Chapter One
In the winter of 1862 I was an idler; assigned to the War Department office at 88 Whitehall Street in the city of New-York after my ship, USS Tisdale, burned when the Rebels took Norfolk.
Time weighed heavily on me, for while my brother officers were gaining rank and experiencing sea-time in maintaining the blockade and chasing the raiders, I was filing papers in an obscure office. I feared that my career would be stalled, if not derailed entirely, the goal of command at sea forever placed beyond my reach.
So it was that a messenger found me laboring at my desk, checking one long bureaucratic list against another, an envelope from the Navy Department in his hand with my name on the front. I fairly tore the envelope from his hand and opened it.
What it contained was indeed the answer to my nightly prayer. I was detached immediately from my current assignment to travel by fastest available means to the Naval Arsenal at Watervliet, to inspect and take possession of a dozen ten-inch Rodman guns, thence to accompany them to the place where USS Nicodemus might lie, there to take my position as head of her gunnery department. Nicodemus was new construction; I would be a plank owner. Nicodemus, I was informed, was even then fitting out in preparation of her sea trials.
The remainder of the morning I spent in checking out of my temporary billet, drawing my health and pay records, and turning over my responsibilities to a hapless civilian clerk.
I had been staying at a hotel under per diem. I lost no time in packing, and the afternoon saw me at the Hudson River Railroad station in my dress blue uniform, purchasing a ticket to Albany. Spring approached; dusk fell later each day, but it was still full dark before a carriage deposited me at the gates of the arsenal.
A Marine guard directed me to the duty officer, who saw to my placement in the Bachelor Officer Quarters. There I said my prayers and went to sleep, wondering what kind of craft Nicodemus might be. I had not heard of her before, though in an eddying backwater such as my office at Whitehall Street that would not be a surprise. Still, a sloop of war mounting a broadside of six Rodmans and, I supposed, lesser pieces besides, would be impressive enough. I was well satisfied with my prospects.
Morning found me in the Arsenal commander's office, presenting my compliments and my orders. The commander, a pleasant enough fellow named Winchell who had preceded me by two years at the Academy, greeted me and offered to accompany me himself on my inspection tour of the guns. I felt it was hardly my place to refuse, and I was just as glad to talk again with a sailor; my previous tour had placed my among civilians and invalided Army men, landsmen all.
As it turned out, he wanted to do more than talk of mutual acquaintances while showing off his command to an outsider. He wanted to pump me for information, information that I sadly lacked, and which baffled me as well.
"You see, Johnny," he said as we entered the sheds facing the Hudson where the guns stood, "they're cast to spec, though why the devil the specs were written that way eludes me."
The guns stood in a burnished rank, gleaming the yellow-gold of brass.
"Brass cannon," I said.
"Yes, brass, as ordered," Winchell said, and here he gestured to a chief petty officer standing by, the crossed cannon of the gunners mate on his right sleeve. "And virgin brass too; never before cast into any other shape."
The chief strode over and presented his leader with a sheaf of paper, which he reviewed, then handed to me. It was the casting history of each of the Rodmans, from the first smelting of the copper and zinc to the present.
I checked over the cannon carefully. I was no stranger to ordnance; the lives of myself and my shipmates, not to mention the defeat of our enemies, were dependent on the flawless construction and operation of the cannon. I requested an inspection mirror and a light, and examined every inch of the barrels, inside and out. They did in fact seem flawless.
I turned to Winchell at length. "You can be proud of your work," I said.
"Do you wish to examine the ammunition as well?" he inquired.
"To the same specifications?" said I.
"The same, virgin brass."
"I can't believe it will be necessary to handle each ball," I said, which brought a smile to his lips. Winchell gave orders that the cannon were to be crated and loaded on a barge for transport. He then invited me to join him for a belated lunch. I accepted with pleasure.
Over cigars at the officers' club, I made bold to breach the question directly.
"Where is it that these guns that I just signed for are to be shipped?"
"To Brooklyn, for the Navy Yard. So say the lading documents. They are being loaded onto a barge even now. A steam tug will tow them. Beyond that, I know nothing."
Across the river in Manhattan I had not heard of a ship under construction that required brass cannon. I asked Winchell directly if he had ever heard of such a vessel.
"No, indeed not. But I can scarcely hear of everything. Perhaps she's been laid in Boston."
"Perhaps."
He kindly walked me to the barge at quayside where my dozen Rodmans, neatly crated, now lay side by side on a barge. Crates that I supposed contained brass shot filled a second barge. We shook hands, saluted, and I presented my orders to the master of the civilian tug that was to take me down the river that I had only lately ascended. The pilothouse of the tug was cramped, and the smell of the engines pervasive, but I eagerly accepted the offer to make the journey there.
