In Pursuit of the Essex

by Hughes, Ben;

  Others passed their time fishing. An ‘abundance’ of wahoo, albacore, yellowfin tuna, grouper and dorado were caught with hooks and lines and Porter sanctioned the use of the frigate’s seine net – standard issue for all ships-of-war in the US Navy. Impressed by the Americans’ success, Governor Coutinho requested a demonstration and on the afternoon of 29 November made his way to the beach accompanied by several ladies and a number of officers. ‘We were not at that time so fortunate as we were afterwards’, Porter recalled, ‘[but still] caught enough … to be carried to their houses.’ Another method of fishing was effected by ‘rowing … a small boat across the mouth [of the bay] … towing a line … baited with small fish, for the purpose of catching baracoutas’.8

  That evening the governor, his officers and family visited the Essex. The governor’s wife, Teresa Joaquina da Silva Ruas, was hoisted on board and dinner was served by Porter’s servants, Francis Green and George Brown. At twenty square feet, the captain’s great cabin was the most commodious accommodation on board. Afterwards, an eleven-gun salute was fired from the Essex’s carronades. ‘[Coutinho] was much pleased with the attentions paid him’, Porter recalled, ‘and next day … I sent him … a barrel of flour and pork … In return he sent me … six fine turkeys.’9

  With three men having succumbed to ‘inflammatory bilious fevers’, attributed to Porto Praya’s debilitating climate and ‘noxious miasmas’, on 2 December Porter gave the signal to weigh. Until the Essex was out of sight, Sailing Master Cowell set a course to the southeast for Africa, before hauling round to the southwest: Porter having no wish to inform the residents of his intended destination. The next day having ‘laboured under a paralytic affection’ ever since the frigate had been at anchor on the Delaware, Able Seaman Levy Holmes, one of the Essex’s Revolutionary War veterans, succumbed to ‘Palsy’. Sewn up in his hammock with two cannonballs placed at his feet, his body was cast into the deep after a brief service read by Chaplain David Phineas Adams, a 35-year-old farmer’s son from Massachusetts who had graduated from Harvard in 1801 and worked as a teacher and journalist before joining the Essex. The next few days passed pleasantly. Under a cloudy sky, the thermometer on the spar deck recorded 85 degrees and the frigate flew before an easterly wind, passing several clumps of a ‘gelatinous substance … known by the name of sun-fish … The landsmen on board were delighted’, Porter recalled, ‘and the seamen felicitated themselves that [such good progress] was not always the case at sea’.10

  Porter now turned his attention to the well-being of his crew. ‘The utmost cleanliness was required from every person and directions were given for mustering the crew every morning at their quarters, where they were … examined by their officers’. The men were to take baths in tubs of seawater ‘at least once a day’ and their officers were ‘requested to show them the example’. The watches were to be kept occupied during their shifts and allowed ample time for recreation when not on duty. In this way Porter ensured the men were not only ‘active … [and] healthy … [but] contented’ too.11

  On 5 December, as a result of leaving Porto Praya before the ship’s barrels had been filled, the water ration was reduced to half a gallon per day and all the pigs and young goats taken on board were killed to reduce consumption. ‘Many petitions were sent to me to save … a favourite kid or a pig that had been destined for a Christmas dinner’, Porter recalled, ‘yet I found it necessary to be inflexible.’ The next day, as the Essex reached the latitude of 4° North, the weather changed. Heavy rain and periods of calm were interspersed with strong breezes whipping round from the northeast to the south. Lightening occasionally lit up the horizon. The topmen shortened, braced and set the sails as required and some sharp squalls on the 7th saw the frigate running along under bare poles.12

  On 8 December the Essex entered the southeast trades, the temperature dropped to 82 degrees and a heavy shower fell. Hoping to call in at the Portuguese penal colony of Fernando de Noronha, the second of Bainbridge’s rendezvous situated 300 miles off mainland Brazil, the men kept a close eye on the birdlife accompanying the ship to judge their proximity to land. ‘We saw several … sheerwaters’, Porter noted, ‘but as they are to be met with … in every part of the Atlantic, I did not consider their appearance as a certain indication.’ Later, porpoises were spotted riding the frigate’s bow wave. At midday Porter took the daily bearings. The longitude, ‘by a very accurate chronometer’, was judged to be 26o 41’ 39” West. Latitude was taken at 3o 2’ 6” North. The following evening, believing himself dangerously close to Fernando de Noronha, Porter hove to for the night for fear of running aground.13

