by Hughes, Ben;
On 2 November, after a few days of squally weather and intermittent rain, the sun broke through the clouds. The apples and potatoes which had been damaged during the storm were thrown overboard, leaving a trail in the Essex’s wake as she cut southwards, heading for the busy British shipping lanes to the northeast of Bermuda. Porter hoped to snatch up a merchantman or, better yet, to encounter a Royal Navy frigate to test his mettle, before heading east for Bainbridge’s first rendezvous – the Cape Verde Islands. The rest of the stores were left to dry, repacked, returned to the berth-deck and stored under oiled tarpaulins, while windsails, cylinders of sailcloth two feet in diameter and several dozen yards long, were looped down through the hatches to funnel fresh breezes to the orlop deck and expel the fetid air which had accumulated whilst the gunports had been closed.18
On the morning of the 3rd a lookout spotted a strange sail to the southwest. Porter ordered the British ensign hauled up to the mizzen peak, a ploy commonly adopted to lull the enemy into a false sense of security, and gave chase. The able seamen scrambled up the rigging, all sails were set and by 8 a.m. the stranger was obliged to heave to and identify herself. ‘[She was] discovered … to be a Portuguese merchant brig’, Porter recalled. Although allies of the British in the Napoleonic Wars, the Portuguese had not taken sides in the conflict with America. As a result, the brig, whose crew remained none the wiser as to the Essex’s identity, was allowed to sail on.19
November 4th dawned bright and pleasant with ‘breezes and flying clouds’. Several days of fine weather followed. With the winter sun warming the spar deck, further adjustments were made to the rigging, tears in the sails were sown up and life on board took on a routine. Every hour, on the hour, the officer of the deck rang the ship’s bell, affixed near the fore-hatchway on the main deck. Every eighth hour it signalled the rotation of two of the ship’s three watches. The newly-arrived topmen, the most experienced and nimble sailors in the crew, stood ready, waiting for the watch lieutenant to give the frigate’s seven quartermasters the command to send them up the rigging and across the yards. Once aloft, dozens of feet above the deck as the ship rolled with the Atlantic swell, they set, furled or unfurled the sails to order, buffeted by the wind, while the waisters took up the ropes below. Midshipman Feltus recorded the rhythm of the days. At 4 p.m. on 4 November the sailors ‘took in the light sails put down the royal yards & housed the masts’. The next day they ‘unbent the … mizzen topsails & bent others [and] at 8 p.m. shortened sail’. Meanwhile, those off duty descended to their quarters beyond the main mast. Divided into eight-man messes, each centred round a small table, they snatched a few hours’ sleep swinging in their hammocks; ate salt rations by candlelight, flickering in the stale air; speculated on the destination of their current cruise and the amount of prize money it would afford them; complained about their officers; recounted old anecdotes; sang and played flutes or fiddles; or drank their grog and gambled over cards, backgammon, chequers and fox and goose.20
On 8 November, the weather turned ‘fresh and … squally’ and at 4 p.m. another strange sail appeared off the lee bow. Porter gave the order to clear for action. As Boatswain Edward Linscott, a New Englander three and half years in his post, blew his whistle, the men rushed to their stations. Muskets, pikes, hatchets and blunderbusses were handed out by Mr Field, the ship’s armourer. The hammocks on the gun-deck were unlashed, rolled into tight cylinders and stowed in racks around the gunwales to provide protection from splinters, the canvas partitions dividing the lieutenants’ and warrant officers’ cabins on the berth deck were taken down, marines were ordered up the ratlines to the tops from where they could pick off enemy officers on the quarterdeck and the gun crews rushed to their carronades. By 8 p.m. the chase had ‘dodged’ the American. The next morning she was nowhere to be seen. Porter speculated that she had been the sloop of war USS Wasp commanded by Captain Jacob Jones which had sailed from Philadelphia on 13 October. His deduction was wrong in several particulars. Five days after leaving the Delaware the Wasp had run into trouble after attacking HMS Frolic, a 22-gun sloop-of-war, escorting six merchantmen. The resulting fire-fight had seen the British lose dozens killed and wounded, while the Wasp’s sails and rigging were cut to shreds by the British shot crashing through the tops. After a final, devastating broadside, Jones’ men had boarded their adversary, but at the moment of victory HMS Poictiers, one of the Royal Navy’s lumbering 74-gun ships-of-the-line, had appeared. With both his ship and his prize in no state to fight, Jones had surrendered.21
