Things were quiet for a time, but on February 28, John Witter, a marine, was found drowned in the surf for no apparent reason. Gamble investigated but failed to discover what had happened. A short time later, on March 6, Isaac Coffin, an escaped British prisoner whom Gamble had recaptured after the Essex left, escaped again during the night. Aware that Coffin’s companions had freed him, Gamble took eight armed men and searched for him. They found him in a native house, took him back to the ship, and put him in irons. The following morning at ten o’clock, Gamble, with all crew and prisoners assembled, gave Coffin three dozen lashes.
Twelve days later, four men deserted during the night. One was Coffin, who had been set loose from his irons once more. Another was John Robertson, an American prisoner in irons. Two of the four were original members of the Essex crew. They took advantage of the darkness, stove in Gamble’s blue boat (the fastest pulling boat) in two places, and left the bay in a whaleboat. No one saw them escape except a former prisoner, who had the watch on deck that night and was one of them. The deserters took several muskets, a supply of ammunition, and other articles such as two compasses, clothing, a spyglass, an English ensign, two axes, a grindstone, and a boat sail, all of which would be of considerable use. Gamble had no hope of catching them. “My attempt to pursue them was prevented by their destroying partially the only boat (near the beach) at that time seaworthy,” he wrote. The deserters made their way to Santa Christiana (Tahuata) Island, one of the Marquesas, where they hid for months until a British frigate, the Briton, picked them up.
By April, Gamble was losing any hope of Porter returning, and on the 12th, he began rigging the Seringapatam and Sir Andrew Hammond for departure. The remaining men were employed removing everything of service from the Greenwich to the Seringapatam. While the work went ahead, Gamble sensed that something was wrong, that perhaps a mutiny was brewing, and he ordered the remaining muskets, ammunition, and small arms taken to the Greenwich—the ship he was living on.
On May 7, the uprising he had feared broke out on the Seringapatam. He happened to be on board at the time, and even though he was on guard, he was surprised when he was violently attacked. An intense struggle ensued. Gamble was beaten to the deck and had his hands and legs tied. He was then thrown below and dragged to the cabin, where he was confined beneath the floor in a space that had no window or light. Midshipman Feltus and Acting Midshipman Clapp were also knocked down and put in the same place with Gamble, where they were tied down and could hardly breath. The entrance to their tiny space was then nailed down and a sentinel placed over it. After complaining loudly about their inhuman confinement, the three were allowed into the cabin. Gamble was forced to sit on a chest under the skylight with two men guarding him.
The fourteen mutineers lost no time spiking the guns on the Greenwich and the Sir Andrew Hammond and at Fort Madison. Then they removed the arms and ammunition from the Greenwich and put them aboard the Seringapatam. They also took everything else of use to them from the other ships and put them on the Seringapatam. They sent for Robert White, whom Porter had chased from the Essex for mutinous conduct, and bending the topsails, got underway at 6 P.M., standing out of the bay with a light wind off the land. Gamble believed that almost none of the mutineers were Americans. He thought that twelve were Englishmen, six of whom had joined the Essex’s crew and six who had remained prisoners. There was also a foreigner, and the American, Robert White, making a total of fourteen. Midshipman Feltus had a different view of who the fourteen were. According to him, six were prisoners, four were former prisoners who had joined the Essex crew, and four were Americans. The four Americans were Thomas Belcher, James Bantum, Martin Stanley, and Robert White. Feltus was undoubtedly correct.
When the mutineers were moving slowly out of the bay, an unfortunate accident happened. Lewis Ronsford, a clumsy sentinel who was guarding Gamble, Feltus, Clapp and two other prisoners, mishandled a pistol he was carrying and shot Gamble in the left heel a little below the ankle bone. When the mutineers on the deck above heard the shot, they immediately assumed the worst, grabbed muskets, and pointed them down the skylight. They were about to fire at Gamble and the others, when Ronsford shouted that he had discharged his weapon in error. Somewhat relieved—they did not want to kill their captives—the mutineers backed off. But Gamble was left with a dangerous wound.