  Porter’s caution was a result of a bitter experience. A little over nine years before, while serving as Captain William Bainbridge’s First Lieutenant during the Barbary War, his ship, the 44-gun frigate USS Philadelphia, had run aground on a submerged reef while pursuing a vessel through Tripoli Harbour. Moments before, a marine had overheard Porter assuring Bainbridge that he knew the harbour well and they had nothing to fear. The Tripolitans had surrounded the frigate with gunboats and forced her surrender. Although the Philadelphia was later destroyed during a raid led by the future darling of the US Navy, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Bainbridge, Porter and their crew had been held as prisoners of war for nineteen months. Publically, Bainbridge was afforded sympathy, but in private many had vilified him for not fighting to the end. As second in command, Porter escaped such censure, but the humiliation of surrender had left a deep scar on his psyche. He would do his utmost to avoid being captured again.14

  At daylight on 10 December, with Fernando de Noronha nowhere to be seen, the Essex raced on. The following day she crossed the Equator in squally weather and at 2 p.m. on the 12th, with the winds ‘moderate’ and the weather ‘pleasant’, the lookout at the masthead decried a strange sail on the weather bow. ‘[She] bore the appearance of a British brig of war’, Porter noted. The topmen made all sail and the Essex sprang forward at 11 knots. At 4 p.m., the chase tacked. The Essex tacked with her and Boatswain Edward Linscott beat to quarters. The gun deck partitions were hauled down and the hammocks stowed to make room for the crew to work the carronades. In the gloom of the cockpit, Surgeon Miller and his mate, Alexander Montgomery, laid out their instruments in preparation. At 6 p.m. the chase hoisted a signal flag at her halyard. Porter responded using the code book he had captured from the Alert several months before, but to no effect and at sunset the chase hoisted British colours. The weather was becoming increasingly squally. Small clouds scudded across the reddening sky. Nervously chewing a wad of tobacco, Porter was well aware of the risk he was taking. With all sail set the frigate could lose a spar or a mast could be wrenched overboard. He pressed on regardless. With night falling and the frigate getting ever closer, the chase displayed a series of signal lights. By 9 p.m., it became clear that she was heavily outgunned. ‘Being desirous of doing her as little injury as possible’, Porter ‘gave orders that the great guns should not be fired.’ Muskets were handed out and Porter hailed the brig through his speaking trumpet directing ‘her to lower her topsails, haul up her courses and heave to the windward’. Robert Leonard, the commander of the 10-gun brig, the British packet Nocton, was not ready to give up. Tacking, he attempted to run to leeward and come under the Essex’s stern to rake her. Porter opened fire. Most of the musket shot cut through the brig’s sails and rigging. One whipped across her deck, mortally wounding Able Seaman John Williams. Leonard struck his colours and hove to. Sending a boarding party across, Porter had the Noctons transferred to the Essex and made a thorough search of his prize. She was carrying over £12,000 in coin. Collected from British merchants resident in Rio de Janeiro, the money was destined for Wellington’s campaigns against the French in Portugal and Spain. It was a godsend for Porter. Far from home and with no allied ports in the vicinity, he could use the cash to buy provisions and pay his men.15

  At 7 a.m. the next morning the Essex and Nocton ‘ran foul of each other … [The frigate] carried a
way part of Her Starbd quarter & our sprit Yard & cat head’, Feltus recorded in his journal. The rest of the morning was spent repairing the damage and ‘set[ting] up the [frigate’s] rigging, which had become much stretched in consequence of the warm weather’. Interrogating his prisoners, Porter learnt that HMS Bonne Citoyenne, a 20-gun corvette laden with gold and silver coin, had left Rio de Janeiro for London six days before the Nocton’s departure along with HMS Montague, a 74-gun ship of the line under Rear-Admiral Manley Hall Dixon, the commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy’s Brazil station. That afternoon Acting Fourth Lieutenant William B. Finch took command of the Nocton with a prize crew of thirteen. Amongst them was the long-suffering William Klaer who had not once been off Surgeon Miller’s sick list since leaving the Delaware. Porter also embarked seventeen of ‘the youngest and weakest’ of his prisoners as well as Captain Robert Leonard, who was placed on parole of honour ‘with the privilege of embarking on board any vessel they might meet bound to England or elsewhere’. Two English merchants, James Heyworth and Alexander Watson, were also sent on board with a servant, William Rossendale, while the thirteen remaining prisoners, the best sailors ‘and strongest men’, were held on the Essex. At 2.30 p.m. the ships parted company. The Nocton sailed north for the United States. The Essex continued her search for Fernando de Noronha.16

