduced herself and soon discovered a common ground. Jolly was a Conch, a native of the island, but his forebears had emigrated from South Carolina in the exodus of loyalists after the Revolution.

The captain offered her champagne. She declined; he insisted on ordering ginger beer with a few slivers of ice floating in it. Alex explained about her mother. “You are sailing to Charleston, are you not?”

“Regrettably, ma'am, yes. Captains with good sense are making for Wilmington, but the owners insist I go to Charleston once more. Do you know the Union has mounted a huge campaign from Hilton Head, and marched north to capture the coastal islands?”

She said she'd read of it, including the sensational failed assault on Battery Wagner on Morris Island in mid-July. A Negro regiment, something new in the Union army, had stormed the battery at night and been thrown back with tremendous loss of life. The regimental commander, a young Boston Brahmin named Shaw, died with his men.
Instead of being given a proper officer's burial he was flung in a trench among his black soldiers. The idea of Negroes in uniform enraged and frightened Southerners.

Jolly said, “The Yankees want to bury Charleston. Cradle of secession and all that. They've floated torpedoes in the harbor and set picket boats and ironclads patrolling outside the bar. If a solitary signal light shows on Sullivan's Island, their batteries open up. Running in there is dangerous.”

“Nevertheless, Captain, I must go, at all hazards.”

Jolly's unwavering bonhomie annoyed her. “Understandable, ma'am, but there are other difficulties.
Osprey
is a River Clyde passenger steamer. We pulled out all the cabins so she carries more cargo. There's no place a lady could stay safely and comfortably.” He snapped his fingers at a black waiter, ordered more champagne. “Excepting my cabin.”

“How much would you want? Fifty dollars?”

“In these circumstances, ma'am, two hundred fifty. In gold.”

She had the money, but there'd be scarcely anything left if she paid his price. She decided she loathed Captain Jolly, so genial and unsubtle in his greed.

“I only have American currency,” she said.

“The bank down the road will be happy to exchange it. They do take a sizable fee.”

It was an effort to control her temper. “Done.”

“Well, then”—he saluted her with his flute—“I'll be happy to hang my hammock with the crew. Are your sympathies with the South?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not since we're doing a cash transaction. I was merely curious. We'll clear for Charleston soon as I fill the bunkers with anthracite. Doesn't smoke like soft coal, you know.”

“I don't know, Captain,” she said in a frosty tone. “I'll take my things to the ship this afternoon.”

“At your pleasure, ma'am.” Alex left her ginger beer untasted and marched down the piazza. A parrot in a cage in an open window screamed, “Grog, Goddammit, grog,” to the amusement of loungers watching the tall blond lady pass by.

 

She hired a porter to carry her steamer trunk but kept the canvas banjo case on her shoulder. They walked along by huge open-sided warehouses stacked with crates marked
COMBUSTIBLES
and
ROYAL ARMOURY ENFIELD ENGLAND
.
Osprey
was a sidewheeler with two short masts, two large paddle boxes, and two rakish stacks. She was painted a dull sea-green. Alex said to the porter, “Please take the trunk to the captain's cabin. I'll be aboard shortly.”

She'd spied some large hogsheads that looked familiar. She'd seen them off-loaded from the ship that carried her from Philadelphia. The hogsheads bore new stenciling.
PRODUCT OF BERMUDA
. The Philadelphia ship hadn't called at Bermuda.

She examined a lading tag.
CONSIGNED TO PALMETTO TRADERS CHARLESTON
. Illegal cargo bought in the North? She shook her head. There was no end to the contemptible profiteering on both sides.

 

Osprey
's manifest listed the neutral port of Havana as the destination for its goods. The young Bahamian supercargo told her it was a subterfuge blockade runners used in case of capture. Alex shared Jolly's small cabin with two padlocked strongboxes, the captain's personal cargo. He freely named the contents—quinine in one, morphine in the other. “Either will sell for a hundred dollars an ounce, if not more.”

They sailed on the dawn tide, running northwest through the Bahamian archipelago, deserted islands of sand and scrub. Ship's rations consisted of sea biscuit and salt pork by day, and for supper a watery fish chowder, soggy macaroni, and corn dodgers, little cakes the crew slathered with a fiery ketchup. At twilight all hands received a ration of gin and water. Jolly promised a champagne-and-oyster supper if they reached Charleston without incident.

Sanitary facilities were primitive. Alex was allowed ten minutes alone in the reeking head in the morning, another ten minutes at night. As for her daily bath, it was out of the question. She passed the time reading
Silas Marner
and a
recent issue of
Harper's Monthly
containing a sympathetic article about her brother's friend James Petigru, dead this past March.
Died of heart trouble and sorrow,
one of Ham's letters said. Ham's faith in the unpopular Unionist beliefs he and Petigru shared had never wavered.

