Perilous Fight

by Stephen Budiansky

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  ON THE passage south through the Atlantic the Essex had marked the crossing of the Tropic of Cancer with the rough if time-honored ceremony much beloved of the common sailor, and prudently indulged by their captain as a boost to esprit de corps.

  “Sail ho!” called the lookout at the masthead, at the appropriate moment.

  “Where away?” replied the officer of the deck.

  “Small boat on the lee bow.”

  “What boat is that?” hailed the officer.

  “Neptune’s, the god of the sea’s; permission to come on board with his train.”

  “Granted.”

  Every man who had not before crossed the line had to submit to the initiation; King Neptune and Queen Amphitrite sat on their throne of boards lashed to an old gun carriage, a boat was placed on deck filled with water—and, as one seaman who went through the ritual at the time described the usual practice, “tar, slush, rotten onions and potatoes, stinking codfish, bilge-water, and various other nauseous ingredients improper to mention”—and the uninitiated were blindfolded and called up one by one to answer to Neptune and swear an oath never to leave the pump till it sucks, never to go up the lee-rigging in good weather, never to desert the ship till she sinks, never to eat brown bread when he could get white (unless he liked it better), never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress. Then he was lathered by one of Neptune’s barbers with a mix of paint, grease, slush, and tar and shaved with a rusty barrel hoop, dunked two or three times in the barge water, welcomed as a true son of the ocean, and cast loose.

  Officers were allowed to buy an exemption with an allowance of rum; Neptune and his attendants, Porter recalled, “paid their devotions so frequently to Bacchus, that before the ceremony of christening was half gone through, their godships were unable to stand.… On the whole, however, they got through the business with less disorder and more good humour than I expected; and although some were most unmercifully scraped, the only satisfaction sought was that of shaving others in their turn with new invented tortures.”8

  On December 2, 1812, the Essex had taken a British packet ship, the Nocton, loaded with $55,000 in specie, a large portion of which was distributed to the crew; and with nothing immediately available to spend it on, the windfall set off a spate of gambling until Porter announced that any amount staked at games of chance would be forfeited to whoever informed on the transaction, the informer’s name to be kept secret. There was also some incipient trouble over rations: Porter had kept the crew on two-thirds rations of salt meat and half rations of bread since leaving the United States to extend their time at sea, a privation the crew had cheerfully accepted in exchange for the shortfall being made up in cash. But when Porter ordered the grog ration cut to two-thirds to make sure it would last too, “every man in the ship refused to receive any … unless he could get the full allowance,” Porter said. The captain tried to argue with them that two-thirds now was better than the “dejection and sickness” that would come later if it ran out altogether, but the crew was adamant. Porter handled the incipient rebellion by announcing that the grog tub would be put out with two-thirds of the rations in it and dumped upside down fifteen minutes later. Every man took his grog.9

  On January 19, 1813, they arrived at St. Catherine’s and waited a week for Bainbridge and the Constitution. “I was perfectly at a loss now where to find the commodore,” Porter maintained. He called the purser to give him a report on the stores: there were 184 barrels of beef, 114 of pork, 21,763 pounds of bread, 1,741 gallons of spirits. That would suffice for three months, but Porter was itching for an excuse to carry out the dashing plan he had had his eyes on all along—to sail into the Pacific and cut a swath of destruction through the British whaling fleet. He now argued to himself that since Bainbridge had failed to meet him at four rendezvous, it was “absolutely necessary to depart from the letter of my instructions; I therefore determined to pursue a course which seemed best calculated to injure the enemy, and would enable me to prolong my cruise.” To prolong his cruise he first needed supplies, “and the first place that presented itself to my mind, was the port of Conception, on the coast of Chili.” With the possibility of additional British warships arriving along the Brazilian coast, which might trap him if he attempted to put into a port there, “there seemed no other choice left for me except capture, starvation, or blockade.”10 If it was self-serving it also admirably matched the strategic outlook of Bainbridge, fully shared by the new navy secretary, of keeping the British continually off balance, chasing over half the globe, never knowing where the tiny but highly annoying American navy would strike next.

