PHOTO: Tift's Wharf - location of Tift's warehouse and ice house.  Source: Tift warehouse : Key West, Florida. 188-. Black & white photonegative. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. Accessed 12 Jan. 2016.<https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/5042>.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  It's 1862, and the Southernmost city in the Confederate States of America is occupied by Yankee troops.  The young men and boys of Key West are looking for ways to escape the island and join the Rebel army or navy.  The citizens with Rebel sympathies are giving the resident Yankees a hard time every chance they get.

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Sergeant Jules Pfifer, a career Army man, marched his patrol briskly through the evening heat toward a tall wooden house on the corner of Whitehead Street and Duval Street. Atop the house was perched a square cupola surrounded by the sailor-carved balustrades called gingerbread. These porches, just large enough for one or two persons to stand and observe the sea from the rooftop, were known as widows' walks. From this particular widow's walk an illegal Confederate flag flaunted its red stars and bars against the clear Key West sky.

The soldiers in Union blue marched smartly through the gate in the white picket fence, up the front steps, and in at the front door—which opened before them as if by magic.

"Evenin', Miz Lowe," Sergeant Pfifer said, without breaking stride, to the woman who had opened the door.

"Evenin', Sergeant," the lady of the house answered, unperturbed.

On the Lowe house roof, the stars and bars were whipped from their post; they disappeared from sight just as the soldiers, clomping and puffing and sweat-stained, arrived atop the stairway. Pfifer and another man crowded onto the widow's walk. Consternation wrinkled the soldiers' faces when they found no Confederate flag, only 17-year-old Caroline Lowe, smiling sweetly.

...

In the twilight, the three-story brick trapezoid of Fort Zachary Taylor loomed castle-like over the sea waves. It stood on its own 63-acre shoal, connected to the island of Key West by a narrow 1000-foot causeway. The fort had taken 21 years to build and was plagued by constant shortages of men and material as well as outbreaks of deadly yellow fever.

Yankee sentries paced between the black silhouettes of cannon pointed seaward. Firefly lights of campfires and lanterns sparkled on the parade ground and among the Sibley tents huddled on shore at the base of the causeway.

Midway between the fort and Caroline Lowe's flagpole, on the tin roof of a three-story wooden house, behind the gingerbread railing of another widow's walk, two athletic, handsome youngsters stood close together, blown by the wind. Twenty-year-old Richard scanned the sea with a spyglass. Joe, an inch shorter than Richard, kept one hand atop a floppy hat the wind wanted to steal.

Richard found something interesting to the east. He handed over the spyglass and pointed Joe toward the same point on the horizon. Joe searched, then zeroed in.

"Some rascal's laid a false light over on Boca Chica," Richard said, referring to the smaller island just northeast of Key West. "Come on!"

They tucked the spyglass into a hollow rail of the widow's walk and hastened down the stairs.

...

On neighboring Boca Chica island, night blanketed the beach. A hunched figure tossed a branch onto a blazing bonfire then slunk away into the darkness. Pine pitch popped and crackled in the fire, adding its sweet aroma to the tang of the salty breeze coming off the sea.

...

Inside a warehouse on Tift's Wharf, all shapes and sizes of kegs, boxes, and wooden crates towered in jagged heaps. Sickly yellow light from a sailor's lantern sent quivering shadows across the stacks. A spindly boy of 15, Joseph Porter, kept watch through a crack in the door.

On the floor a dozen teenaged boys hunkered down, whispering. Richard sneaked in from the rear of the building to join them. Behind him, out of the light and keeping quiet, came Joe.

Porter hissed, "Mudsills comin'!"

The whispered buzz of conversation halted. Someone doused the light. Bodies thumped to the floor as the boys took cover.

Outside, footsteps ground into the gravelly dirt of the street. Four Yankee soldiers, the source of the boys' concern, completed a weary circuit of the dark dockside buildings. They were Pennsylvania farm boys not much older than the Key West boys hiding inside.