A brisk wind was blowing, and the slush turning to ice, while the sun dipped toward the western hills. A young enlisted man brought my seabag from my quarters and laid it on the fantail of the tug, lashed to the rail. Towing hawsers were made fast to the barges, and with our whistles screaming out we made way down river. The sun set as we steamed along, the lighthouses of the Hudson illuminated, as we made our way to the East River of Manhattan and to the Navy Yard on its eastern shore.
We came alongside a brig, TRIUMPH lettered on her sternboard in gold leaf, where we were evidently expected, for the watch soon appeared with a lantern, a ladder dropped to our deck, and a working party swung out booms to load the cargo from the barge to the brig's hold.
I clambered up the ladder, my boat cloak swirling around me, to salute the quarterdeck and the officer of the deck.
The degree of activity surprised me, and I said as much, for I had expected the guns to be loaded at first light, no sooner, for the night was a dark and a bitter one.
"Dark and cold, you'll get used to 'em where you're going," the officer said. "We sail with the tide or miss a day, and that won't make the old man happy, not a bit."
He concluded reading my orders by the binnacle lamp, then handed them back to me and instructed the messenger of the watch to take me below and show me to the captain's quarters, then to my own.
The captain, as it turned out, was "Uncle Joe" Suffern, of whom I had heard good report. He was a seaman's seaman, and a fighting captain. Why he was assigned to such a small vessel and such an insignificant role as running coastwise cargo I could not then imagine.
"Last of the Nicodemus wardroom," he said, having offered me a seat in his cabin and a glass of port. "I envy you. The outfitting should be done soon. I imagine sea trials shortly."
"Nicodemus, sir?"
"You are not aware? You and your guns are being transshipped to the Naval Experimental Shipyard, Thule."
"I confess that I've never heard of that shipyard, sir."
"Neither had I, until I was assigned to run cargo there. Not to breathe a word about the place to anyone, not even to a sweetheart or a wife, those are our instructions."
"What can you tell me about Nicodemus?" I asked.
"Nothing," he replied, "for I have not seen her myself, though I have been involved in her construction for over a year now."
Our conversation was interrupted by a messenger who announced the loading complete and the cargo made fast for sea. Captain Suffern excused himself, directed the boy to show me to my cabin, and took to the deck. I followed the messenger toward the waist, where I was to be placed in a cabin shared with another lieutenant. My seabag was already there, lying on the deck beside a stanchion.
I traded my boat cloak for a short jacket of thick wool and ascended the ladder to the main deck. The boatswain piped single up all lines, and the crew, well drilled, hurried silently to obey.
"Cast off," came a voice from the quarterdeck, and the line-handling party on the pier dropped the mooring lines from the bollards. The same tug that had carried the guns from Watervliet pulled us stern first into the stream, then cast off.
We hoisted sail, and beneath topgallants and the glittering stars passed beneath the Battery. I could see the War Department building, one window on the top floor illuminated by the lantern of a late worker. I imagined that it might be my relief burning the midnight oil and raised my hat to him as we passed.
As we entered the Narrows the word was passed to make full sail, and the little brig fairly bounded forward under a fresh breeze. By sunrise we were out of sight of land, the ship's head east by north, shaping a course for who knew where.
#
Although I was not slightly obligated to do so, I had myself placed on the watch bill, and stood my watches on the quarterdeck observing the sea, listening to the crack of canvas, hearing the groans of the cordage and tasting the salt spray on my lips.
The high North Atlantic is no easy sea, nor was this passage completely peaceful. For twenty-four hours we battled mountainous seas under storm-jib alone, while Uncle Joe stood on the quarterdeck as if he were rooted there, using all his skill to see us through.
Still, a week and a day after our departure from New York, light came without a sun, and we sailed through chilling mist so thick that it might be cotton wool; so thick that the foremast was not visible from the wheel, the sails dropping and the only sound the bell struck by the quartermaster as he turned the glass each half hour.
"We're close now," Uncle Joe said, and instructed the Boatswain to commence sounding. Thus we proceeded, making bare steerageway, for most of the day, the fog never lifting, but occasional bits of ice floating by on the sullen swell.
Toward the end of the forenoon watch, a voice from out of the mist cried "Ship ahoy!" and the lookout sang back, "United States Brig Triumph!"
With a plash of oars a cutter came alongside and passed us a line, and within an hour, as dark was falling, I found myself standing on a wooden pier attached to a stony shore. Through the mist nothing else could be seen save a warehouse, a heap of coal, and, incredibly, an ornate railway station. A single track ran beside it, and a locomotive attached to a passenger car and ten flatcars stood waiting.
