Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Bay Fight
By Henry Howard Brownell (1820–1872)(Excerpt)
T
The steady Trade blew strong and free,
The Northern Light his banners paled,
The Ocean Stream our channels wet,
We rounded low Canaveral’s lee,
And passed the isles of emerald set
In blue Bahamas’ turquoise sea.
And hauntings of the gray sea-wolf,
The palmy Western Key lay lapped
In the warm washing of the Gulf.
The burning glare, the barren reach
Of Santa Rosa’s withered beach,
And Pensacola’s ruined wall.
The thousand miles of shapeless strand,
From Brazos to San Blas that roll
Their drifting dunes of desert sand.
The land-breeze still at nightfall bore,
By beach and fortress-guarded bay,
Sweet odors from the enemy’s shore,
Unchallenged of his sentry lines,—
The bursting of his cypress buds,
And the warm fragrance of his pines.
Nor bolder flag a foe to dare.
Had left a wake on ocean blue
Since Lion-Heart sailed Trenc-le-mer!
Was ours, save, sometime, freer breath
For friend or brother strangely found,
’Scaped from the drear domain of death.
Or laurel for our valiant chief,
Save some blockaded British thief,
Full fraught with murder in his hold,
Or dull bombardment, day by day,
With fort and earthwork, far away,
Low couched in sullen leagues of mud.
The day at last, as ever, came;
And the volcano, laid so long,
Leaped forth in thunder and in flame!
“Man your starboard battery!”
Kimberly shouted;
The ship, with her hearts of oak,
Was going, mid roar and smoke,
On to victory!
None of us doubted—
No, not our dying—
Farragut’s flag was flying!
Morgan roared on our right—
Before us, gloomy and fell,
With breath like the fume of hell,
Lay the Dragon of iron shell,
Driven at last to the fight!
The brave two hundred scars
You got in the River-Wars?
That were leeched with clamorous skill
(Surgery savage and hard),
Splintered with bolt and beam,
Probed in scarfing and seam,
Rudely linted and tarred
With oakum and boiling pitch,
And sutured with splice and hitch,
At the Brooklyn Navy-Yard!
To bide the battle’s frown
(Wont of old renown),—
But every ship was dressed
In her bravest and her best,
As if for a July day;
Sixty flags and three,
As we floated up the bay,—
Every peak and masthead flew
The brave Red, White, and Blue,—
We were eighteen ships that day.
The weaker lashed to port,
On we sailed, two by two,—
That if either a bolt should feel
Crash through caldron or wheel,
Fin of bronze or sinew of steel,
Her mate might bear her through.
The great flag-ship led,—
Grandest of sights!
On her lofty mizzen flew
Our leader’s dauntless blue,
That had waved o’er twenty fights.
So we went, with the first of the tide,
Slowly, mid the roar
Of the rebel guns ashore,
And the thunder of each full broadside.
Of statute and of state,
We once held with these fellows:
Here, on the flood’s pale-green,
Hark how he bellows,—
Each bluff old sea-lawyer!
Talk to them, Dahlgren,
Parrott, and Sawyer!
Of the cannon’s sulphury breath,
We drew to the line of death
That our devilish foe had laid;
Meshed in a horrible net,
And baited villanous well,
Right in our path were set
Three hundred traps of hell!
There, while the cannon
Hurtled and thundered,—
(Ah, what ill raven
Flapped o’er the ship that morn!)
Caught by the under-death,
In the drawing of a breath,
Down went dauntless Craven,
He and his hundred!
A little heel she gave,
And a thin white spray went o’er her,
Like the crest of a breaking wave;
In that great iron coffin,
The channel for their grave,
The fort their monument
(Seen afar in the offing),
Ten fathom deep lie Craven
And the bravest of our brave.
