September 9, 1882
Ship’s Location Undisclosed
First Mate’s Cabin
The year 1864 had not proven to be a good year for Union Naval action, at least not as of May. Why Turner was thinking of this when he finally fell asleep would remain his private mystery: it had been eighteen years since then. He had put particular energy into forgetting as much as he could. Yet, the more he forced the memories aside, the more vivid they became.
Despite all the substantial wins the Navy had achieved for the Union, most especially in New Orleans where the battle would have been lost without them, the Army had both numbers and public relations on its side. Accolades were printed in every newspaper in the North about how important the Army’s victory had been at the mouth of the Mississippi River. And it was an important victory, though unachievable without the men of the sea. The Navy did receive some comment and compliment. But, with fewer than 200,000 men and a public mandate from Lincoln regarding the Anaconda operation to cut off the South from supplies and foreign aid, the media had decided the only role of the Federal Navy was to administer and enforce the droll blockade. It wasn’t very newsworthy. And what the media printed the average Yankee believed. Rear Admiral David Porter was said to have made a thoroughly unprintable remark.
And, it didn’t help that May had not been a good month for the Navy.
Turner’s arm tingled with numbness as it was his habit to sleep on his side with that arm crumpled back over his neck. A protective position. His fingers and his eyes twitched like a cat in deep slumber, chasing a mouse or escaping a dog in its dreams.
Turner’s dreams were not so mundane.
The ironclad Confederate ship Albermarle had taken control of the Roanoke River and more than one attempt to battle her had ended in disaster. Three Federal ships, the Sassacus, Wyalusing, and Mattabesett. had tried to take her together and failed. Control of the river was important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was public relations. Every day the purpose of the war was challenged and its costs were reconsidered. Every Rebel victory was cause for concern and doubt. There was also the problem that it signaled, rightfully or not, an advance in Confederate naval technology and design – though provided by the French or British. “Interested foreign parties” were getting too involved where they were not wanted.
Orders had come from Admiral Porter, “enough with the large scale attacks - send a Landing Party to take out the Albermarle with a hand delivered torpedo.” A brash young Lieutenant, William Cushing, wanted the assignment. He was too new to the game. No, this called for a level of stealth and cunning no pup could know. It needed an older dog, a fighting dog, with obsessive obedience. One so loyal to the cause of the Union that he would do anything – anything they asked of him.
Turner’s fingers twitched.
As they had rowed quietly up the river, Turner looked back toward his ship, the USS Sassacus. Neither he nor his ship would leave the North Carolina swamps as they had arrived. Once on shore he had directed them to move with absolute silence. Eight men and Turner. Small, fast, deadly. Two of the men who took orders from him were older and more experienced than he, but that was a bonus. Their hard earned knowledge proved vital more than once.
Biting mosquitoes and thick patches of foul gas greeted them in the swamp. Their uniforms, which he had insisted they wear so that no charges of espionage could be made should they be captured, quickly became matted with soil and sweat, and clung to their bodies. They had carried two revolvers each, except for the Gunner’s Mate who carried in a haversack the components of a torpedo. Each also had their weapon of choice: a Bowie knife or just their bare hands. Shots were to be fired only if there was no other choice.
The Landing Party could go where the ships and armies couldn’t. And they could go with complete invisibility. That reputation was well known and the Captain of the Albermarle had been wise enough to place sentries on both shores opposite the boat.
One by one, they crept up on a Confederate sailor on guard, and removed him like a chess piece. The quickest way was to break the neck, but it wasn’t an easy task. It took practice; hours of practice to be fast enough and strong enough. As commander of the party, Turner chose the first man and demonstrated his unhappy mastery of the skill. His other men tended toward seizing their victim by the mouth and cutting his throat. It was not a method that guaranteed silence, but it was practical enough.
Turner rolled over, trapping his arm under his body, fitfully still asleep.
Four men. He killed four men within a single hour. They were the enemy. They knew the risk they took joining a rebelling military. The Rebels knew they were wrong; they had to. No honest man fought for slavery, mob rule, and the destruction of the Union. No honorable man could …
Before leaving with his men on the mission, he’d read his father’s latest letter. His father was an absolute abolitionist and yet despised the war. To his son, he confided his fears of divine retribution on those who killed their brothers. His father wasn’t wrong. But his father wasn’t there, in the thick of the war, seeing comrades die or lose limbs in bloody hospital tents.
His mind was not in the moment. He was distracted though how, with his blood pounding through his body and his every nerve on fire, he would never understand. In that second, Turner had doubted his purpose and broken his focus. The fifth sentry escaped his reach.
For that long minute, the two men stared at each other. The ‘Grayback’ was fifteen, if that much. His eyes were huge and blue, like Turner’s. He held his rifle in unsteady hands. Farmer’s hands. He had something that resembled a moustache. It was too thin, too sparse, too new. Beige blond hair hung down his head and curled at the ends. He was a boy, fighting for a cause that would never benefit him. Abolitionists in the North weren’t the source of his poverty and social mistreatment: rich plantation owners banking on free labor from slaves were. He didn’t even have shoes. His feet had become mangled from the years of unprotected laboring in the fields and he was only fifteen. He might not have been fifteen yet.
Lieutenant Turner just stared. Hesitated.
“Mister?” the boy said in a slightly effeminate voice.
Turner’s Boatswain dropped down behind the boy and nearly removed his head in a single cut.
Turner awoke, sweating. Every drop of moisture appeared to be from the spray of blood that coated him when the boy was killed until his senses regained knowledge of the actual place and time. It had been eighteen years ago but now he dreamed of it regularly. Why that boy? Why was it he and no other Grayback that drove a spike into his confidence, skewing his moral certainty? At that moment? Why did he dream of it so much?
He slowly rolled onto his back, shaking his arm to try to start the circulation to his fingers. Life was not as he had expected it. Young William Cushing had followed in Turner’s footsteps, achieving what Tom couldn’t: the destruction of the Albermarle. Cushing went on to become a famous man, beloved and decorated. Yet there too was a lesson: Cushing eventually went mad. Turner wondered if perhaps he too would surrender his mind to oblivion before he lost his life?
What should his life have been? There had been hopes that with his college education, he might form a merchant company with his father as chief Ship’s Master, with a fleet of vessels supplying the gold fields of California and the Pacific Northwest. They would hire the best seamen in New England, veterans of wars, and outfit the fastest clipper ships. They would have broken speed records around the Horn and up the Pacific coast carrying goods to the remote but exploding populations in the west. Doubtless he would have been married before too long, giving his father a set of grandchildren to fawn over.
But the war broke out. Against his father’s hopes, though with his reluctant blessings, Turner joined the Union Navy. His education and a bit of hard cash brokered him a commission. He wasn’t too old, at the age of twenty-five, to be a Lieutenant. He’d move up. He was bright.
And he had a knack for the games of intrigue. That was something he did not tell his father. He told him only that he participated in sea battles. The rest was unfit for the eyes of an honest sailor like his father. Most of the war was unfit for anyone’s knowledge. But that was war. Always had been.
His father died thinking Tom had been killed as a prisoner of war. Thinking his only son had died before him. The knowledge had probably been what brought on the stroke.
At least he never had to explain to his father about the scar. Turner reached up and put his fingers on the unnatural feeling tissue, wishing he could tear it off his body. He never went back to sleep that night.