The storm continued on 11 November. Despite being buffeted by a heavy swell, Porter had the men exercised at the great guns. Amidst the acrid smoke and the thunder of the carronades, the officers timed their crews with stopwatches. Friendly competition was encouraged, wagers placed and rewards distributed. Below, in the filling room, Gunner Miller and his assistants made up cartridges behind a lead-weighted leather blast curtain for the powder monkeys to lug up the ladders to the gun deck. The next morning dawned clear, the gun ports were pushed out and the carronades exercised yet again. To barked orders, each ten-strong crew sponged out the barrel, loaded the charge, shot and wadding and rammed them home. The gun captain pricked the powder bag through the touchhole and poured some powder into it. The crew stood clear, the captain adjusted his aim and gave the order to fire. A match was touched to the priming and, with a thunderous crash, the gun lurched up its slide as the roundshot hurtled across the ocean to send up a distant plume of water unseen through the smoke.22
As she cut southeast across the Atlantic the Essex’s rate of fire steadily improved, as did the health of her crew. Adversely affected by the ease with which rum had been procured on the Delaware, the sea air and exercise restored the men and by 16 November, when the winds dropped and the frigate was bathed in warm sunlight, only eight men remained on Surgeon Miller’s sick-list. Six, including the British boatswain’s mate Thomas Belcher, were able to continue with light duties. Levy Holmes, the aging Revolutionary War veteran who was suffering from an ‘intermitting headache’ and William Klaer, the serial skiver with a chronic liver problem, remained in the sick bay, ‘a comfortable place … fitted up’ especially for their accommodation on the berth-deck behind the main mast.23
The next morning an old Portuguese brig fifty-two days out from Brazil with a cargo of tobacco for Gibraltar was spotted. ‘The only news she could give us’, Porter noted, ‘was that an embargo had been laid on American vessels in the Brazils on news of the war.’ On 20 November, as the Essex fell in with the trade winds and was swept swiftly south-southwest, the temperature rose and a heavy rain fell. Spreading the spare sails across the deck, the crew caught sixty gallons to add to the stock. Two days later another stranger was spotted. At first Porter thought her a British East Indiaman, but after an exhilarating one-hour pursuit with the salt-spray whipping across deck, she turned out to be yet another Portuguese schooner, bound for New York from Lisbon with a cargo of salt.24
On 23 November the Essex crossed the Tropic of Cancer prompting an age-old initiation ceremony. ‘When the ship was supposed to be about on the line the man at the mast head was directed to cry Sail Oi’, Feltus recorded. ‘Being asked by the officer of the deck … what she looked like[,] he answered a small boat on the Lee bow … [and] that it was Neptune’s the god of the seas, & that he wished permission to come on board with his train. As soon as it was granted one of the B[oatswain’s] Mates with some others being in the fore chains, came over the Bows.’ Playing Neptune was William Kingsbury, ‘a trusty’ 39-year-old ‘seadog’ with a ‘stentorian voice’ from Wiscasset, Maine. Once on board, he was seated beside a seaman impersonating his wife on chairs lashed to a converted gun carriage ‘drawn by 4 men[,] some with their shirts off & their Bodies painted[,] & others with their trowsers cut off above the knees’. Behind came several ‘Barbers’ carrying makeshift ‘razors made of an Iron hoop & constables & [a] Band of music’. Neptune dismounted at the quarterdeck and asked Porter’s permission to pr
