Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History (39 page)

The Americans’ ironclads in the first line were steaming slowly at a right angle to the approaching British; the monitors were lucky to do five knots. The two British columns were aiming to cut right through the American line. Seymour signaled to break the American line fore and aft of the
New Ironsides
. At two thousand yards the forward pivot Armstrongs on their lead ships opened an accurate fire, striking the
New Ironsides
and the turrets on several monitors. Seymour had directed that priority of fire to the ironclads. The excellence of British guns and gunnery were immediately evident. Unfortunately, they were completely without effect as their shot barely dented the American armor. Within minutes the vent piece from the
Black Prince
’s Armstrong blew out, silencing the gun.

As the range closed to eight hundred yards, the Dahlgrens opened up. The ironclads concentrated the fire of four XV-inch and twelve XI-inch Dahlgren guns on the
Black Prince
and
Resistance
in the lead. The
Wabash
and her sloops behind the ironclads fired over the decks of the low-slung monitors, with a broadside of another twenty-five IX-inch, one X-inch, and three XI-inch Dahlgrens as well as four 100- and 150-pounder Parrot rifles. The
Wabash
alone was a veritable spitfire. The huge frigate, at 4,650 tons, was larger than two of Seymour’s three ships of the line. It carried one X-inch and forty-two IX-inch Dahlgrens, one 150-pounder and two 100-pounder Parrot rifles, as well as a smaller 30-pounder rifle and one 12-pounder gun howitzer. Despite her wooden body, the
Wabash
contained a significant part of Dahlgren’s firepower that day.
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The storm of American shells converged on the two lead British ships in a visible stream of black dots against the blue sky. Months of practice in bombarding the forts in Charleston Harbor had honed a precision accuracy in the ironclad gun crews.

Black Prince
staggered under the hail of 350- and 136-pound shells; her bow and forecastle disintegrated. The casemate armor that protected the gun decks did not extend around the bow or stern. The shells had ripped and torn her metal hull plates down to the water line, and she began to drink in the sea in great gulps as her powerful engines sped her forward toward
New Ironsides
. But watertight compartments, one of her design innovations, limited the amount of water gushing through the smashed bow that would have otherwise flooded the entire ship.

Seymour’s flagship was about to experience the layered gunnery Dahlgren had instructed his captains to employ. As
Black Prince
and
Resistance
closed the distance with the enemy line, the American ships switched to solid shot to bear on the armored sides of the British ship. The large shot converged on both sides of the British ships. From within the 8-inch armored pilothouse on the
New Ironsides
, Admiral Dahlgren watched the huge shot arc over the sea or skip across the waves to ensure a crippling hull strike. It was the
Atlanta
all over again. The low-velocity Dahlgren shot ruptured the armor plates, detaching three-foot sections of the armor’s teak backing and inner metal skin in showers of wooden splinters and metal shards that wiped out whole gun sections. The concussion sent the shot flying from their racks within the casement. Here the design innovations of the
Warrior
class came to
Black Prince
’s aid. Her gun deck had been designed as a series of compartments with armored 4.5-inch bulkheads between them, limiting the damage done by each shot to single compartments.
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By the time
Black Prince
broke the American line astern of
New Ironsides
, a third of her guns were out of action. The crews of the rest had not lost their nerve and fired accurately as she passed the American ship’s stern. The Royal Navy believed its 68-pounders were the only ordnance it had that would shatter armor plate but at no more than two hundred yards.
Black Prince
halved that distance, firing its starboard battery almost point-blank into
New Ironsides
, each surviving gun firing as it bore. The
New Ironside
’s unarmored stern crumpled under the impact, its rudder shot to pieces. But even at a hundred yards, the British shot just bounced off
New Ironsides
’s armored casemate. A subtle advantage to the American ship was its seventeen-degree outward slopping hull, which presented an angled instead of a flat surface to the British shot. Its armor had been forged rather than rolled, giving it even more strength than the usual plating. Coupled with the strength of the casemate, the angle deflected the British hits with wild, deep, echoing clangs. The monitor
Catskill
swung its turret to follow
Black Prince
and fired both of its guns into the larboard battery as the enemy passed, wrecking another fighting section.

At almost the same time,
Resistance
cut across
New Ironside
’s bow, raking the latter as her guns bore. She then passed
Wabash
and fired into her stern.
Resistance
had suffered almost as much as
Black Prince
in its race to close with the enemy, and its crew now worked like men possessed to even the score. The fighting spirit of the island race was never keener as they worked the guns.

Attempting to follow
Resistance
through the American line was
St. George
. Her wooden bow and forecastle simply disintegrated from the explosive power of the shells converging on it. Shells spread havoc down the quarterdeck, turning it into an abattoir of blood and shattered bodies, its captain dead and wheel shattered. In a moment this venerable ship of the line, with its three gun decks counting 120 pieces of ordnance, had been stunned. But she plunged on, her screws spinning and pulling to starboard in the absence of the wheel’s control. Her gun crews hauled away the dead and wounded and fought the fires that seemed to have ignited everywhere. The ship was now pulling unintentionally parallel to the American line, and for the first time she could fire back. The crews rushed to their larboard guns and fired as they bore. Her guns were accurate at this range, and the British gun crews, oblivious to the carnage on the quarterdeck, fought like demons, their famed gun drill taking charge, their motions fluid and powerful like the piston arms of powerful steam engine. Yet their skill and courage were wasted as the shot just bounced off the ironclads whose turrets had reversed to reload.
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Inside the turrets, the gunners felt the continuous concussive effect as a heavy vibrating hum. The turrets on the monitors
Catskill
and
Nahant
rotated back to fire at close range into
St. George
. Behind them,
Wabash
’s heavy Dahlgren battery added its fire.
St. George
seemed to fly apart in clouds of wooden splinters under the impact, huge holes smashed into her sides, her masts crashing down over the sides.
Wasbash
’s broadside battery kept the fire hot as the monitors rotated their turrets to reload. One by one, then by whole sections,
St. George
’s guns fell silent amid their dead and dying crews, blood washing the decks. As her engines took her out of the fight, she was more a floating wreck than a fighting ship.