The southern boys would have been surprised to know that the Yankees in the street were not technically "mudsills," that was the name given to northern factory workers who lived crowded together in dirt-floored shacks along muddy streets. Still, the word was applied to all the Yankee enemies, just as the northern boys would have called Key West residents "mooncussers," as if they all were pirates.

Native born citizens of Key West referred to themselves as Conchs, a term dating back to the 1780s immigration of British Loyalists from the Bahamas. A large shellfish called a conch was plentiful in the local waters and became a staple of the pioneers' diet.

On Tift's Wharf one of the Pennsylvania soldiers said something in Dutch-German, and the others murmured agreement. They sounded homesick. One slapped a mosquito on his neck then turned up his collar, grumbling.

In front of the warehouse the soldiers stopped beside a barrel set to catch rainwater running off the tin roof during storms. They loosened their woolen tunics and dipped their handkerchiefs into the water, laving themselves, trying in vain to ease the steamy agony of tropical heat.

Inside, the wide-eyed Conch boys held their breath, listening to the sounds from the water barrel outside. Joseph Porter trembled, perspired, and stared cross-eyed at a gigantic mosquito making itself at home on the end of his nose. He tried to raise one hand quietly to chase the brute away, but his elbow nudged a crate of bottles. Glass tinkled. The boys froze.

Outside, a soldier started at the sound and snatched up his weapon. "Vas ist das?"

The other soldiers were less concerned. They were hot, tired, and not looking for trouble.

"Rats," one said. "These pirate ships are full of them. Let's go back to the ice house. It's cooler."

The sweat-covered Conch boys heard the receding footsteps of the Yankees. Long, sweltering seconds later, Porter crept to his crack in the door and risked a peek. "It's all right. They're gone."

Red-haired William Sawyer lit the lantern.

A bigger boy, Marcus Oliveri, stepped forward and cuffed Porter smartly. "Porter, you imbecile!"

"Here now, Marcus!" said William. "He didn't mean to."

Oliveri returned to his place in the circle of boys forming around the lantern. "I don't fancy getting arrested or maybe shot because Porter can't abide getting mosquito bit for his country!"

"I'm sorry," said Porter. "It was an accident."

"Let's just forget it," urged William. "Let's finish up and get out of here before they come back. Now, the English schooner leaves for Nassau tomorrow morning. Richard and Marcus and Alfred and me will be on it. The rest of you know what to do to cover for us."

An older boy with a thick Bahamian accent, Alfred Lowe, shook his finger under the nose of a friend. "And you, Bogy Sands, stay away from my sister while I'm gone, you hear me?"

Richard looked surprised. He thought he and Caroline Lowe had an unspoken agreement. "Caroline? Bogy!"

"You ain't engaged to her, Thibodeaux," said Bogy.

William Sawyer's hair flashed the same fiery color as the lamplight when he reached across the circle to separate Richard and Bogy. "That's enough of that! Let's not be fighting each other. God willing, we'll all be soldiers of the Seventh Florida Regiment within the year. Any questions?"

All around the circle the boys murmured in the negative.

"Let's get home then, and be ready when the call comes," William said.

The boys scrambled away. Joe and Richard were the last to leave, watching for Yankee patrols while the others sneaked out.

Joe complained, "I'll probably break my neck walking around in your boots. You got such big feet, Wretched! I had to stuff the toes with rags."

"You just keep that hat on and stay out of Papa's way. You'll do fine," Richard replied.

As they moved to leave the warehouse, Richard put an arm around Joe's shoulders and gave an encouraging squeeze.

...

In the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba, just before dawn, two lithe, black fishermen reacted to the flare of a distress signal that arced upward in the eastern sky. One fisherman reached into the bilge of his craft and produced the empty pink-and-white spiraling shell of that large mollusk called a conch. He lifted the trumpet-size conch shell to his lips and blew a loud, hooting blast.