By nine o’clock, the Seringapatam was safely out of the bay. The night was dark and the wind blowing fresh. The mutineers decided to get rid of Gamble and his companions, Midshipmen Clapp and Feltus, and seamen William Worth, and Richard Sandsbury. They put them in a leaky boat, gave them a keg of gunpowder, and three old muskets, which Gamble had asked for. While the Seringapatam disappeared into the night, Gamble and the others rowed for the Greenwich, bailing for six long miles, fighting to keep the boat afloat, before finally making it back to the ship, exhausted, but feeling lucky that the mutineers had not killed them and dumped their bodies overboard.
Two days later, Gamble and his remaining men were hard at work making preparations to leave for Valparaiso. They were assisted by George Ross and William Brudenell, Americans who by chance were on Nuku Hiva collecting sandalwood. While Gamble’s men were moving supplies from Fort Madison to the Sir Andrew Hammond, the Taiohae—urged on by Wilson, the tattooed Englishman with a fondness for rum, whom Porter had trusted and used as an interpreter—attacked them, murdering Midshipman Feltus, John Thomas, Thomas Gibbs, and William Brudenell. Not everyone was killed, however. Peter Caddington, a marine, and William Worth jumped into the water and started swimming for the ship with the Taiohae after them.
Seeing what was happening, Midshipman Clapp and three others put off in a boat to rescue them, while Gamble fired grape and canister shot at the attackers from the ship. Caddington was badly wounded as he struggled forward, but Clapp managed to pick up both him and Worth and return to the ship safely, with the Taiohae working hard to intercept them. The Taiohae did not stop either. They kept on coming and tried to board the Greenwich and Sir Andrew Hammond. But Gamble, who was on the Sir Andrew Hammond, drove them off with a cannon.
Meanwhile, Wilson and hundreds of Taiohae were overrunning Fort Madison. They tried to get the spikes out of the guns as quickly as possible and turn them on the Sir Andrew Hammond, where Gamble and the rest of his men were—with the exception of John Pettinger, a sick man aboard the Greenwich.
Gamble—still in excruciating pain—was running low on ammunition. He knew he had to get the Sir Andrew Hammond out of the bay before Wilson succeeded in readying the shore battery. Before leaving, Gamble sent a boat to retrieve Pettinger and burn the Greenwich. When the boat returned with Pettinger and the Greenwich was blazing, Gamble made a run for it. Having already bent the jib and spanker, he cut his anchor (not being able to pull it), and, even though it was a dark night and the only light was coming from the burning Greenwich, a providential breeze carried him clear of the bay. Gamble had eight pathetic souls on board—“one cripple confined to bed,” he wrote, “one man dangerously wounded, one sick, one convalescent (a feeble old man recovering from the scurvy) and myself, unable to lend any further assistance, the exertions of the day having inflamed my wound so much as to produce a violent fever; leaving Midshipman Clapp and only two men capable of doing duty.” To make matters worse, just six cartridges remained.
“In that state,” Gamble recorded, “destitute of charts, and of every means of getting to windward, I saw but one alternative; to run the trade winds down, and, if possible, make the Sandwich [Hawaiian] Islands,” a perilous journey of two thousand miles. After struggling out of Taiohae Bay, Gamble, who was using a crutch to walk, lost no time getting up topsails. His chances weren’t good. But as luck would have it, against horrendous odds, he succeeded, reaching the Sandwich Islands on May 25, after a passage of seventeen incredibly difficult days—“suffering much from fatigue and hardships” the entire way, Gamble remembered.
On May 30, Gamble came to anchor in Waikiki Bay off the island of
Oahu. As he had hoped, a few Americans were there, including Captain Nathaniel Winship and some officers from other ships who were anxious to help. “I received every assistance their situations would afford me,” he reported.