I entered the station in search of both warmth and enlightenment. Once within, I was gratified to find a jolly pot-bellied stove nearly red from the fire that burned inside it, and a Navy petty officer sitting at a desk. I saw that his hat bore the ribbon "Nicodemus", so I strode up to him and enquired where the ship of that name might be found, that I might present my orders.
"A bit of a trip yet, sir," he replied. "First, I must ask if you are carrying any gold or silver or any items made of iron."
"Why, yes, all three," I said.
"Before you can board the train for the yards," the man said, "I must ask you to leave them here. For your silver and gold money I will exchange greenbacks. For watches and rings you will be given a receipt. As well as your sword, any pistols, and so on."
This was most unusual, but in the course of my career the Navy had asked many unusual things of me. The man was sober and serious in aspect, so I complied.
"I suppose the nails in my boots will pass muster?" I said with a smile.
"No, sir. I must ask you to leave them behind as well. We've felt boots, sir, and warmer they are than standard issue." He reached beneath his desk and pulled out a pair. "Here, sir, let me make your receipt, and I'll put all your goods in the lockroom with the rest."
I passed through the other door of the station to the platform, and onto the passenger car. The words "Department of the Navy, Thule Shipyards," were painted along its side. I could see my brass cannon being loaded onto the flatcars. At last I was to find out what manner of vessel I had been assigned to, and whence the mystery. I noted that the locomotive also was made of brass, as were the rails on which it stood.
Without my watch I could no longer tell the elapsed time, but it was not much longer ere the locomotive gave a lurch and we were underway.
I was the only officer in the railway car. Some half-dozen other men rode with me, bluejackets wearing the uniform of Nicodemus and the sullen expressions of men returning from liberty. If that railway station was the only place they had to go for entertainment, small wonder that they looked dour. I did not speak to them, nor they to each other, and truth to say I dozed. I suppose the trip lasted some hours.
Nights are long in the far northern latitudes, and it was still dark when a whistle from the locomotive and a slowing of the train announced that we were nearing our destination.
With a final chuff of steam and squeal of brakes we came to a halt. I stood, shouldering my bag, and stepped from the car. The air was thick with mist, and curiously lighted. A pervasive glare surrounded the station, a twin to the one where I had embarked. I soon saw that it came from gas lamps set on poles, one every twenty feet or so.
I walked back along the platform to inspect my cargo. The crates were covered by a rime of ice perhaps an inch and a half thick. Even as I watched, a working party appeared, ghostlike in the fog, with wagons and teams of horses, their breaths steaming into the mist. They began working to shift the crates. The utter rapidity of all the evolutions I had witnessed so far, combined with the silence in which they labored, impressed me.
The liberty party had by this time debarked the train as well to shuffle through the station. I turned to follow them. I had no desire to get lost in the cold and fog on an unfamiliar base.
Wherever they went, they went quickly, without the roistering that is almost universal at fleet landing. What I found on the other side of the station was a long wall, half again as tall as a man, broken by a gate whose lintel bore the words: THULE EXPERIMENTAL SHIPYARD, then, in smaller letters below, Authorized Personnel Only.
How likely is it, I asked myself, that unauthorized people will find themselves standing here? Indeed, it seemed to me that I stood at the edge of the world.
For all the ferocity of the sign, no guard stood at the gate for me to present my orders to. Nor was there a sign of the group of sailors I had been following. The mist had swallowed them. The light was brighter here, though, and ahead of me I thought I could make out a tapping sound, though what could be producing it I could not tell.
Since my eyes told me nothing, I decided to follow my ears. The ground was all of clean snow, but trampled flat in a welter of footprints leading in every direction.
The fog was thick, as I mentioned. I could scarcely see the poles holding the lights before bumping into one. But the tapping sound ahead of me grew louder, so I persevered. My cheeks were stinging with the cold, and my lungs hurt with the effort of breathing.
Before long I perceived that I was no longer walking on trampled snow but on ice, perfectly smooth. And then I came to the source of the sound: a party of sailors, swinging picks, chipping away at the edge of the ice. Beyond then was black water, and beyond that the smooth sides of a ship. The line of sailors went out of my sight to the right and left. Among them were some with long-handled rakes. When a piece of ice was chipped free, it was swept up and away.
I turned to my right and walked behind the sailors as they engaged in their peculiar task. It seemed as though they were endlessly laboring to keep the ice away from the sides of the vessel. I walked sixty paces before the line turned, a ninety-degrees to the left, and I followed it to pass under the ship's bows, then thirty paces after another corner. A third corner took me under her stern. I was not surprised to see the name Nicodemus painted in dull gold on the sternboard. Another turn and thirty more paces brought me to where I supposed I had started, without a clue as to how to get aboard the ship. No brow, ladder, or companionway had appeared during my circuit, nor had I seen a boat in the water.