oceed. The Bostonian had little choice. Although the ceremony was a thinly-veiled excuse for the men to momentarily lord it over their officers while getting thoroughly drunk, it had become so imbedded in the mariners’ psyche that non-compliance would be tantamount to inciting mutiny. Clambering into one of the ship’s boats, which had been placed on the quarter-deck and filled with seawater, Kingsbury and his nereids called for the first of their victims to step forward. While officers who had not crossed the line before were only required to pay a tribute of a bottle of rum, the novices from before the mast were roughly shaved with the iron hoops and dunked repeatedly under the water. ‘In the course of the afternoon all … were initiated,’ Porter recalled. ‘Neptune, however and most of his suite, paid their devotions so frequently to Bacchus, that before the ceremony … 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.’25
On 24 November the captain of a Portuguese trading brig destined for St. Barts informed Porter ‘that an English frigate, bound to the Cape of Good Hope, had touched at Madeira and brought intelligence of the war … As we were under English colours,’ Porter recalled, ‘I … affected much surprise at the news and questioned him accordingly.’ The next day the crew rigged the flying jib boom, allowing the Essex to harness extra wind and at 6.30 a.m. on the 26th the lookout in the tops sighted the island of Saint Nicholas, the second largest of the Windward Islands of the Cape Verde archipelago. That night Sailing Master Cowell set a course between Sal and Bonavista. Taking to the starlit quarterdeck, Porter watched the islands slip by. After passing Mayo Island, the Essex sailed onto Santiago and into Porto Praya Bay, the site of the principal settlement on the Cape Verde Islands and the first of Commodore Bainbridge’s appointed rendezvous. The first leg of Porter’s cruise had passed without incident.26
Chapter 2
The South Atlantic: USS Essex, 27 November 1812 – 25 January 1813
Under topsails the Essex rounded the east point of Porto Praya Bay at 2 p.m. on 27 November 1812. It was a beautiful day. A light wind blew from the northeast and small clouds scudded across the azure-blue sky. Taking in the arid hillsides, spotted with clusters of whitewashed single-storey houses, Porter thought ‘the island had altogether a most dreary and uncultivated appearance’. Aside from several goats sheltering in the shade of a few stands of palm trees, there was little sign of life. A mile on, Porto Praya hove into view. Nestling between hills at the head of the bay, the town was built on a sheer-sided bluff. To the northeast stood a dilapidated fort flying the Portuguese flag. Another had been built on Tubaron Point and several dozen guns mounted on rotting ships’ carriages were housed in redoubts on Quail Island. Rising up beyond was the 1,394-metre high Mount Saint Antonio. Noting Bainbridge’s absence, Porter sent First Lieutenant John Downes ashore in the gig with a crewmember who spoke Portuguese.1
Born in Canton, Massachusetts, John Downes had joined the US Navy at the age of twelve. Through the influence of his father, a purser’s steward, he secured a place as a powder monkey on board USS Constitution and distinguished himself in his very first fight, a slugging match with a shore battery at Saint Domingo during the Quasi-War. Set on the path to promotion by Captain Silas Talbot, by 1802 Downes had been made a midshipman. Two years later he caught David Porter’s eye during a vicious shore action in the Barbary War. Downes had gone on to command a bomb-vessel in the Mediterranean, before being appointed lieutenant aboard USS Wasp in 1807. Transferred to the Essex two years later, he had served on embargo duty and taken part in a diplomatic mission to Europe by the time Porter took command. Although his annual salary of $480 meant that he was no better remunerated than Lieutenants Wilmer, Wilson and Finch, as First Lieutenant, Downes was tasked with dealing with the day-to-day running of the ship. His thoughtful professionalism provided a counterbalance to Porter’s hot-headedness, he was capable of performing a diplomatic role despite his humble origins, and he would distinguish himself on several occasions before the cruise was out.2
