"She's almost within range," announced Alden.
"No need to waste good shot, Mr. Alden. Instruct your gun crews to wait and make every shot count."
Aboard the Texas, Tombs instructed his Chief Pilot, who stood gamely at the helm ignoring the blood that dripped from his left temple. "Hunt, skin the line of wood frigates as close as you dare, so that the ironclads will hesitate to fire for fear of striking their own ships."
The first ship in the two lines was the Brooklyn. Tombs waited until he was within easy range before he gave the order to fire. The Texas' 100-pound Blakely in the bow opened the engagement as it threw a fused shell that screamed across the water and struck the Union warship, shattering the forward rail and bursting against a huge Parrott rifled gun, killing every man within a radius of 10 feet.
The single-turreted monitor Saugus opened up with her twin 15-inch Dahlgrens while the Texas was bearing down. Both solid shot struck short and skipped across the water like stones, sending aloft huge cascades of spray. Then the other monitors, the Chickasaw, recently returned from Mobil Bay where she helped pound the mighty Confederate ironclad Tennessee into submission, the Manhattan, the Saugus, and the Nahant all swung their turrets, dropped their port shutters, and opened up with a tremendous wave of fire that found and battered the Texas' casemate. The rest of the fleet joined in and boiled the water around the speeding warship into a seething caldron.
Tombs shouted through the roof hatch to Craven. "We can't hurt the monitors! Answer their fire with the starboard broadside gun only. Rotate the bow and stern pivot guns to fire against the frigates!"
Craven carried out his commander's orders and within seconds the Texas replied, sending shells exploding through the oak hull of the Brooklyn. One shell burst in the engine room, killing eight men and wounding a dozen others. Another swept away a crew feverishly depressing the barrel of a 32-pounder smoothbore. And yet a third burst on the crowded deck, creating more blood and havoc.
Every gun of the Texas was busily engaged in destruction. The rebel gunners loaded and fired with deadly precision. They hardly had to waste precious seconds aiming. They couldn't miss. Yankee ships seemed to fill up all vision beyond the gun-ports.
The air of Hampton Roads was filled with the thunder of discharged round shot, exploding shells, conical solid bolts, grape and canister, and even musket balls potshotted by Federal marines perched aloft in the yards. Dense smoke quickly shrouded the Texas, making it difficult for the Union gunners to get a good sight. They fired at the muzzle flashes and heard the ring as their shot struck Confederate armor and ricocheted out of the smoke.
It struck Tombs that he had sailed into an erupting volcano.
The Texas had now passed the Brooklyn and gave it a parting shot from the stern pivot that passed so close to Admiral Porter that its air suction caused him to temporarily lose his breath. He was fighting mad at the rebel ironclad's ease of deflecting the broadside the Brooklyn threw at her.
"Signal the fleet to encircle and ram her!" he ordered Captain Alden.
Alden complied, but he knew it was a long shot. Every officer was stunned by the ironclad's incredible speed. "She's going awfully fast for one of our ships to hit her squarely," he said bleakly.
"I want that damned rebel sunk!" snarled Porter.
"If by a miracle she gets past us, she'll never escape the forts and the New Ironsides, " Alden soothed his superior.
As if to punctuate his statement, the monitors opened up as the Texas passed free of the Brooklyn and broke into the open ahead of the next frigate in line, the Colorado.
The Texas was being swept by a screaming bedlam of death. The Union gunners were becoming more accurate. A pair of heavy solid shot struck just aft of the starboard gun with a tremendous blow. Smoke burst inside the casemate as 38 inches of iron, wood, and cotton were crushed 4 feet inward. Another shot pounded a massive crater below the smokestack, followed by a shell that struck in exactly the same place, breaching the already damaged armor and exploding inside the gun deck with terrible effect, killing six and wounding eleven men and setting the shredded cotton and shredded wood on fire.
"Hells bells!" Craven roared, finding himself standing alone amid a pile of bodies, his hair singed, clothes torn, and his left arm broken. "Grab that hose from the engine room and put out this damned fire"
Chief Engineer O'Hare stuck his head up through the engine room hatch. His face was black from coal dust and. streaked with sweat. "How bad is it?" he asked in a surprisingly calm voice.
"You don't want to know," Craven yelled at him. "Just keep the engines turning,"
"Not easy. My men are dropping from the heat. It's hotter than hell down here."
"Consider it good practice for when we all get there," Craven snapped back.
Then another great fist of a shell smacked the casemate with a huge, deafening explosion that shook the Texas to her keel. It was not one explosion but two, so simultaneous as to be indistinguishable. The forward port corner of the casemate was chopped open as if by a giant meat cleaver. Massive chunks of iron and wood were twisted and splintered in a blast that cut down the crew of the forward Blakely gun.
Another shell sheared its way through the armor and exploded in the ship's hospital, killing the surgeon and half the wounded waiting to be tended. The gun deck now looked like a slaughterhouse. The once immaculate deck was blackened from powder and crimson with blood.
The Texas was hurting. As she raced across the killing ground she was being pounded into scrap. Her boats had been carried away along with both masts and her smokestack riddled. The, entire casemate, fore and aft, was a grotesque shamble of twisted and jagged iron. Three of her steam pipes had been cut through, and her speed had dropped by a third.
But she was far from disabled. The engines were still throbbing away and three guns yet hammered havoc among the Union fleet. Her next broadside whipped through the wooden sides of the old side-wheel steam frigate Powhatan and exploded one of her boilers, devastating the engine room and causing the greatest loss of life on any Union ship this day. Tombs had also suffered grievous wounds. A piece of shrapnel had lodged in one thigh and a bullet had gouged a crease in his left shoulder. Still, he insanely crouched exposed behind the pilothouse, shouting directions to Chief Pilot Hunt. They were a
lmost through the holocaust now.
He gazed ahead at the New Ironsides, lying across the channel, her formidable broadside loaded and trained on the rapidly approaching Texas. He studied the guns of Fortress Monroe and Fort Wool, run out and sighted, and he knew with sinking heart that they could never make it through. The Texas could not take any more. Another punishing nightmare and his ship would be reduced to a helpless, stricken hulk unable to prevent its total destruction by the pursuing Yankee monitors.
And the crew, he thought, men no longer caring about living, men oblivious to everything but loading and firing their guns and keeping steam in the engines. The ones still living had gone beyond themselves, ignoring the dead and doing their duty.
All gunfire had ceased now, replaced by an eerie silence. Tombs trained his glass on the upperworks of the New Ironsides. He spotted what looked like her commander leaning over an armored railing, staring back through a glass at him.