At that moment I saw a light moving on the deck above me, so I sang out, "Hello the ship!"
"Aye aye!" came the answer.
"Lieutenant John Nevis, United States Navy, reporting as ordered for duty aboard USS Nicodemus," I shouted back.
"Oh, bugger," replied the voice. "Go to the house and report to the captain in the morning."
"Bugger yourself," I called back, cold, tired, and annoyed. "I haven't a clue where this house might be."
"Hopkins, take the lieutenant in tow and stow him away, would you?" the voice called. A moment later, a young sailor stepped up beside me, saluted, and reached for my seabag.
"You'll learn your way around here quick enough, sir," he said. "But you might as well know that they don't do things here the way they do anywhere else in the fleet."
That I could well believe, though I had no desire to show over-familiarity with the enlisted by telling him so. I believe Hopkins understood my silence, for without another word he shouldered my bag and started off. I followed, from the ice to a slope, all snow covered, and thence to the porch of a pleasant house of clapboard, its shutters closed tight against the night.
"Here you are, sir," Hopkins said, saluted, then faded away into the fog. For my part I returned the salute, turned the knob, and pushed into the vestibule. The three officers inside the house quickly introduced themselves: Lieutenant Dodge, Lieutenant Vincent, and Passed Midshipman Seaton, all line officers.
"Come," said Lieutenant Dodge after I had introduced myself. "You must be half frozen and completely tired after your journey. Let me show you to your cabin here ashore."
"Gladly," I replied. "But first, tell me, what manner of place is this?"
"The God-damnedest shipyard that I've ever seen," Dodge replied. "If the Navy needed to build in a dark, cold, and cheerless place, the Charlestown or Portsmouth yards would have served the purpose quite adequately. Lovely duty here; there's a girl behind every tree."
"I did not see any trees . . . ." I began, then quieted.
Dodge shouldered my seabag, and led the way up the stairs to a corridor on the upper floor. Seaton followed with a kerosene lamp. He opened the first door on the right, and we all followed in.
The furnishings were spare, but adequate, with two narrow beds, a washstand, two desks, two chairs, and two wardrobes. A register in the floor let heat from the fire below flow up, though not much of it; the exterior wall's inner face glittered with ice.
"This bunk is mine," Dodge said, pointing to the one closest to the window, "and that press. Stow your gear where you will." He lighted a candle from the lamp, then he and Seaton departed, pulling the door to behind them.
I could see my breath in the air of the room. Nevertheless, the bed looked entirely inviting. I stood my seabag in the wardrobe, hung my clothing over the back of a chair, blew out the candle and by feel alone crawled between the cold sheets. I said my prayers while curled in a ball, only my nose sticking out, and soon fell asleep.
What seemed an instant later, a tremendous hammering fell on the door. I started upright. The window was as black as it had been when I arrived.
Before I could say a word, an enlisted man in a peacoat and gloves entered, and placed a lighted lamp on the near desk.
"Good morning sir," he said, but did not stay for reply, instead tramping out and shutting the door behind him.
I rose and dressed, wearing the same clothes I had traveled in, and with the lamp descended to the drawing room where I had encountered the other three officers the night before.
Some hours had apparently passed. The card party had been cleared away, and the three officers I had met the night before were dressed with coats and gloves of their own. My own coat was over my arm, and I donned it now, placing the lamp on the table.
Two other officers had joined the others I already knew, bringing our company to six.
"Ah, there you are," Dodge said. He had been consulting a wheelbook, which he replaced in his inner pocket as I arrived. "Off to break our fast. Join us?"
"With pleasure," I said, for my last meal had been a hasty one while still coming to land the day before.
"Come on, then."
The six of us went out of the door, down the steps, and made our way in a gaggle across the creaking snow to a long and low structure, where smoke rose from chimneys at each end and a line of windows glowed yellow.
We entered, and, Dodge in the lead, walked between tables with benches, filled with sailors all eating their morning portions. We proceeded to a spot half-way down, where a thin partition set off a single table with chairs.
One officer was already there, a sheaf of papers under his hand, ship's plans. He looked up when we all arrived, rolling them and placing them in a case leaning against the partition.
"Welcome to the mess," Dodge said. "Time for introductions all around."
These were quickly performed. The gentlemen I had not met the evening before were two more passed midshipmen, by the names of Williams and Bash, and the officer who had met us was a lieutenant named Cromwell. I was given to know that he was the engineer of Nicodemus.
"I viewed the ship briefly on my arrival," I said to Cromwell, "and did not see sidewheels or a sternwheel on her. Will you be using an Ericsson screw, or are the wheels not yet mounted?"
"Propulsion is no concern of yours," was all he replied.