Black Prince
now turned slowly hard to starboard to bring it broadside to broadside with the crippled American falling out of line. The
Warrior
class ship was especially difficult to steer with any precision given its small rudder, and the American ship had time to prepare for the next round. The little submersible tender was barely able to steam away from
New Ironsides
, its submersible boats nowhere in sight. Following
Black Prince
, ship of the line
Sans Pareil
also turned to starboard to sandwich
New Ironsides
and pound her to pieces between them. The American ship was now dead in the water as the battle split into two parts. The monitors ahead of Dahlgren’s flagship steamed on, engaging HMS
Donegal
and its following frigates, which were steaming into the same pulverizing hail of shells that had wrecked
St. George
.

From behind
Wabash
, the ram
Atlanta
emerged to swing wide and come in against the British 2nd Division line. She bypassed HMS
Donegal
, which was engaging the American line to aim squarely at HMS
Shannon
. This huge British frigate was the namesake of the ship that had taken the USS
Chesapeake
in 1813 and with its fifty-one guns approached the size of a small ship of the line. Her gunnery was as good as her renowned ancestor’s, and she sent a stream of iron at the former Confederate ironclad that repeatedly struck her bow and sides.
Atlanta
steamed on, her smokestack shot away and her broadside guns useless at that angle of approach. Lieutenant Cromwell, barely used to the title of captain, was intent on closing with the enemy and put his reliance in the ironclad’s spar torpedo. The gunpowder-filled torpedo extended beyond the prow just under water, its barbed point invisible in the muddy water around the bar.
Shannon
’s broadside of fifteen 8-inch shell guns and ten 32-pounders poured their fire into the oncoming ram, but they burst or bounced off her plate.
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The frigate had only one gun, a 68-pounder that could hope to defeat even
Atlanta
’s inferior armor, and it had only one shot as it closed the last hundred yards. It was a direct hit that that knocked the top off the pilothouse and killed the young captain. It was too late for
Shannon
, however;
Atlanta
itself now was the weapon. She crashed into
Shannon
, driving the spar torpedo point deep through the ship’s copper bottom and pushing the ship out of line.

Atlanta
’s engineer ordered engines reversed, but the spar torpedo was sunk too deeply into
Shannon
, and the underpowered Confederate engines did not have the strength to pull it free. The torpedo man hesitated; his orders had been to connect the battery that would send the current into the explosive after the ship had disengaged.
Shannon
’s guns were firing at top speed at the immobilized ironclad.
Atlanta
’s bow gun was dismounted by a direct hit through its gun port. Now HMS
Ariadne
came up alongside to pound her with her broadside. Her expert gunners sent 68-pounder shot through
Atlanta
’s single broadside gun port, dismounting the gun and savaging the crew. The third frigate,
Melpomene
, came up as well to hammer
Atlanta
’s stern. The patches in her armor failed as shot penetrated the casemate, killing the torpedo man and wounding the engineer. The casemate was filled with smoke and screams as the armor plate rattled with shot and more shells exploded inside. The engineer crawled over to the torpedo man. Pushing the body off the battery, he made the connection. He fell back and counted—one, two, three—then the underwater force of the explosion surged back through
Atlanta
,
pushing her back.
Shannon
shrieked as if in pain as the explosion ruptured her engine and broke her keel. An enormous hole sucked in the ocean. Almost immediately she started to list. She died fast, slipping beneath the water in minutes.
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Many a man paused to stare at
Shannon
’s death. HRH Albert was not one of them. If anything his sharp tongue lashed the gawkers back to their duties aboard HMS
Racoon
as it led the smaller ships of the first division in the envelopment of the American right. His captain was so intent on the last ships in the American line that he did not notice the flotilla hugging the coast to the south. He had no idea the initiative had slipped from his fingers until an XV-inch shell landed amidships. The lookout that should have seen them was flung into the sea as the mast he was atop flew apart in a cloud of splinters. Another huge shell and then another arced toward the corvettes. Against wooden ships, Dahlgren’s shells smashed their way into the gun decks before exploding with such force to create shambles and a butcher’s yard.

Albert scanned the shore but could see only the faintest shapes close to the water. He scampered up the rigging to give height to his glasses. “By God,” he muttered to himself, “more of those damned monitors.” They were the three monitors whose repairs had been rushed forward at Port Royal, and they were slowly moving toward the corvettes. The second monitor shell to strike
Racoon
stove a great hole in her hull. The third killed the captain and sent Albert in a bloody heap on the shattered deck. Fires broke out to feed on the mass of new kindling, and the ship began to list strongly. Strong hands lifted the prince down into a boat. Despised or not, he was still Victoria’s son, and
Racoon
’s tars would not have it said they left her boy to die.
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