“Cap’n wants to see you,” the deckhand shouted over the din.

“Be right up,” Hardy said, wiping his hands on an already greasy piece of burlap.

Straightening his uniform, Hardy ran a wooden comb through his hair, then climbed up the ladder through the port. Walking forward, he saluted Warley.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Hardy said.

“Yes,” Warley said. “How many inches of steam are we making?”

“About nine, sir,” Hardy noted.

Manassas could make nearly thirty before her boilers would blow.

“Why so little?” Warley asked. “I’m having problems with control.”

“It’s the fuel we loaded,” Hardy noted. “We have some seasoned wood and a half-load of coal — but if I burn that, we won’t have them when we go into battle.”

“So we burn green wood?” Warley said, wiping his nose, which was dripping from the smoke.

“Unless you order me otherwise,” Hardy said easily.

Warley nodded. Hardy was a good man and as fine an officer as he had aboard Manassas. “You made the right choice, William,” he said. “Let’s just hope next time we go out, it will be with a full load of prime fuel.”

“Yes, sir,” Hardy said, “that would be a blessing. For now, however, you have about fifteen more minutes of green wood.”

“Then that’s the way it is,” Warley said, dismissing Hardy with a crisp salute.

Turning the helm over to First Officer Charles Austin, Warley made his way to the bow, where the Manassas’s single nine-inch gun sat pointed downriver. He stared out at the blackness as he drew in breaths of clean air.

The Yankees were out there, and, seasoned wood or not, it was time for the rebels to visit.

The fog was growing thicker around the anchored Union fleet as Manassas steamed downriver. The flotilla was well armed. Richmond was armed with a total of twenty-six guns. The sailing sloop Preble carried seven 32-pound cannon, two 8-inch rifled guns, and a single 12-pounder. Less heavily armed was the steamer Water Witch, which mounted only four small guns. More heavily armed was the sloop Vincennes, which carried a complement of fourteen 32-pounders, twin 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbores, and four 8-inch rifled guns. Because of the late hour, the decks of the Union fleet were quiet.

Engineer Hardy popped his head through the hatch into the pilothouse. “We’re into the good wood. You should feel an improvement.”

Charles Austin at the helm shouted. “I felt the speed pick up a few minutes ago.”

“Good,” Hardy said. “Fear not — when we attack, I have a little trick up my sleeve.”

“I’ll let you know,” Austin shouted after the retreating Hardy.

Manassas was the lead ship of a small Confederate force.

Just behind and off her port side trailed the small Confederate tug Ivy, which had come downriver a few days before. Ivy mounted a new British-made Whitworth rifled gun. The Whitworth was a rare and expensive extravagance for the Confederate navy, effective and well built. The last few days, Ivy had stayed upriver, harassing the Union blockaders by shelling the Union fleet from a distance of nearly four miles.

Calhoun, Jackson, and Tuscarora also left Fort Jackson to travel downriver for the attack. Calhoun was an aging vessel equipped with walking beam engines. Her orders called for her to stay away from action and fire her guns from a distance. Jackson was a newer high-pressure paddle wheeler, but the Confederates were concerned that the noise from her engines and paddle wheels would alert the Union forces, and she was coming downriver last. Tuscarora was a small tug tasked with towing a fire raft the Confederates hoped to use to set the Union fleet ablaze.

Manassas was close to the Union ships. Austin strained to see through the fog.

Frolic, a southern schooner the Union had captured when she tried to run through the blockade with a load of cotton bound for London, was manned by a skeleton crew. She was due to travel north for conversion to a Union vessel in a few more weeks, and only a few men tasked with maintenance were aboard.

The master of Frolic, a laconic New Yorker named Sean Riley, was having trouble sleeping. The monotony was wearing on Riley, and after tossing and turning in his berth, he finally decided to try the main deck to see if the fresh air would bring sleep. Carrying a thin wool blanket, he headed for the stem to make himself comfortable.

A sound of tapping reached his ears. Maybe it was a woodpecker, Riley thought. No, not a woodpecker — the tapping had a distinctly metallic tone. Must be from Richmond, which was anchored nearby. Riley climbed into the riggings to investigate.

“I saw a dim outline ahead,” Warley said to Austin, after returning from the gun port. “I have no idea if it’s a Federal vessel, but she’s slightly to port.”

Austin adjusted the wheel, then peered from the tiny port into the gloom.

“What in God’s name,” Riley blurted aloud.

A blackened leviathan from the depths was quickly approaching. If not for the round smokestack and noise, the unknown object might have been a whale that had lost its bearings and traveled from the Gulf of Mexico upriver. Like a hunter stalking prey, the black object was advancing on Richmond.

The time was 3:40 A.M.

Sliding down a line, Riley began ringing Frolic’s bell. Then he shouted across the water. “Ahoy, Richmond, there’s a boat coming down the river.”

Over the sound of the bunkers being loaded, no one on Richmond heard his pleas.

Riley ran into the pilothouse to find an aerial flare.

“Enemy dead ahead,” Austin shouted down the hatch to Hardy.

“Now’s the time, boys,” Hardy yelled to his engine-room crew.

Opening the door to the firebox, the black gang took turns tossing kegs of tar, turpentine, tallow, and sulfur into the flames. Almost immediately, the steam gauge began creeping higher. At the helm, Austin felt Manassas surge forward.

On Preble, a midshipman saw Manassas advancing. He ran to warn Commander French. A few moments later, French appeared on deck in his long underwear. The Confederate ram was only twenty yards from Richmond—there was no time to give warning.

The explosive fuel tossed into Manassas’s firebox gave the vessel speed but also raised the temperature inside the vessel. The crew of the ram was covered in sweat, and their heads were swimming from the heat. One crewman began to sing “Dixie.” The rest of the sailors quickly followed suit.

Inside Manassas, it became chaos. The sailors were singing at the top of their lungs, the Union ships were sounding their warnings, and the vibration of the propeller shaft through the deck was making Austin’s feet numb. He peered through the tiny port at the vessel looming above.

They were ten yards from Richmond when Riley’s flare streaked skyward.

“Fire the gun,” Warley shouted to the gun captain.

The shot from the cannon struck the side of Joseph H. Toone and exited from the other side. Then Richmond’s bell began to ring the call to arms. In the confusion, Austin never hesitated in his advance and never deviated from his course. Hands firmly on the wheel, he steered Manassas directly into the side of Toone. The cast-iron ram performed as designed. It parted the planks of the frigate like a knife through the belly of a fish. The ram wedged between a pair of thick ribs two feet below the waterline. Water poured into the hull through a six-inch gash.

Fortunately, it was not a fatal blow.

On board Manassas, Austin touched the tip of his fingers to his forehead. When he brought them away and into the light, he could see red. At impact his head had slammed into a bulkhead and opened a cut. He dabbed at the wound with his handkerchief. Later he could tend to the wound — right now it was time to make another run at the Union ship.