Hawaiians supplied Gamble with fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit. They expected in return that he would take their chief man and some others with their property to the big island of Hawaii, which was to windward. The weather was too boisterous for the Hawaiians to make the journey in their canoes. Gamble hired nine men to supplement the crew of the Sir Andrew Hammond and sailed for Hawaii to meet the king of the islands and request provisions from him, after which Gamble intended to sail to Valparaiso, following Porter’s original instructions.
Unfortunately, on the passage to the Big Island, the fates turned against Gamble once more. On June 13, 1814, he ran into a British warship of some size. Incredibly, she turned out to be none other than the 24-gun Cherub, fresh from her victory in Valparaiso. After the battle with the Essex, Hillyar had ordered the Cherub’s Captain Tucker to take on board provisions for five months and race to the Sandwich Islands “to use your utmost endeavor to distress the enemy by capture or destruction of his vessels.” Hillyar had gotten word that American merchantmen had congregated there, waiting for the war to end.
In spite of Gamble’s protestations, Tucker seized the articles Gamble was transporting for the Hawaiians, including a valuable canoe. The goods were intended as tribute for their king. It was obvious that Tucker’s principal object was not capturing American merchantmen but enriching himself in any way he could before returning to Valparaiso and then Rio de Janeiro. After robbing the Hawaiians, Tucker moved on to the island of Kauai, looking for more booty. He was in luck. The American merchant vessel Charon was there and was easily captured. Goods from other vessels were deposited on the island as well, which Tucker took, stuffing as much as he could into the Cherub.
On July 15, Tucker departed Hawaii and traveled to Tahiti, where he expected to find refreshment of every sort for himself and his crew—but not for their American prisoners. He had little consideration for Gamble, and even less for his men, who were robbed and cruelly handled. “My men were treated in a most shameful manner,” Gamble reported.
Tucker departed Tahiti on August 23 with the Sir Andrew Hammond, the Charon, and the Cherub and stood east for a month, dropping anchor in Valparaiso on September 23. An English brig and the Montezuma, one of Porter’s first prizes, were anchored in the port, along with several Spanish vessels, and to Gamble’s surprise and chagrin, the old Spanish flag was flying above the forts. Gamble and Midshipman Clapp were allowed to go ashore, but not the rest of their men. Gamble and Clapp went immediately to the home of the American deputy vice consul, Mr. Blanco, who had been of such service to Porter. To his great surprise, Gamble discovered that as many as twenty (the exact number was uncertain) of the Essex’s old crew were still living in difficult conditions in the city. Some of them had even enlisted in the Chilean army. When Porter learned about them much later, he thought they were the men who had jumped overboard or otherwise fled the Essex during her monumental battle with the Phoebe. He had no sympathy for them. As far as he was concerned, they had brought their problems on themselves by their own misconduct.
On October 18, 1814, the Cherub left Valparaiso Bay with her two prizes and the prisoners bound for Rio. Tempestuous rain and hailstorms plagued them as they rounded Cape Horn. They got around, however, arriving in Rio on November 28. Gamble and Midshipman Clapp were allowed to leave the ship, but no other prisoners could. Tucker kept them on board until December 14, when, Gamble recalled, “the prisoners were sent ashore, having received the most rigorous treatment from Captain Tucker during their long confinement in his ship, and the greater part of them, like the natives, left destitute of everything, save the clothes on their backs.” Gamble found sixty American prisoners of war in Rio, being kept track of by Thomas Sumter Jr., the American minister. Like all the others, Gamble had only one thought in mind—going home, but Sumter offered little hope of getting them there quickly.
Gamble did not leave Rio until May 15, 1815. Midshipman Clapp and five men accompanied him. Another man had died of smallpox. During the voyage, one of the men died, but the others reached New York on August 27, 1815, after a passage of one hundred days that took them first to France. A few days later, Gamble wrote long letters to Porter and to Secretary of the Navy Crowninshield, explaining what had happened to him and his men after the Essex and Essex Junior left Nuku Hiva on December 13, 1813.
Porter’s guilt at his treatment of Gamble was pronounced. He tried to make up for it by lavishly praising him, but the record of Porter’s hubris and bad judgment and their consequences for Gamble and his men could not be erased.
