Assassin's Honor (9781561648207) (27 page)

“Aye, sir. Bosun Rork reports we're still darkened. No lights showing and no funnel sparks visible.”

“Very well. Let's get this done.”

I moved to the area forward of the chart table, near the starboard bridge door, where I could be heard by everyone and also see outside.

“This is the captain. I have the deck. Mr. Lambert, take in all sail, slow all engines to dead slow ahead, eliminate any funnel sparks, and quiet the ship.”

Lambert repeated the order verbatim and then set the watch to carrying it out. A methodical flurry of activity instantly ensued all over
Bennington
, from the engine room to the mast heads. Eight and a half minutes later, Lambert reported, “All sail is taken in, engines are ahead slow, course is steady at north-northwest, and ship is quiet, sir. North point of Anna Maria Island bears east-northeast, approximately two miles, and we are in five fathoms of water. Bearing of ships astern remains at due south. Range is approximately three and a half miles and closing fast, sir.”

“Very well. Commence right standard rudder and come to course zero-nine-zero degrees. I want constant soundings.”

The order was repeated and as the bow swung to starboard, toward Passage Key, I soon heard Rork, swinging his lead line by the foremast chains, and calling out his report of the fathom depths in a low chant. “By the mark, four!” “Nigh on four! Hard sand.” “By the mark, three!” “Deep three, hard sand!”

Bennington
's hull drew fourteen feet of water, so she needed sixteen feet to float through and not foul the intake pumps—if the transit through the shallows was brief and the bottom wasn't loose silt or sand. Two and two-thirds fathoms was what we needed.

“Deep two!”

That meant it was about seventeen feet deep. The next sounding didn't come from Rork, it came from the ship when her bow touched the shoals with a slow thud.

“All engines back full,” I said as calmly as I could. With the ebb still running strong, two minutes aground was enough to set us on the shoal until the next high tide, at least seven hours away. Lambert was on the command immediately and within seconds the deck rumbled as the propellers dug in and pulled her astern, off the shoal.

All eyes watched my reaction, which I was determined to make unruffled.

“Very well done, Mr. Lambert. Please stop the starboard engine and go slow astern on the port engine. I want her backing around to starboard. Stand by for new course. We're going through Southwest Channel, which is also too shallow for our foreign friends. Speaking of which, what is the bearing and range on the German and the Spaniard?”

“Both are due south, approximately three miles and closing fast, sir,” piped up the junior officer of the deck.

Bennington
was now gradually backing southwest then south, toward our adversaries. As I surveyed the taut faces around me, I silently counted to twenty.

“All engines stop,” I ordered, then waited another five seconds before continuing my orders, “All engines ahead slow. Course is three-one-five, due northwest. Steer nothing to the east of the course, if you please. Mr. Lambert, the outer bell buoy for Southwest Channel will be dead ahead by half a mile. Green buoy number one should be a mile out, about a point on the starboard bow. It is the important mark. Let me know when both are spotted.”

Lambert repeated the order and added a spirited, “Aye, aye, sir!”

This élan was echoed by his subordinate helmsmen as they, in turn, received the command. Warfield glanced at me in the gloom and smiled. Ol'
Benny
had a different atmosphere about her now.

Certainly, my reader knows there was no war going on at this time, but the thick tautness in the ship was closely akin to the tension encountered in combat. That there was a race against the Germans and Spanish was obvious to all in
Bennington
. That it had to do with something more serious than sport was equally plain.

For the first time since her commissioning, the sailors of
Bennington
were bonded in a common struggle against a visible common foe in their homeland, and they would do everything they could to prevail over them.

“By the mark, four! Hard bottom.” Rork called.

Lambert quietly said, “Egmont Key bearing northeast, sir. Range is one mile.” Then he added, with a touch of awe, or maybe surprise, “Oh, there's the bell buoy on the bow, and there, there's the channel mark, sir! A point on the starboard bow—just where you said it would be.”

“Mr. Lambert, that came out wrong,” growled the executive officer.

Lambert recoiled, then quickly added, “No disrespect intended, sir. Sorry.”

“Understood, Mr. Lambert,” I said. “It helps that I've been on this coast for thirty years.”

The time had arrived to begin our turn to the right so we would not cross into the beam of red light from Egmont Key lighthouse. Shining to the southwest, the red beam warned ships in the main shipping channel to the northward about the shoals we were about to cross.
Bennington
would be silhouetted against the beam for the ships astern, giving away our position and plan.

“Mr. Lambert, come right standard rudder to course zero-four-five, due northeast. All engines maintain ahead dead slow. Pass buoy number one close aboard to port.”

Creeping forward against the ebb tide while continually in the bare minimum of sixteen feet of water, we passed the green buoy, the red mark opposite it, then Egmont Key over on the port side. Finally, green buoy number three slid by to port as we
steamed northeast into Tampa Bay itself, our ship a black form moving through the black night, away from our pursuers.

Behind us, two ship's searchlights stabbed out into the inky dark. But we weren't in their line of sight, for they were looking to the northwest for the outer markers of the main ship channel near Palatine Shoal. They never traversed the lights to the northeast, where we used to be, or farther to the east, where we presently were.

“What is the range and bearing of those ships, Mr. Lambert?”