She had to draw her knees up to sleep in the bunk, which only confirmed her long-held opinion that she was too tall for most everything in the world.

 

In the sunlit waters of the Gulf Stream, Jolly sent a lookout to the foremast crosstrees. The lookout earned a dollar for every sail sighted, but if someone on deck saw it first, it cost the lookout five. Twice they spied a ship of the Union's Gulf squadron out of Key West. Jolly immediately changed course, his escape helped by
Osprey
's dull paint and low profile.

The sun flashing off the blue-green sea bathed Alex in delicious warmth. Whatever perils and hardships waited in Charleston, there was also warm weather. Her neuralgia and her injured leg troubled her less. In a burst of confidence she threw her cane over the side and watched it float away.

She'd taken off the coarse netting that held her chignon, let her hair out like a gray-streaked banner. Crewmen watched, puzzled. Alex laughed, leaning on the rail and feeling an unjustified giddiness. She couldn't help it. She was going home.

 

The run to Charleston took three days, covering more than 480 miles because of Jolly's zigzag course. A knock roused Alex late on the third night. She held her muslin gown against her breasts and opened the door a crack. It was the supercargo, with a lantern.

“Beg pardon, ma'am. Captain asked that I wake you. We'll be making the run within the hour.”

A thrill ran through her. “How are conditions?”

“Tide will be right but the moon's up and the clouds are clearing. Looks like some rain building in the north. We'll
be in an exposed position for several minutes. Best to secure yourself in here.”

“I prefer to watch from the deck.”

“It wouldn't be safe.”

“I insist. Considering what I paid, I deserve a good show.”

“Then please stay out of the way, and be quiet. Captain flogs any man who so much as lets a far—makes a noise.”

“Thank you. I'll get dressed.”

 

On deck the engine-room hatches were covered, the binnacle hooded. Speeding clouds glowed with an inner light from the hidden moon. The night air was heavy with the familiar damp of the low-lying coast, the faint tang of decay. Ahead, ship's lanterns lit the horizon. The light clusters were widely spaced. The blockade squadron was waiting for them.

Alex went forward between crates lashed down to deck cleats. It was still dark, although daybreak was near; a paleness marked the horizon astern. The clouds cleared long enough for moonlight to reveal the lookout in the crosstrees above her. Five minutes later the moon vanished behind a rampart of rumbling storm clouds.

Jolly issued a muffled order at the helm. The engines slowed. Lightning glittered in the clouds, thunder came and, almost immediately, rain. Alex put her Paisley shawl over her head.
Osprey
plowed through the wind-roughened sea toward a gap between the lighted ships. In the distance she glimpsed scattered lights in the city. Her stomach hurt.

Another bolt of lightning lit up a three-masted steamer lying about a thousand yards off the port bow. The lightning shimmered on her iron-plated hull. A smaller vessel shot from behind the steamer and turned seaward to intercept
Osprey
. “Monitor closing fast,” the lookout called above the hiss of rain.

A trail of sparks rose from the steamer. Suddenly an umbrella of white light opened, turning the raindrops silver. “That's
New Ironsides,
” someone yelled. There was no longer a need for stealth, only speed.

A red eye blinked on the steamer, followed by a roar.
Bells rang;
Osprey
veered to starboard. Alex clutched the mast as a shell streaked across the bow and blew a geyser from the sea. A second rocket went up, illuminating the monitor bearing down on them. Forward of its turret a Union seaman readied the bow gun. Someone hailed them through a trumpet. “This is the Union monitor
Catskill
. Heave to or we'll sink you.”

Jolly's response was to shout, “All ahead full.”

A sudden grinding and scraping of the keel tilted the deck to port. Sand dunes and sea oats rose from the dark in the next lightning flash, alarmingly near the starboard side.
Osprey
was running close to Sullivan's Island. There was shouting and frantic cursing at the helm, then a sudden jolt;
Osprey
ran aground on a sandbar.

The engine driving her starboard paddle whined. The vessel shuddered. Just as the monitor's bow gun fired, she leapt free. The shell narrowly missed the pilot house and exploded onshore. Alex silently congratulated Jolly, as though she belonged to his crew. At that moment
New Ironsides
fired again.

The cannonball clipped the foremast. The upper third toppled down on the port side. Alex flung herself toward the starboard scuppers. The lookout's body plummeted, striking a crate, bouncing off, and landing on the deck with a sickening pulpy sound.

The broken mast had speared one of the hogsheads she'd examined in Nassau. Brine gushed out. A glistening slab of salt pork slid onto the deck.

The rain squall swept out to sea. Dawn light was breaking on the coastline and Charleston Harbor. Soaked and bedraggled, Alex peered at Fort Sumter off the port bow. Two rounds from the fort fell well astern as Captain Jolly screamed down the engine-room tube for more speed.