From Sea to Shining Sea (24 page)

But now came a still greater storm of noise: Colonel Moultrie’s eighteen-pounders were answering with a booming salvo from the right, one gun per second. The
Active
and the
Bristol
, and now another fifty-gun giant, the
Experiment
, were all at anchor directly in the line of fire. Two other ships, the
Solebay
and the
Thunder
, a bombship, also were dropping anchor and discharging broadsides at the fort. Now the five gunships were anchored in a line less than 500 yards offshore, and at this close range, the Carolinian gunners could hardly miss. Through the blown smoke now Jonathan watched the warships take their punishment.

Sails twitched and turned to rags. Rigging snapped. Oak rails and bulkheads disintegrated and spun overboard in chunks and splinters to splash into the channel. Spars and booms shivered and dropped. Shrouds parted and hung flapping like rope ladders, masts crashed down like felled trees, cannon leaped up and fell, fires broke out on the decks, gaping holes appeared in the freeboards, sailors and marines were blown out of the rigging and off the decks like sparrows in a shotgun blast.

At the sight of this havoc, the gunners in the fort and the troops along the shore raised a resonating
hurrah!
Bill Croghan’s hand gripped Jonathan’s arm; he was grinning, but there were tears in his eyes; this was, after all, the navy of his native land.

Colonel Moultrie’s appraisal of his fort was proving true. When a cannonball hit the ramparts, the wall would buck and sand would fly like the dust beaten out of a rug, but the spongy palmetto logs and their fillings of sand were simply swallowing the British lead.

His artillery was proving as sound as his fortification. His gunners were cool and deliberate, wasting no shot, and the decks and rigging of each ship in turn were being reduced to a shambles of rope, splinters, broken bodies, and blood. And, to the greater thrill of the onlookers, a tiny, dark-clad figure, some madly brave artilleryman, had picked up the fallen Carolina flag, attached to a sponge staff, and now stood as a human flagpole atop the rampart, in the hail of British shot, holding the riddled banner up in the wind while his comrades lashed it to the stump of the flagstaff. Jonathan gritted his teeth and prayed that the brave fool would not be blown apart.

Still, for all this heartening display, the guns of the fort were not sinking any ships. And now, covered by the fire of the anchored gunships, three more white-sailed frigates came plowing up the channel, going around the far side of the gunships, headed for the harbor. Apparently these fast vessels were going to avoid the fort’s barrage almost entirely. Jonathan realized this suddenly, amid the thrilling spectacle of the gunnery, and his heart sank.

The first of the three frigates now emerged beyond the anchored ships. Unscathed, she had got north of the fort, past the line of its fire, and was coming about, as if to turn at the end of the island, lie offshore, and pour fire into the fort through its unfinished and unprotected side, thus making it the “slaughter pen” that General Lee had warned it would be.

“That one’s the
Actaeon
,” cried Bill Croghan, who was now watching the frigate through a spyglass. “God, I’m afraid she’s going to enfilade the fort!”

“Damnation!” Jonathan yelled, “I wish they’d give us something to do! I didn’t walk all the way to Charles Town to lay idle and watch!” The little rosy-silk regimental banner fluttered against the sky, now like a symbol of uselessness.

“Hey! What’s this now?” Croghan yelled. There was an outburst of cheering from the fort; some of the officers of the infantry along the shore were capering and throwing their hats in the air. At first Jonathan could not determine what they were celebrating. They were pointing toward the
Actaeon.
There was something odd in the way she was standing.

Jonathan was a stranger to ships, but even to his eye, the frigate looked somehow crippled. She was listing slightly; her sails were empty and flapping uselessly in the wind … and she was not moving. “She’s aground!” Croghan whooped. “She’s fast stuck in the shallows o’ that
love
-ly channel!”

“
Yaaaaahaaaaa!
” someone yodeled, and a ripple of derisive laughter went through the ranks. “Some sailors, them Royal
swabs!” a voice yelled between the slamming, booming explosions from the fort.

Well, that was a small piece of good luck, Jonathan thought. But now going feverish again and feeling somehow vulnerable and doomed, he wondered what all this was coming to in the big scheme of things. There were still ships coming up the channel; the five gunships were still pouring cannonballs into the fort’s ramparts; there were no orders for the Virginia troops; there was no intelligence from General Lee about whether the 3,000 Redcoats down on Long Island were on the march yet.