Downes returned to the Essex at 3 p.m. Although the governor had been taking an afternoon nap, Major Medina, the second-in-command, had proved most accommodating. As well as being permitted to resupply, Porter would be welcome to stay as long as he wished. Downes had also learnt that two American privateers, one from Boston and one from Salem, and an armed British schooner had been the only recent foreign visitors. Porter ‘consequently concluded on stopping a few days, to … take in refreshments’ and that afternoon the Essex came to in seven fathoms, dropped the starboard anchor and saluted with eleven guns. At sundown the topmen lowered the royal yards and stowed them on deck.3
Early the next morning Porter and his officers dressed in formal blue jackets, white breeches and black leather boots. Rowed ashore through surf whipped up by the northeast trades, they climbed up to town, watched by negro fishermen sitting under the shade of withered palms. Porto Praya consisted of three streets, extending along an east-west orientation. To the northwest grouped around the plaza, stood the customs house, barracks and jail. After a two hour wait, they were received by the governor and a company of black soldiers, naked from the waist upwards and armed with ceremonial halberds, rusty muskets and broken swords. ‘A man of easy and agreeable manners of about forty-five years of age’, Don António Coutinho de Lencastre appeared ‘much pleased’ with his unexpected guests. ‘He expressed … regret that the war had deprived [him] … of the advantage arising from the American commerce’, Porter recalled, ‘and assured me … he would give me every protection against any British force that should arrive.’ Later, over a plate of meat and ‘an abundant supply of the best tropical fruits’ the Americans had ‘ever tasted’, the governor complained of the treatment he had received at the hands of Portugal’s ‘haughty, unconciliating’ allies. The British demanded supplies, but never brought the trade which the islands so desperately needed. ‘[He] spoke of the prince regent [Dom Joao VI, then residing in Rio de Janeiro under the Royal Navy’s protection] as the … tool of the British government’, Porter added, ‘and [was] highly gratified with the accounts I gave … of our little success over the ships of that imperious navy.’4
Don António’s Anglophobia matched Porter’s own. Mixed with grudging admiration, the Bostonian’s prejudice stretched back to his childhood. Both Porter’s uncle and father had been captured by the British during the Revolutionary War when USS Raleigh, captained by John Barry, had been forced to beach on Wooden Ball Island in Penobscot Bay. Imprisoned on HMS Jersey, the most notorious of the ‘hellships’ anchored in New York’s East River, David Porter Senior had escaped after befriending his guards. His brother died on board. As an adolescent Porter’s resentment grew. Twice he had been pressed off merchantmen in the Caribbean while serving under his father and on one occasion one of his shipmates had been shot dead at his side by an over-zealous British press gang.5
On the afternoon of 28 November the Essex’s boats began watering the ship. Hiking to a heavily shaded valley with a solitary well, the men filled the ship’s casks, rolled them back to the beach, rowed them out to the anchorage and hoisted them into the frigate’s hold. The process was exhausting, but refreshment was close at hand. ‘The [local] negroes … have such a variety of expedients for getting rum on board that it is almost impossible to detect them,’ Porter explained. Some buried bottles in the sand for later retrieval. Others filled empty coconuts with liquor and by nightfall several of Porter’s men were hopelessly drunk. Some had even sold their winter clothing to purchase rum, while Martin Gilbert and Thomas Ewing had become so inebriated that they had injured themselves loading the casks.6
The next day, over dinner at the governor’s house, Porter met a Portuguese merchant ‘of considerable wealth’, while Midshipman Feltus and Acting Fourth Lieutenant William B. Fi
nch explored the town. Out of a population of 3,000, the former noted that thirty were white and the others slaves, free blacks and mulattoes. The rest of the Essexes spent the day stowing supplies. Alongside some ‘very poor’ and ‘very dear’ beef, 100,000 oranges and ‘a large quantity of cocoa-nuts, plantains, lemons, limes, [and] casada’ were loaded. Livestock was also purchased and soon ‘every mess on board [had] … pigs, sheep, fowls … goats … [and] turkeys’. Some men bought dogs, young goats and monkeys as pets, prompting Porter to complain that the frigate ‘bore no small resemblance … to Noah’s ark’.7