Seconds later on Tift's Wharf, a lookout in a wooden tower reacted to the distant conch horn, scanned the eastern horizon with a spyglass for barely an instant, then clanged the wreckers' bell and shouted to wake the whole island.

"Wreck asho-o-o-re! Wreck asho-o-o-re!"

Men of all sizes came running from every direction. Black men and white, old and young, in jerseys and loose short pants, they raced through the streets of Key West to the Jamaica sloops moored in the harbor. Every shopkeeper (save one, William Curry) left his store, every clergyman his church, every able-bodied homeowner his house. Quickly it became apparent that nearly every man in Key West, whatever else he might be, was a wrecker.

Men shouted, the bell clanged, the distant conch horn trumpeted. The race was on. Yankee soldiers, standing on the street corner, did well not to be trampled in the rush.

At Fort Taylor, blue-clad soldiers on the roof of the fort took note of the wreck and watched closely the activity in the harbor, ready to take action if necessary.

Aboard the moored schooner Lady Alyce, white-bearded, patriarchal Captain Elias Thibodeaux, regal in his double-breasted jacket, surveyed the scene with hawk's eyes. The Lady Alyce, at 50 feet and 136 tons, was a sleek topsail schooner with well-greased masts, coiled lines, and shining brightwork. She looked like she could outsail anything.

"Mister Simmons," the captain shouted.

The mate, Cataline Simmons, was a black Bahamian with the muscles and instincts of an experienced sailor and the accent of an Oxford professor. "Aye, sir!"

Thibodeau's eyes searched the wharf again, but it was no use. What he sought was not there. "Hoist the mains'l," he commanded.

Cataline, too, looked with concern at the wharf before executing the order.

"Today, Simmons!" bellowed the captain. "We'll leave him if we have to, but I will be first to bespeak that wreck!"

Cataline leapt into action, gesturing to four crewmen—three white, one black—who waited poised at their stations. "Aye, sir! Hoist the mains'l."

The three white crewmen set about their tasks quickly, skillfully. The small, wiry black man, Stepney Austin, hesitated. If Thibodeaux was king here, and he undoubtedly was, then Stepney Austin was the court jester. Monkeylike in his movements and Cockney in his speech, he could be the bane of Simmons' existence if he were not so brave and loyal.

"Cast off the docklines," said the captain.

Cataline threw Stepney a look. Stepney moved as if he had been waiting for just such an order.

The sail was filling; other boats were getting underway. Stepney cast off the bow lines and moved deliberately toward the stern, watching the wharf as did Cataline. Thibodeaux turned away and looked seaward, giving up on finding what he sought upon the wharf.

Then Joe, baggy in Richard's clothing and unsteady in Richard's boots, appeared at the far side of the wharf, running toward the Lady Alyce.

Stepney cried, "There he is!"

Thibodeaux did not look. "Cast off!"

Cataline lifted a cargo block hanging from the rigging nearby and, as he spoke, swung the block like a great pendulum out over the wharf. "Casting off. Aye, aye, sir."

Stepney was forced to comply, but it was in slow motion that he cast off the stern line.

Joe ran desperately to close the gap of several yards between Richard's reluctant boots and the departing schooner. When the cargo block swung toward Joe, Joe took full advantage of it by grabbing it and hanging on for dear life.

Stepney chanted, "Come on, come on!"

Joe's forward motion combined with the pendulum swing of the block to carry Joe, like a trapeze artist, across the chasm now yawning between schooner and wharf. Joe landed more-or-less flatfooted on the deck behind Captain Thibodeaux. Richard's floppy hat tumbled from Joe's head, followed by a cascade of unruly curls that reached halfway down her back.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Will Richard and his friends succeed in escaping the island and joining the Rebel army?  Will Joe (a/k/a Josephine Marie Thibodeaux) fool her father long enough for her brother to get away?

In Chapter 2:  A Yankee spy arrives on the island - and ends up living in the Thibodeaux house!

Thanks for reading, voting, and commenting.  Let me know if you have any experiences or memories of Key West.

Until next time,

Iris