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It was 7:20 A.M. when Rhind and Wheeler stepped from the deck of Keokuk. As soon as the tug cast off, the ironclad began her death spasms. First she shifted bow-down, as water borne by the wind entered through her hawse pipe. Then the ironclad shuddered as the immense weight of the water settled in the lower hold and sprang the already battered planking. The second the water filled the hold, Keokuk burped a cloud of coal dust like the last gasp of a diseased smoker.
Then she settled to the seafloor in fifteen feet of water.
Her battered smokestack was partially visible. Keokuk had lived but six weeks.
Philo T. Hackett spit tobacco juice at a nearby anthill and watched the tiny insects struggle to free themselves from the sticky mess. At fourteen, he was too young to be chewing, but he was also too young to be hiding on Morris Island under a makeshift covering of brush and limbs. Hackett had been hiding since yesterday evening. First, he had watched the battle, then he had observed the Union ironclad struggle to stay afloat before dying.
Hackett’s father was stationed on Fort Sumter, and his mother was home, worried sick about her missing son. Crawling from his hiding place, Hackett made his way to his rowboat hidden on the lee side of the island.
Then he quietly rowed across the water to report to General Beauregard.
“I WANT THOSE guns,” Beauregard said.
Adolphus La Coste nodded.
La Coste was a civil engineer. However, in a war where all were called, he was not one to shirk responsibility. He stared at the aging lightship at the dock in Charleston.
“I think we can do it, sir,” La Coste said, “but it is not without peril. We will be operating right under the nose of the Yankees.”
“How long will it take, Adolphus?” Beauregard asked.
“With the right help, a couple of weeks,” La Coste answered.
“Whatever you need,” Beauregard said, walking away. “I want those guns.”
Outfitting the lightship with tackle and hoist required a week. True to his word, Beauregard had given La Coste all he needed. The tackle was new, the ropes unused. A half-dozen divers sat on the deck amid a pile of freshly oiled saws, pry bars, and levers. Now it was time to do the impossible.
A driving rain was making visibility nonexistent.
Diver Angus Smith climbed up a Jacob’s ladder onto the deck of the lightship. His leather gloves were in tatters and his hands cut from his labors. Smith barely felt the pain, because the cold from being immersed in the chilled water had permeated his very being. For seven nights now, Smith and the other divers had rowed out on small boats to labor a fathom below the water. To avoid being seen, they used no lights. To avoid being heard, they were careful not to bang tools against the metal. Before first light, the divers retreated; each evening they came anew. Four days into the operation, they reported to La Coste that the guns were free from their mounts and that openings in the turrets had been hewn. Tonight was the first time the modified lightship had visited the site.
“We’re doing this all by feel, sir,” Smith said. “It’s as black as night down there, but I think we have everything attached as ordered.”
La Coste nodded, then stepped into the pilothouse near a single burning candle and stared at his pocket watch. It was nearly 4 A.M. Attaching the lines had taken longer than expected. Soon it would be light, and the minute the Yankees saw the lightship on station above Keokuk, they were sure to come. He stepped back out of the pilothouse.
“Are all your divers out of the water, Smith?” La Coste asked.
Smith did a quick count of the men on deck. Four were sleeping, still in their diving gear; one other had disrobed and stood in his long johns, peeing over the railing on the lee side.
“They’re all accounted for, sir,” Smith said laconically.
“Power to the turnstile,” La Coste ordered.
Four Confederate sailors began walking in a circle. Their hands were gripping the oak arms of the turnstile. Slowly the thick lines were tightened until the 15,700-pound weight of the first gun was being supported only by cable and rope and chain.
The ca
La Coste stared at the wooden derrick on the bow. The wood creaked in protest as the joints rubbed, but it held fast. “Grease the fair ends,” he whispered to a sailor, who slathered animal fat on the lines. Then he staggered as the deck of the lightship settled from the immense weight being transferred. Almost imperceptibly, the ca
Wiping water from his beard, La Coste peered into the depths of Keokuk’s grave.
And then he saw it. The merest edge of the outer tube of the ca
“Harder, boys,” he said a little too loudly.
The ca
“Mr. La Coste,” a deckhand whispered, “the tackle’s together. We can’t go farther.”
Inches from salvation and miles from success. And the sky was becoming lighter.
“Damn,” La Coste said. Soon they would be visible. Once they were spotted, this operation would be finished for good. “We need to move all the weight we can to the stern. That should raise the bow enough to give us the small space we need.”
A little more — but not enough. The dangling gun muzzle clung stubbornly to the wreck. La Coste stared east — it was growing lighter. A few more minutes and he would need to abort the mission to escape detection. A span thi
Then the sea came to the rescue.
Perhaps there was a storm a hundred miles offshore. Maybe somewhere the earth had trembled. Whatever the case, a large wave came from nowhere. It rolled across the placid surface of the water like a bedsheet being straightened.
Into the trough in advance of the wave, the lightship dropped. Then, all at once, the hull of the ship rose, and the gun came free and hung on the cable.
“Can you steer with the gun weight off your bow?” La Coste asked the captain.
“I can sure as hell try,” the captain said.
Three nights later, they came back and raised the second gun. It was not until much later that the Union found out that Keokuk had been salvaged.
A few months after the debacle off Fort Sumter, Captain Rodgers was sleeping in his cabin on Weehawken. He had been reassigned farther south, and the ironclad was riding at anchor in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia. Nehant, a second Union monitor, lay a league away. It was hot, four degrees over eighty, and the air was still. Wispy Spanish moss hung from the trees nearby, and the croak of thousands of frogs filled the air. The Union ships were waiting to intercept the newest Confederate ram.
The pilot of the Confederate ironclad Atlanta was groping his way down the Sava
Atop Atlanta’s casement, ordinary seaman Jesse Merrill was standing watch. Even in the darkness, he could see the difference in the river astern. Atlanta was dragging her keel and churning up the river mud. The ship was dragging bottom.
Peering forward, Merrill strained to see through the mist on the river. He thought he caught the outline of another ship, but just as he trained his eyes on the spot, Atlanta ran aground and he was pitched forward.