Suddenly Bill Croghan grabbed Jonathan’s arm and pointed up toward the town.

Yes! The two other frigates seemed to be in trouble now. They had veered to pass the stranded
Actaeon
, and now they, too, seemed to be aground, sitting in the channel in awkward attitudes.

And now most of Sir Parker’s fleet, which had looked so irresistible, was at a standstill, locked in a thunderous duel with the fort or blocked in the channel by its own grounded frigates. This juggernaut of a fleet, which had been plowing so resolutely up the channel an hour ago in a straight battle line, now was sprawled all over the narrow channel, running up signal flags, slowly disintegrating under Moultrie’s methodical cannonade. It was a merry piece of mayhem.

Now there was nothing more pressing for the 8th Virginia to do than stand in the hammering midday sun with marsh water in their shoes and enjoy a great spectacle of the enemy’s desperation, played out against the choppy blue waters of the channel, the shimmering beaches of James Island across the way, under a crystalline sky in a scouring hot wind.

I
T WENT ON THROUGH THE AFTERNOON
. W
ORD CAME THAT
Moultrie had sent to Lee demanding more powder, and it seemed unlikely that Lee could refuse now. Moultrie’s gunnery officers had been sparing of powder, sighting each big gun as if it were a hunting rifle, scarcely wasting a shot. They were aiming at the ships’ waterlines now. Maybe they would sink some ships. It was certain the British were not going to sink the fort. The bombship
Thunder
was lofting bombshells one after another into the compound from her mortars. These would have killed everyone in the fort, but that the ground within the works was so soft and wet—a sandy morass—that they were swallowed and smothered on impact, and few exploded.

Jonathan’s troops, waiting in the sun, were near collapsing
with heat, and he wondered how those artillerymen in the stifling, smoke-filled confines of the fort could still be moving. He could see them through his spyglass, stripped to their drawers, rags tied around their heads, shining with sweat and black with powder, laboring like ants in the superheated gunpits to keep the big cannons swabbed, loaded, and aimed. But they were happy in their work, especially when the firebuckets full of grog would be passed to them.

In midafternoon, when General Muhlenberg’s Virginians at last received orders to cross over to Sullivan’s Island and reinforce the sharpshooters guarding Breach Inlet, the fusillade was still on, undiminished. The fleet was expending ammunition as if its supply were limitless, making a constant thunder across the channel and a haze of acrid gunsmoke. Marching down past the cove, the Virginians could look out across the water and watch the British try to free their grounded ships. They were trying to pull them off with lifeboats full of rowers attached by long lines to the ships’ sterns; they were trying to kedge, taking anchors out astern in rowboats, dropping them to the bottom, then pulling against the anchor ropes by shipboard windlasses. But all this was futile, and dangerous in the extreme with the fort’s cannonballs plunging in all around. Finally all such efforts were abandoned, and apparently the captains were just waiting for the tide to come in.

I
N THE LIGHT OF SUNSET, A SUNSET BLOOD-RED THROUGH
the smoke of the cannonade, the tide at last floated two of the frigates. But the
Actaeon
still sat hard aground; likely she was taking water, perhaps from a shell hole in the hull. And she still blocked the channel.

With the cool of evening, Jonathan’s malarial chills had returned, so overwhelming him that he hardly knew what he was doing. The regiment was encamped now on a sandy, scrubby flat, without tents or mess, on half-watch, the off-duty troops bedding down clothed and at the ready in case Clinton’s Redcoats should try to cross Breach Inlet. It was not likely they would try. They had made one effort early in the day, at low tide, Jonathan learned. But the ranked Redcoats, weighted down with weapons and packs, had sunk and fallen in the sandy-bottomed watercourse, floundered into hidden potholes, been tipped over by the ripping currents, or peppered by rifle balls from the hidden Carolinian sharpshooters on the other side, and had been called back. They were over there now, three thousand of them, stranded until the fleet could come back down and take
them off with its lifeboats. It was not likely they would march down into the water again, especially now that the tide was rising. “Unless,” Bill Croghan speculated, “it’s to escape the mosquitoes.” It was agreed that Clinton could not have made worse use of his army.