A little the ships held back,
Closing up in their stations:
There are minutes that fix the fate
Of battles and of nations
(Christening the generations),
When valor were all too late,
If a moment’s doubt be harbored;
From the maintop, bold and brief,
Came the word of our grand old Chief,—
“Go on!”—’t was all he said;
Our helm was put to the starboard,
And the Hartford passed ahead.
On our starboard bow he lay,
With his mail-clad consorts three
(The rest had run up the Bay),—
There he was, belching flame from his bow,
And the steam from his throat’s abyss
Was a Dragon’s maddened hiss,—
In sooth a most cursèd craft!—
In a sullen ring, at bay,
By the Middle Ground they lay,
Raking us, fore and aft.
Ah, wickedly well they shot;
How their death-bolts howled and stung!
And the water-batteries played
With their deadly cannonade
Till the air around us rung;
So the battle raged and roared—
Ah, had you been aboard
To have seen the fight we made!
How they leaped, the tongues of flame,
From the cannon’s fiery lip!
How the broadsides, deck and frame,
Shook the great ship!
Came crashing, heavy and oft,
Clouds of splinters flying aloft
And falling in oaken showers:
But ah, the pluck of the crew!
Had you stood on that deck of ours,
You had seen what men may do.
Boldly they worked and well,—
Steadily came the powder,
Steadily came the shell.
And if tackle or truck found hurt,
Quickly they cleared the wreck;
And the dead were laid to port,
All a-row, on our deck.
Never a cheek that paled,
Not a tinge of gloom or pallor:
There was bold Kentucky’s grit,
And the old Virginian valor,
And the daring Yankee wit.
There were black orbs from palmy Niger,—
But there alongside the cannon,
Each man fought like a tiger!
Our consort began to burn;
They quenched the flames with a will,
But our men were falling still,
And still the fleet was astern.
In an awful shroud they lay,
Broadsides thundering away,
And lightning from every port,—
Scene of glory and dread!
A storm-cloud all aglow
With flashes of fiery red;
The thunder raging below,
And the forest of flags o’erhead!
So fiercely their broadsides blazed,
The regiments fighting ashore
Forgot to fire as they gazed.
Moving grimly and slow,
They loomed in that deadly wreath,
Where the darkest batteries frowned,—
Death in the air all round,
And the black torpedoes beneath!
All for’ard, the long white deck
Was growing a strange dull red;
But soon, as once and agen
(The firing to guide or check),
You could hardly choose but tread
On the ghastly human wreck,
(Dreadful gobbet and shred
That a minute ago were men!)
Red, on bulwark and wale!
Red, by combing and hatch!
Red, o’er netting and rail!
The ship forged slowly by;
And ever the crew fought on,
And their cheers rang loud and high.
How by their guns they stood,
Right in front of our dead
Fighting square abreast—
Each brawny arm and chest
All spotted with black and red,—
Chrism of fire and blood!
Worth all the weary time;
Worth the woe and the peril,
To stand in that strait sublime!
Death? A dream of the eyes!
We were atoms in God’s great storm
That roared through the angry skies.
One only dread we knew:
Could the day that dawned so well
Go down for the Darker Powers?
Would the fleet get through?
And ever the shot and shell
Came with the howl of hell,
The splinter-clouds rose and fell,
And the long line of corpses grew:
Would the fleet win through?
(How aforetime they ’ve fought!)
But Murder may yet prevail,—
They may sink as Craven sank.
Therewith one hard fierce thought,
Burning on heart and lip,
Ran like fire through the ship:
Fight her, to the last plank!
If Death lay square alongside;
But the Old Flag has no like,
She must fight, whatever betide:
When the war is a tale of old,
And this day’s story is told,
They shall hear how the Hartford died!
And the leading ships worked in,
Losing their hope to win,
The enemy turned and fled:
And one seeks a shallow reach,
And another, winged in her flight,
Our mate, brave Jouett, brings in;
And one, all torn in the fight,
Runs for a wreck on the beach,
Where her flames soon fire the night.