He answered, “Bearing is due west, sir. Range has increased to just over three miles. They are steaming northwest out into the Gulf at about sixteen knots.”

As we passed the lookout tower of the channel pilot station on Egmont Key, I told Yeats, “Send the message on the hooded lamp.” The hooded lamp was aimed directly at the tower, and could not be seen by any other direction. The message in Morse was simple: USS BENNINGTON FOR PORT TAMPA—NO PILOT NEEDED—FOREIGN WARSHIPS IN MAIN CHANNEL—SEND THEM TO TAMPA ANCHORAGE.

Yeats allowed himself a mischievous chuckle as he replied, “Aye, aye, sir.”

Once we were past the shallow area east of Egmont Key, it was time to increase our speed. “Mr. Lambert, please make turns for ten knots on this course, and also continue constant soundings. The depths will be close to four or five fathoms for the next several miles, until we reach a pair of buoys, numbers one and three. Once through them we will turn north-northwestward to the channel for Port Tampa.

“And kindly remind Mr. Angles to be vigilant against stack sparks and embers as we increase speed. We do not want to be seen by the . . .” I almost said
enemy
, but altered it to, “other warships.”

“No stack sparks or embers. Aye, aye, sir,” came the reply.

Warfield walked over to me. “Captain, I've been studying the chart. Looks like we'll have to slow down once we enter the
upper channel, so I'm figuring another two hours to the docks at Port Tampa. Three-thirty a.m. estimated time of arrival.”

“Yes, that sounds about right to me.”

I saw several quizzical glances among the officers and men. They still had no idea why we were going to Port Tampa, what would happen there, and when we would leave. An addendum was needed, for general consumption of the crew.

“With any luck, Commander Warfield, we'll have this assignment completed by the afternoon and can get back to Key West in time for the squadron gunnery qualifications. That way Mr. Lambert and his people can show off their considerable skills to the admiral. Not to mention a quick liberty ashore on the island, and then another one at Pensacola for Christmas!”

I was pleased to see it cheered up the mood significantly.

Behind us, both foreign warships continued on their course and were lost to view, being masked by the shadowy outline of Egmont Key.

Yes, things were looking up. Finally.

Tampa Bay, Florida

Before dawn Friday

16 December 1892

“Sir, only one of the warships is transiting the main channel back there,” stated Lieutenant Manning, who was again the officer of the watch. “I can't tell which one she is, though. Too far away.”

I could hear the weariness in my words as I replied, “Very well, Mr. Manning. Thank you.”

Warfield and I had been on the bridge throughout the night. I'd just sent him below for an hour of rest as we passed the new town of St. Petersburg to port. He wanted to stay topside, but I insisted. He'd be in command when I went ashore, and I wanted him alert and ready for anything.

I scanned astern of us. Barely visible on the southern horizon, only one set of navigation lights, glowing reptilian red
and celestial white, showed in the main channel to downtown Tampa. Earlier, our darkened
Bennington
had altered course to port from the main channel and was now heading north into the narrows between the Pinellas Peninsula and the Tampa Peninsula, which opens onto Old Tampa Bay. Ahead on our starboard bow was Port Tampa.

Six miles dead astern, the other ship was heading northeast up the main channel toward Hillsborough Bay and the anchorage well off the city of Tampa. We would be at our dock in an hour. They still had several hours to go to get to their anchorage.

This new development, however, brought troubling new questions to my tired mind. Which warship was the one in sight—Spanish or German? Where was the other? Did the other one continue steaming up the coast? Or did they douse all their lights also, and somehow make it through the same shoals we did? If they did, where were they now? Somewhere in the darkness, heading to Port Tampa too? I had no answers for any of them.

Manning pointed off our port bow. “Papy's Point now bearing northwest, sir, at one mile. Red light number ten is dead ahead at due north, at one mile. We are right in the center of the deepest water available right now. Bosun reports thirty feet. The channel up ahead will be twenty-two feet at this tide.”

We were at the narrowest, and shallowest, stretch of the final approach. Henry Plant, the rail and hotel tycoon who had been building Port Tampa into a major ship wharf facility for the last five years, had gotten the channel dredged and marked, eliminating dangers for those who used common sense. Having known that tortuous channel in earlier years, I greatly appreciated his expensive efforts right about then.

The foremast lookout reported electric lights on shore ahead, then corrected himself and explained they were on a large wharf, two miles on the starboard bow. Manning stared through the night glasses and confirmed it was a wharf, with several ships
alongside and one anchored nearby.

Plant, a determined man in his seventies, owned a sizeable area of the west coast of Florida, from Tampa down to Punta Gorda, and east to Orlando. His commercial empire was growing exponentially by the day. It included railroads, hotels, real estate, mining, and steamers. Quite a few people worked for him directly and indirectly.

The crown jewel of his hotel network was the five-hundred-room Tampa Bay Hotel, a magnificent resort, the largest in Florida, built across the river from the town of Tampa and opened in 1891. Its architecture was in the Oriental-Arabesque motif, evoking a fantasy escape from the fast-paced world of bustling northern cities. It was predicted to be the premier resort in America in the next decade, and everyone who was anyone was a guest during its season, from December to May.