Ethan Rutherford: The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

On the hull, rivets have been countersunk to minimize drag. If the tide is with us, if the sea is calm, if we are cranking to absolute capacity, our top speed is four knots. If the water’s against us, we have a cruising speed of one knot and are in danger of capsizing. On the rear conning tower Frank’s painted “1863” and below it, “Speed Matters Little.” Someone else (not one of us) has painted, in smaller letters, “Also: Reason.” It shows a basic lack of understanding. As far as we can tell, our Confederacy is on the verge of collapse. What’s so unreasonable about wanting to give some of it back?

November and December pass without improvement around Battery Marshall, the focused attention of our war effort shifting from one losing front to another, and enthusiasm regarding our new weapon seems to have tapered from the top down. In the absence of any clear directive, our dives become endurance tests. How deep can we go? How fast can we pump air back into the ballast tanks? We turn tight circles underwater. We set the Hunley down on the harbor floor and practice shallow breathing. We dive and surface, acquainting ourselves with immersion. We memorize instrument placement. Attached to the outer hull is extra ballast, iron platelets i-bolted through the floor, which, in case of an emergency, can be unscrewed and dropped. We practice locating them in the dark.

Lieutenant Dixon studies tidal charts. Given that we are hand-powered, whenever we are scheduled to engage the blockade we will need to leave on the ebb tide and return with the flood. We will need the cover of darkness.

“Darkness, darkness, darkness,” Frank has taken to saying before Lieutenant Dixon blows out the candle.

“Light, light, light,” we say back, once the candle’s extinguished. We’re fond of the reversal.

There are moments of panic. Episodes of self-doubt that buffet our overall sub-marine elation. We’ve come to know our time underwater as a dampened and foggy silence punctuated by flashes of distress so immediately visceral it takes us days to stop shaking. During one dive, Lieutenant Dixon forgets to light the candle before setting the diving planes, and accidentally floods the ballast tanks before the rear hatch is fully sealed, taking on enough water that if he hadn’t immediately realized his mistake we would’ve certainly sunk. Another dive, we reverse into a pylon and break the flywheel that houses our propeller. While depth testing, Augustus succumbs to a brief hysteria, and in our rush to surface we almost roll to port. “Pardon that,” he says, shaking. He’d almost kicked a hole in the hull. “Pardoned,” Frank says.

At the dock we heave ourselves out of the hatch and stretch out flat on our backs, letting the unreality of what we’ve just done sink in. The men puttering around Battery Marshall shake their heads and keep a distance that signals discomfort. We give them hard looks in return. They’ve taken to calling us Pickett’s Charge, only without the charge. They place bets on the time it will take us to sink ourselves. The odds are on less than a week. We resent the implication. Frank reminds them that the odds haven’t changed for the last six weeks running. “So?” one of them says back.

“Whatever happened to patriotism?” Augustus says. “Don’t they know war heroes when they see them?”

“Apparently not,” Carleton, watching the latest bombardment of Charleston, replies.

One day, following up an idea we had the night before, Augustus rigs a dummy spar and we knock it into the hull of the Indian Chief . We’re pulled from the water for a week for having a detrimental effect on morale. “So it wasn’t the best way to illustrate our potential,” Frank says. “But morale? Half of me wishes it’d been a live load.”

“Half of you?” someone says back.

Frank and James disappear in a reverie of letter writing. Lieutenant Dixon takes a leave of absence to visit his fiancée. Carleton and I spend the week sitting near the water, throwing pebbles at floating sticks. When Augustus comes back, he tells us our comrades in arms have a new name for the Hunley: the peripatetic coffin.

I tell him I like the sound of it. Augustus shrugs. “Incapacitation is as incapacitation does,” he says.

“For our parade,” Carleton calls over his shoulder to Lieutenant Joosten, who’s running an inspection on the torpedo, “how about a full band and seven of South Carolina’s finest, untouched beauties?”

“We’ll see about a celebration,” Lieutenant Joosten, who has a beauty of his own, says, “when you guys actually do something.”

Our first chance actually to do something comes at the end of December when we receive an order to engage the U.S.S. Camden, a sloop of war that has just arrived in the harbor. As we make our preparations, the thump of artillery sounds in the distance. It has also come down from General Beauregard that, for our own safety, we are not to use the Hunley as a submersible, but to remain partially surfaced, using the night as camouflage. When this news reaches us, Augustus says nothing. Carleton says nothing. I say nothing.

“Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of this thing?” Frank says.

“You’re looking at me like I have a reassuring answer to that,” Lieutenant Dixon says.

We retrieve the torpedo from the armory and carry it the three hundred yards to the dock. My hands are sweating and twice Carleton asks us to stop so he can get a better grip. We fasten the boom to the bow, sit on the dock, and listen to the waves lap the iron sides of the hull. The night is moonless, and very dark.

Without a word, we lower ourselves into the Hunley . Infantrymen line the dock wearing expressions caught somewhere between skepticism and disbelief. As we cast off, one of them, a kid wearing a uniform three sizes too big, slowly waves. I close and secure the hatch without waving back.

Lieutenant Dixon sights the Camden and calls for a rotational speed of three quarters. He floods the front ballast tank and then gives the signal for Carleton to flood the rear. Beside me, Frank whispers a Hail Mary. Augustus triple checks the i-bolt at his feet. We dive incrementally until only the conning towers are surface-visible and then secure the tanks. Two minutes in, the Hunley ’s a hothouse. Six minutes in, Lieutenant Dixon blows out the candle, and we’re moving in a darkness so complete I feel outside of myself.

It takes us an hour to get to the mouth of the harbor. It takes us another hour to get within half a mile of the Camden . Lieutenant Dixon calls for a lower speed, and we’re surprised at the sound of his voice. My body’s aching from sitting in the same position for so long. My shoulders are on fire. Sweat pools in my boots.

When we’re what must be a hundred yards from the ship, Lieutenant Dixon orders us to stop. We take our hands off the propeller, and everything goes silent. We can hear the water breaking in wavelets over the conning towers as we glide forward. We can hear voices, indistinct. Laughter. Shouting. Part of a song. It sounds infinitely far away. For a moment we wonder if we’re prepared to do what we came out here for—it seems, suddenly, ungraspable and remote—and then Lieutenant Dixon hisses, “Stop. Reverse.”

We do nothing at first. “Reverse,” he says again. “It’s not the Camden, it’s just a picket ship.”

“What’s the difference?” Frank says.

“The difference is that we only have orders to engage the Camden, ” Lieutenant Dixon says. “Reverse.”

“Why don’t we just ram it?” I say. “We’re out here.”

“Reverse.”

Because the tide is against us, it takes us four hours to get back. By the time we reach the dock, morning has broken. We sit at our stations, cold with sweat, furious with humiliation. No one wants to get out. Finally Lieutenant Dixon unscrews the hatch. As he heaves himself out, he shakes like he has a palsy. “It wasn’t the Camden, ” he says, to someone at the dock.