  On January 26, 1813, Porter set a course to the southwest, and three nights later the wind hauled around to south by east, sharp lightning began around midnight, and as the wind rose the crew went aloft in the storm to send down the royal yards and double reef the topsails. Woolen clothes that had been lying about the ship suddenly were being carefully guarded as temperatures began dropping. For the next week the winds would die to a dead calm, then spring back in heavy blows from every point of the compass, and Porter prepared the ship “to meet the worst,” he said, sending down the royal masts, unreaving all unnecessary running rigging, removing every heavy or unnecessary article from the tops, striking down to the hold all the shot except six per gun, running the guns in from their usual positions at the side of the decks and securing them amidships, readying three anchors so they could be let go in an instant in an emergency.11

  On February 3 the sun rose on a perfect clear day, the wind steadied from the northwest, and every sail was set for what promised to be an easy run to the straits. Porter issued a notice to the crew formally announcing what all had guessed by now but which sent spirits soaring with its promise of riches and South Seas girls to match the provident weather.

  Sailors and Marines:

  A large increase of the enemy’s forces compels us to abandon a coast that will neither afford us security nor supplies … We will, therefore, proceed to annoy them, where we are least expected. What was never performed, we will attempt. The Pacific Ocean affords us many friendly ports. The unprotected British commerce, on the coast of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, will give you an abundant supply of wealth; and the girls of the Sandwich Islands, shall reward you for your sufferings during the passage around Cape Horn.

  D. Porter12

  But by 2:00 p.m. the weather turned worse than ever, the wind head-on from their southwesterly course; then the next day the heaviest blows and worst sea yet, the wind boxing the compass and sending the sea pouring through the canvas shield around the rudder hole and flooding the wardroom. Whales appeared in the distance, and exhausted albatrosses rode on floating masses of kelp on the heaving sea.

  The thirteenth found the ship driving south through a thick rain and haze, visibility down to a mile, Porter confident that the eastern end of Staten Island, the easternmost tip of land of the horn, lay thirty-five miles ahead. His plan was to bypass any of the inland passages by going completely around Staten. Late that afternoon a violent ripple appeared in the water close by along with great flocks of birds and masses of kelp. Porter ordered extra lookouts, took in the topgallant sails, double reefed the topsails, furled the mainsail, and instructed the officers to be ready to haul the wind if necessary. At half past six breakers were seen three-quarters of a mile to the southeast. A tremendous sea was running, plunging the forecastle completely under, and the ship was heading for the breakers with no hope now of weathering them and no sea room to wear away from the strong wind impelling the ship eastward. The only hope was to get the ship in stays and tack, and with the lead going constantly taking soundings the mainsail was set in a flash, the ship got around, but the jib was blown to pieces a moment later.

  With night falling there was no choice left but to carry a heavy press of sail to keep off the lee shore, and Porter had her stand to the west-northwest for an hour when suddenly the water began to run smooth and a sharp-eyed lookout
spotted land a mile ahead on the bows: it was now beyond doubt that they had gone to the west of Staten and were in the Strait of Le Maire. Porter ordered the helm put aweather and all sail made to southward, and with the tide mercifully with them, they hugged the coast of Tierra del Fuego, clearing the straits at nine o’clock that night.13

  By the eighteenth they had made their westing and turned north into the Pacific. The fresh provisions from St. Catherine’s were long gone, and now the pet monkeys vanished one by one, and even the rats that had overrun the ship began to be “esteemed a dainty,” in Porter’s words. Despite the assault of the rats on the bread rooms, the supplies of hardtack were still holding out and, even if full of weevils, were still edible; but the peas and beans proved to be nothing but “a mass of chaff and worms” when the casks were opened.

  Once again the weather beguiled them; once again the worst was to come. On the last day of February, now well into the Pacific, the ship was in such a gentle sea and mild weather that Porter planned to get the guns back in position and the spars sent back up that day. By noon the wind “blew with a fury even exceeding any thing we had yet experienced,” and it was touch and go whether they would be dashed to pieces on a lee shore or simply founder first. The ship rolled so violently that the shingle ballast choked the pumps, and so much water was coming in from the opening of the seams of the ship with each heave that she began to wallow like a bloated whale.