EPILOGUE
FOUR LIVES AFTER THE WAR
DESPITE DAVID PORTER’S SHORTCOMINGS, WHEN HE RETURNED home from the Pacific, the great majority of his countrymen greeted him as a hero, as did President Madison. The war was going badly for the president in 1814. Defeatism was widespread, and London was reacting to the abdication of Napoleon on April 14, 1814, as though Britain now had the capacity to work her will on the United States in a short time with relatively few resources.
Madison, with good reason, feared a large-scale invasion that would have incalculable consequences. The British were still furious with America for declaring war in June 1812 when they were most vulnerable to Napoleon. In the spring of 1814, after Napoleon had abdicated unconditionally, a vengeful Britain intended to crush the United States and permanently weaken her. Madison vowed to resist the British to the last. Remembering the sacrifices he had observed as a young man being borne during the War of Independence, he was not about to give in. In the darkest moments of the Revolutionary War, Washington had been determined to fight on no matter what. He would never submit. Madison was of that mind now in the darkest hour of the War of 1812. Porter’s spirited defense of the Essex struck a responsive chord in the president, who was determined never to give in himself. Madison overlooked Porter’s failings and concentrated on his brave resistance, declaring in his Message to Congress in 1814, that the loss of the Essex was
hidden in the blaze of heroism with which she was defended. Captain Porter, . . . whose previous career had been distinguished by daring enterprise and by fertility of genius, maintained a sanguinary contest against two ships, one of them superior to his own, . . . until humanity tore down the colors which valor had nailed to the mast. This officer and his comrades have added much to the rising glory of the American flag, and have merited all the effusions of gratitude which their country is ever ready to bestow on the champions of its rights, and of its safety.
It was a handsome tribute. No one could gainsay that those who fought the battle in Valparaiso were heroes; these were men who did their duty in an exemplary manner, and who deserved the plaudits of their countrymen. Whether the Essex should or should not have been where she was at the time was beside the point. The example of the men who defended her was what stood out. They created a brilliant legacy for those who came after them.
WHILE PRESIDENT MADISON WAS USING THE EXPLOITS OF THE Essex men to help rally the country during the difficult summer and fall of 1814, no one imagined that the war would be over by the end of the year. The assumption that the fighting would go on into 1815 and beyond was universal. David Porter, John Downes, David Farragut, and James Hillyar expected to be engaged in the struggle for a long time. At most they anticipated a brief furlough before receiving new orders to go back into battle.
When the peace treaty was signed on December 24, 1814, in Ghent, Belgium, and the war ended abruptly, the four officers were completely surprised. So was the president. He was also extremely grateful. For him, having to carry on the fight when the country desperately wanted peace was an uninviting prospect. In fact, he had been trying hard to end the war since at least February 1813, when it had become clear that his strategy wasn’t working. Napoleon had been defeated in Russ
ia, taking the pressure off Britain to negotiate an end to the war with America, and the Canadian invasion that Madison had initiated and persisted in had been repulsed with minimal effort from London.
No matter how much Madison desired peace during 1813 and 1814, however, the British would not oblige him. They were angry that he had declared war in June 1812 when they were most vulnerable to Napoleon. As far as they were concerned, Madison had stabbed them in the back when their very existence was at risk, and they intended to repay him by permanently weakening America. They changed their minds, however, in the fall of 1814. In that season it became obvious, after American victories at Fort Erie, Plattsburgh, and Baltimore, that the United States was too strong to be easily subdued, and that Europe’s problems would continue to occupy Britain for years. Given this new reality, the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, his foreign minister, Lord Castlereagh, and their cabinet colleagues moved quickly to end the war. They did not want to be fighting the United States while they were tied down on the European continent.
The peace that Liverpool obtained was widely popular in Britain, where people were dead tired of war. They had been fighting the French since January 1793. Their only respite had been during the period of the Treaty of Amiens, which lasted only fourteen months, from March 1802 until May of the following year.
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