And we looked that our stems should meet
(He had us fair for a prey),
Shifting his helm midway,
Sheered off, and ran for the fleet;
There, without skulking or sham,
He fought them, gun for gun,
And ever he sought to ram,
But could finish never a one.
Till we sent our parting shell,
’T was just one savage hour
Of the roar and the rage of hell.
With the lessening smoke and thunder,
Our glasses around we aim,—
What is that burning yonder?
Our Philippi—aground and in flame!
As the ships went by the shore,
But the fire of the fort had slacked
(So fierce their volleys had been);
And now, with a mighty din,
The whole fleet came grandly in,
Though sorely battered and wracked.
The Flag to port and ahead,
And a pitying rain began
To wash the lips of our dead.
A league from the fort we lay,
And deemed that the end must lag;
When lo! looking down the Bay,
There flaunted the Rebel Rag:
The Ram is again under way,
And heading dead for the Flag!
Boldly his course he lay,
Though the fleet all answered his fire,
And, as he still drew nigher,
Ever on bow and beam
Our Monitors pounded away,—
How the Chickasaw hammered away!
Eager the prize to win,
First of us all the brave
Monongahela went in,
Under full head of steam;
Twice she struck him abeam,
Till her stem was a sorry work;
(She might have run on a crag!)
The Lackawanna hit fair;
He flung her aside like cork,—
And still he held for the Flag.
(Lest the smoke his sight o’erwhelm),
Our Admiral’s voice rang loud:
“Hard-a-starboard your helm!
Starboard! and run him down!”
Starboard it was; and so,
Like a black squall’s lifting frown,
Our mighty bow bore down
On the iron beak of the Foe.
Men that had looked on death
In battle and stormy weather;
Yet a little we held our breath,
When, with the hush of death,
The great ships drew together.
Drayton, courtly and wise,
Kindly cynic, and wise,
(You hardly had known him now,—
The flame of fight in his eyes!)
His brave heart eager to feel
How the oak would tell on the steel!
A little he seemed to shun us;
Out peered a form grim and lanky,
And a voice yelled: “Hard-a-port!
Hard-a-port!—here ’s the damned Yankee
Coming right down on us!”
With a gnarring shudder and growl,
He gave us a deadly gun;
But, as he passed in his pride,
(Rasping right alongside!)
The Old Flag, in thunder-tones,
Poured in her port broadside,
Rattling his iron hide,
And cracking his timber bones!
With her bow all weathered and brown,
The great Lackawanna came down
Full tilt for another blow:
We were forging ahead,
She reversed; but, for all our pains,
Rammed the old Hartford instead,
Just for’ard the mizzen-chains!
And the stout hull ring and reel,
As she took us right on end!
(Vain were engine and wheel,—
She was under full steam),—
With the roar of a thunder-stroke
Her two thousand tons of oak
Brought up on us, right abeam!
(Rib and plankshear gave way
To the stroke of that giant wedge!)
Here, after all, we go;
The old ship is gone!—ah, no,
But cut to the water’s edge.
His flurry now can’t last long;
He ’ll never again see land;
Try that on him, Marchand!
On him again, brave Strong!
Full on his beam we bore;
But the spine of the huge Sea-Hog
Lay on the tide like a log,—
He vomited flame no more.
Half the fleet, in an angry ring,
Closed round the hideous thing,
Hammering with solid shot,
And bearing down, bow on bow—
He has but a minute to choose;
Life or renown?—which now
Will the Rebel Admiral lose?
He ever was strong and bold,—
Shall he shrink from a wooden stem?
He will think of that brave band
He sank in the Cumberland:
Ay, he will sink like them.
Boldly his last sea-fight!
Can he strike? By Heaven, ’t is true!
Down comes the traitor Blue,
And up goes the captive White!
The hurrahs that, once and agen,
Rang from three thousand men,
All flushed and savage with fight!
Our dead lay cold and stark,
But our dying, down in the dark,
Answered as best they might,—
Lifting their poor lost arms,
And cheering for God and Right!