  “The sea had increased to such a height, as to threaten to swallow us at every instant; the whole ocean was one continued foam of breakers; and the heaviest squall that I ever before experienced, had not equaled in violence the most moderate intervals of this hurricane,” wrote Porter. For three days it blew, the ship able to change tacks but once the whole time; three times, Porter was hurled down the hatchways by violent jerks of the ship. The pumps had been cleared, but so much water had come aboard that everything was afloat between decks.

  Then at three in the morning of March 3 an enormous sea broke over the ship that seemed to spell the end. The gun-deck ports were all broken in, the boats stove to pieces, the entire ship deluged. David Farragut, who had joined the ship as a twelve-year-old midshipman, said it was the only time he had seen “a regular good seaman paralyzed by fear at the dangers of the sea—Many of the marines & some of the seamen were sunk on their knees in prayer.” Then through the chaos and wind came the roaring, commanding voice of boatswain’s mate William Kingsbury, who had been the inebriated Neptune at the crossing-of-the-line ceremony. “Damn your eyes, put your best foot forward, there’s one side of her left yet,” he absolutely bellowed. The men at the wheel kept their heads and their station, the sky began to clear, and then the worst really was over.14 On March 14 the Essex rounded the Point of Angels, and looking through his spyglass, Captain Porter saw a drove of loaded mules coming down a mountain on a zigzag path, and then in the next instant the whole city of Valparaíso was in view, the forts bursting out behind the rocks, the harbor crowded with shipping, colors flying. He was uncertain of his reception in Spanish territory, but before the Essex even got to anchor the captain of the port came aboard and to Porter’s “astonishment” offered every assistance the city could offer: Chile was in revolt against monarchical Spain and welcomed the Americans as allies in the fight for republicanism, and liberty.15

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  A MONTH later, the Essex, sated with the provisions and almost exhausting hospitality of Valparaíso, rounded the point of Narborough in the Galápagos. Every yard aloft was manned by the officers and crew, every eye straining for the first glimpse of Banks Bay ahead and the crowd of British whalers they expected to see when they weathered the point and opened on the broad, thirty-five-mile-wide bay. The bay was said to abound every March to July in whales that came to feed on the cuttlefish the currents swept in, and if the British were anywhere, this was where they would find them.

  Secretly, Porter had a “dread of disappointment”: since leaving Valparaíso on March 23 he had been continually on the trail of his quarry and continually frustrated in his hopes. At Valparaíso the Americans had been feted at huge banquets and balls, stuffed with twenty-course meals, swiftly supplied with wood, water, and provisions “in the greatest abundance, of an excellent quality, and at a more moderate price than any port in the United States,” Porter noted, and assured by all concerned that the coast of Peru and the Galápagos Islands were where all the British whalers surely were. But also in Valparaíso harbor when they had arrived were two Spanish ships that sailed for Lima during their stay, sure to spread the alarm to the British agent there of the presence of an American frigate in Pacific waters. And so the crew of the Essex worked nonstop amid their abundant social duties to get back to sea. “Perhaps no week of my life was ever more actively employed, both in labour and in pleasure,” Porter wrote afterward; and in nine days they were away, soon making all sail northward.16

  Two days out of Valparaíso they caught up with a Peruvian privateer, the Nereyda; flying English colors and ordering an American whaler he had fallen in with to hoist an English jack over an American ensign to make her look like his prize, Porter forced the privateer to heave to. He had gotten the officer of the Nereyda into his cabin, listened to his tale of the American vessels he had recently taken, offered to relieve him of his twenty-three American prisoners, and only when that was done did Porter strike the English colors, raise the American flag, and fire two shots over the Peruvian, who immediately struck his flag. Since Spain was neutral in the American–British war, the privateer was little better than a pirate, but Porter decided not to antagonize the royalist viceroy in Lima. Porter ordered the Nereyda’s guns, ammunition, small arms, and even the light sails thrown over the side, and allowed the crew to sail back to Lima carrying a note to the viceroy:

  U S Frigate Essex

  At Sea 26th March 1813

  Your Excellency,

  I have this day met with the Ship Nereyda mounting fifteen Guns, bearing your Excellencies Patent and sailing under the Spanish flag—

  On examination of said Ship I found on her as prisoners the Officers and crews of two vessels belonging to the United States of America employed solely in the Whale fishery of those seas captured by her and sent for Lima, after being plundered of boats, cordage, provisions, clothes and various other articles …

  I have therefore to preserve the good understanding which should ever exist between the Government of the United States and the provinces of Spanish America determined to prevent in future such vexatious and piratical conduct, and with this view have deprived the Nereyda of the means of doing the American commerce any further injury for the present, And have sent her to Lima in order that her commander may meet with such punishment from your excellency as his offence may deserve—I have the honor to be With the highest respect and consideration Your Excellencies Obt. Huml. Servt.

  D. PORTER17

  Flying fish appeared as they crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, and the crew spent several days completely altering the appearance of the frigate, painting a broad yellow streak around her hull, rigging false waistcloths as high as the quarterdeck nettings to hide the gunports, painting the quarter galleries different colors, and setting up a false poop deck to make her look like a Spanish merchantman.18 They had heard that whaling ships left letters in a box at the landing place on Charles Island, the southernmost of the Galápagos, and on the eighteenth of April, Porter sent his first lieutenant John Downes in a boat to see what he could learn. Three hours later Downes returned with several not very recent letters from the box, which he had found readily enough, nailed to a post with a painted sign atop it reading HATHAWAY’S POSTOFFICE. The most recent letter was dated the previous June, but it listed six large British whalers on their way to the island of Albemarle, and indicated that they intended to be there for at least a year filling their holds with whale oil.19

  And so the Essex headed for Albemarle, whose large crescent shape formed Banks Bay to the northeast of Narborough. And so
every eye was straining as they weathered the tip of Narborough on the afternoon of April 23, and not a sail was to be seen across the entire bay.

  With some difficulty Porter located a watering place on Albemarle, and on a rock were scratched the names of American and British ships; nearby were fresh ashes and the bones and shells of a recently butchered turtle and a leaf from an English political pamphlet. But the water source was little more than a damp rock where a few drops collected from a tiny spring. Water was already becoming a problem. The islands they had so far put in at teemed with giant land tortoises that the crew at once developed a passion for; their flavor was said to be like fine veal and their fat more delicious than olive oil. Iguanas by the hundreds were to be had too, and the crew set about clubbing them on the head. But water was barely to be found anywhere.

  A few days later, as the Essex sailed north, the lookout’s cry of “Sail ho” sent an electrifying surge coursing through the ship. But it turned out to be only two sand banks, “whose appearance had been so strangely altered by the intervention of the fog,” wrote Porter, “as to assume precisely the appearance of ships under their top-gallant-sails.” The false alarm broke the last dam that had been holding back the feelings of the crew. “The disappointment … occasioned no trifling degree of dejection and despondency,” Porter said. “There were few on board the ship who did not now despair of making any captures about the Gallipagos Islands; and I believe that many began to think that the information we had received,… as well as the flattering expectations which this information had given rise to, had been altogether deception.”

  The current was now sweeping them to the northwest, and for several days they fought an unsuccessful battle against baffling winds and the running sea to work back southward, but Porter was determined not to leave the islands “so long as there remained a hope of finding a British vessel among them.” On the twenty-eighth he passed a sleepless and anxious night. At daylight the next day, Porter was roused from his cot by calls of “Sail ho” echoing once again throughout the ship. In a moment all hands rushed to the deck, and there she was, a large ship bearing west, to which the Essex at once gave chase. In an hour, two more sail were sighted. At nine o’clock they came up on the first ship, the British whaler Montezuma, with fourteen hundred barrels of spermaceti oil. Porter put a prize crew aboard and made chase for the other two ships, but at eleven o’clock the wind fell calm with the whalers still eight miles off. Porter was concerned the ships might outrun him when the breeze returned, for the Montezuma’s captain had identified them as the armed letter-of-marque whalers Georgiana and Policy, both reputed to be fast sailers, armed with six to ten guns apiece.20