Ethan Rutherford: The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

The sound of iron walls adjusting to the underwater pressure around you was like the sound of improbability announcing itself: a broad, deep, awake-you-from-your-stupor kind of salvo. The first time we heard it, we thought we were dead; the second time we heard it, we realized we were. The third time wiped clean away any concern we had regarding our well-being and we whooped like madmen in our sealed iron tub, hands at the crank, hunched at our stations like crippled industrial workers. Frank yelled like a siren without taking a breath. Augustus hooted like a screech owl. The walls pinged and groaned, but held their seams. We screamed for more.

My name is Ward Lumpkin, and I man the second crank station aboard the “fish boat” H. L. Hunley, the first underwater vessel commissioned for combat by the Confederate States of America. There are seven of us aboard, not including our captain, Lieutenant Dixon, and in navigating the submarine murk of Charleston Harbor we make up the third volunteer crew in as many months. Mechanical failure; flooding ballast tanks; human error; bad luck: conventional wisdom around Battery Marshall has the survival rate aboard the Hunley hovering near zero, and that’s without ever having engaged an enemy ship. Cannon probability, Augustus calls it, as in, stuff yourself inside a cannon and see what happens. But there’s probability, and there’s certainty. Antietam was a washout. Gettysburg was worse. Crescent City folded like the house of cards it was and we lost the Mississippi.

And now? In Richmond, war widows have begun rioting over bread. Railways in our control are being blown at such a rate you’d think it was some kind of competition.

One thing, at least, is clear to everyone: the Union naval blockade encircling Charleston must be broken if we are to continue aggression with the North, and if things are ever going to roll our way it’ll be by doing the unexpected. General to germ-soaker we fold our hats and stand in awe before the ingenuity of this machine: a cylindrical steam boiler, lengthened and tapered at the ends, outfitted with conning towers, a propeller, and diving fins. Affixed to our bow is a seventeen-foot-long iron spar torpedo that carries 135 pounds of gunpowder, which Frank has taken to calling the Demoralizer. We are the unheard of: an instrument of destruction that maneuvers under the waves. If we survive our test dives, if we make it past Breach Inlet without rolling in the tide, if we crank undetected the three miles from the mouth of Charleston Harbor, it’s enough ordnance to send any ship we happen to greet to the bottom of the ocean.

“Desperation breeds invention,” Arnold has begun saying each time he seals the hatch.

“May wonders never cease,” Frank says back.

Arnold Becker, Carleton F. Carlsen, Frank Collins, James Wicks, Augustus Miller, Joseph Ridgaway. Before the Hunley arrived in Charleston, before we volunteered our way underwater, all of us were stationed aboard the receiving ship Indian Chief off of Battery Marshall. The Sloop of Invalids, we called it . The C.S.S. Not Much to Report . Everyone aboard had either been shot, trampled, maimed, heavily shelled, amputated, or otherwise shellacked on various campaigns. We suffered from swamp foot, dysentery, low morale, and general incompetence. Our commander, Lieutenant Joosten, enjoyed telling us that he woke each morning wondering about the talents of his crew, and passed each night trying to forget. To a man, we were considered unreliable in combat. Frank had been at Manassas, seen his best friend ribboned by shrapnel, and had dreams like you wouldn’t believe. Augustus had stepped on his bayonet while cleaning his rifle and severed a tendon. I was born with a hip irregularity and moved so herky-jerky it made other people wince. “Well, I guess we all know why you’re here,” Frank had said when I introduced myself. In response I told a joke about a three-legged plow horse, which either no one heard, or no one got.

On deck, we had an unobstructed view of what Augustus had dubbed our Tableau of Lessening Odds. The Federal blockade was stupefyingly effective. Union canonships patrolled the mouth of the harbor, just out of range, and sank anything we tried to send through with the insouciance of a bull swatting blackflies. At night, they resumed bombardment of the city. High, arching incendiaries, numbering in the thousands, painted the sky. You felt the concussion in your chest.

Damage reports read like the end of the world. Houses, churches, and hotels were demolished. Everything south of Calhoun Street was rubble. Stray dogs ran in packs down the boulevard and looked at whoever was sifting through the wreckage like, What are you doing here?

On our receiving ship, we sat back, dumbfounded, and familiarized ourselves with new definitions of inadequacy. Supplies were running low. Reinforcements, always coming, never showed. Larger attempts at mobilization had been catastrophic. We practiced knots and evacuation drills, memorized flag signals, and wondered how much longer the city would hold. We’d stand watch, scan the horizon for runners, and return below with a tally of the gulls we’d counted. Downtime was spent staring at cleats.

“I can’t say I’m proud of our efforts,” Augustus said one day as hundreds of pounds of artillery whistled into Charleston.

“I’ve addressed the firmament,” Frank said back, watching the bombardment with his head in his hands. “And it remains uninterested in your evaluation.”

Half our guns had been off-loaded and sent to the front. Those that remained sported the dust of the museum pieces they were. Our defense seemed to consist of getting—and staying—out of range. “If we’re not going to actually be receiving anything, couldn’t we be of more use somewhere else?” Frank said one day to Lieutenant Joosten when he was topside checking inventory.

“Your enthusiasm,” Lieutenant Joosten said, looking around as if seeing us for the first time, “is admirable.”

After he’d left, Augustus kicked at the rail and broke his toe. Frank counted the picket ships just outside Battery Marshall’s cannon line and cursed all fourteen vessels, then our ship, then himself with pleasurable combinations of colorful language. “We’re just going to sit here in the pluff mud, watching, until they destroy everything?” Arnold said. “That a rhetorical question?” someone said back.

Two weeks later, on August 12, 1863, the Hunley was brought in over rail on a flatcar, transferred to dry dock, and, with the help of thirty-five men and an elaborate pulley system, lowered into the water. We crowded the gunwales. We jostled for a view. The afternoon heat shimmered the air above her like a mirage.

“Cure for what ails you,” someone said. “Our secret weapon’s an iron pecker.”

“For the record,” Lieutenant Joosten said, clearing his throat, “that’s an underwater iron pecker.”

The crowd that had gathered by the dock parted to make room for a group of six nonuniformed men, carrying a long boom with a charge and spar at one end. Even from where I was standing I could see they were less than comfortable handling the load. They attached it gingerly to the bow of the vessel, and backed away.