“Well, at least,” Jonathan said, “they’ve been safer there on that sandbar than they would have been on the ships.” The cannon were still thundering. Moultrie had gotten his powder.

The shooting was still going on after nightfall. Jonathan could read his timepiece by the flashes of bombardment. Now and then the clouds of smoke would glow red or orange as something burned. Jonathan sat wrapped in a blanket, shivering. It seemed there had never been a time when that infernal thundering had not existed.

At about ten o’clock the sky became yellow. Jonathan thought he had dozed, that morning was coming. But Bill Croghan came and knelt by him. “The
Actaeon
’s afire,” he said, “and we can see it from the beach. Let’s go have a look at that spectacle, my friend.” They identified themselves to their sentries in the eerie glow and walked through scrub to the beach. They sat on the sand watching the ship burn in the distance. There were small boats all around it. They saw the yellow flames climb the masts and make a path of reflection on the water. Not far off, the roar and flicker of the cannonfight at the fort continued like a lightning storm.

Then the flames of the
Actaeon
suddenly blossomed, grew bigger and brighter, and a dull
boom
, deeper and more muffled than the cannonfire, rolled across the water. Above the hulk, flaming spars and timbers and sparks were arcing through the sky and a dense, yellow-red smoke cloud was climbing, seeming to turn inside out as it rose. The sparks and flames whirled down like burning straws and were extinguished in the harbor. The frigate was becoming shapeless now and was half-hidden in steam.

“There went her magazine, I’ll bet,” Bill said. And after a while he said, “What do you think will come o’ this fray, Jonathan? Do you suppose Charles Town’s really safe?”

“God willing. Listen, Bill. I should rather face Clinton’s bayonets tomorrow than another day o’ these shivers. Walk me back, Bill, ere I shake myself apart at the joints. I’ve got to get back in my blanket. That boat fire’s just too far away to keep me warm.”

“You’re quite sick, aren’t you?”

“Quite some.” He slapped at his ear, where mosquitoes were
droning. “I’ve seldom been sick. But this Southland, I’ll vow, it’s plague country.”

“Maybe after this campaign I could take you home on a convalescent leave. And meet that marvelous family o’ yours.”

“Might could be. That sounds good to my ears.”

J
ONATHAN SAT UP IN HIS BLANKET, STARTLED AWAKE BY SUDDEN
silence. There were no more cannon. In the night wind and over the surf he thought he could hear wisps of voices yelling far away; then he heard the quizzical murmurs and mutterings of waking troops nearby. Jonathan got up, the night air making him shudder again as he left his blanket, and he staggered to the fishing shack that was serving as regimental headquarters. General Muhlenberg was sitting in lamplight at a field table, his round German face sleepy-looking, several other officers standing around him. They knew nothing yet.

A runner brought pathetic news half an hour later. The fort had run out of powder.

“But why’ve the British stopped shooting?” someone asked. No one knew. But the worst was to be expected. Likely the ships were being readied to sail on into the harbor and start bombarding Charles Town. And likely the Redcoats would try again to ford the inlet at next low tide.

The sleep-dulled troops were mustered and stood yawning, groaning, scratching in the waning smoke-glow, slapping at the clouds of marsh-mosquitoes that had discovered them outside their blankets. They stood and suffered while their officers awaited news and orders from General Lee.

At two in the morning the news came, and it was scarcely believable.

The battered fleet had come down with its boats and taken Clinton’s troops back on board, then had cut cables and was slipping out to sea. They had abandoned their siege of Charles Town!

A mighty yowling and yodeling of triumph and relief rippled along the windswept shore. Lee’s army, which had seen the enemy only at a distance, was feeling victorious.

When dawn broke, they stood watching the half-junked British fleet limping away up the coast.

T
HE VICTORY CELEBRATION IN
C
HARLES
T
OWN WAS SPICED
by a delightful report, which came by way of deserters from the British fleet.

One of Colonel Moultrie’s cannonballs, well aimed at the
Bristol
, had ripped the breeches off Commodore Peter Parker, laying his backside bare. By the evening after the victory, there were already being sung, throughout all levels of Charles Town society, several hastily composed ballads about Sir Peter Parker’s pants.