  At 5.30 p.m. on 14 December the lookout sighted land on the lee bow. Fernando de Noronha was a desolate volcanic island of eleven square miles. With a variance in the tide of five feet and with just one safe anchorage directly before the guns of a stout citadel, it made for an almost inescapable penal colony. At 10 p.m. the Essexes wore the ship and headed in ‘under easy sail’. Daylight revealed the island twelve miles to the southwest. Porter ordered the guns run in and raised British colours. Disguising the Essex as a British East Indiaman, he bore up under shortened sail and sent Lieutenant Downes ashore in civilian clothes. ‘[I] directed him to inform the governor, that we were the ship Fanny, captain Johnson, from London, via Newfoundland, bound to Rio de Janeiro, Porter recalled, ‘that we were short of water, had several of the crew sick with scurvy and were very much in want of refreshments; but that we could not anchor, as we had lost all of our anchors but one.’17

  Three hours passed with the Essex standing off and on in the bay, before Downes returned. The lieutenant had learnt that two men of war, one of 44 guns, the other of 22, both purporting to be British cruisers, had called in ten days before. Their commodore had left a letter addressed to Sir James Yeo to be sent to England at the first opportunity. Suspecting the ‘British’ ships may have been Bainbridge’s squadron, Porter sent Downes with a gift of cheese and porter for the governor and instructions that he would be only too happy to deliver the letter himself. The governor’s catamaran twice braved the surf to bring water, before Downes returned at 4.30 p.m., his boat having been swamped by the waves on two occasions. At first sight the letter appeared innocuous, but a secret message, written in lime juice revealed itself when it was held before a lighted candle – a technique Bainbridge and Porter had employed whilst held in captivity in Tripoli. ‘I am bound to off St. Salvadore’, the message revealed, ‘thence off Cape Frio [north of Rio de Janeiro], where I intend to cruise until the 1st of January. Go [there] … and keep a look out for me. Your Friend.’18

  Sixty leagues off the coast of Pernambuco, Brazil, the weather grew increasingly sultry and apathy spread through the crew. Porter issued summer clothes and set up awnings to provide shade from the sun. On 18 December a strange sail was spotted which turned out to be a Portuguese brig. Two days later another was sighted. Porter approached under British colours and learnt that HMS Bonne Citoyenne had put into Saö Salvador da Bahia for repairs. Porter briefly considered going after her, but, with Bainbridge in the vicinity, soon thought better of it. The idea of running into Rear-Admiral Dixon’s 74 was also off-putting, besides, Porter’s first responsibility was to make directly for the rendezvous.19

  At noon on Christmas Day a rocky high headland was sighted. Under a hazy sky with high humidity, Porter hauled to the southward and made Cape Frio at 4 p.m. Shortening sail, the Essex lay to in the shipping lanes, to see what the tides and winds would bring. That night the hammocks and partitions were cleared from the gun deck and British colours hoisted and the following morning, as several dolphin playing around the ship were hooked for dinner, Porter exercised the great guns. Two days later the Essex chased a stranger to within five leagues of Rio de Janeiro before Porter realised she was merely another Portuguese brig.20

  The Essexes’ luck changed on 29 December. That morning the man at the mast head spotted a sail on the weather bow. The crew made all sail in chase while Porter climbed into the tops with his telescope. ‘I perceived … she was a schooner … standing in for … Rio’ and set a course to intercept. It wasn’t until 9 p.m. that the Essex got within cannon shot. Running out the 12-pounder bow chasers, Porter fired a few shots. The chase bore up, ran up under the Essex’s lee and surrendered. ‘She proved to be the British schooner Elizabeth, from Rio bound to England’, Porter recalled. Having set out with four British merchant ships and a cutter under escort of the ten-gun schooner HMS Juniper on 27 December, the Elizabeth had sprung a leak two days later and put back to Rio for repairs. One of her crew, Seaman John Bagnell, signed up on board the Essex and informed Porter of the whereabouts of the rest of the convoy: ‘the cutter had gone to the south-ward to convoy a ship to St. Sebastians … and … the Juniper had proceeded to the eastward with the … others, which were deeply laden and dull-sailing … I also [learnt] that … the Montague … was still at Rio Janeiro, with all her sails unbent; that a packet had recently sailed for England on Christmas day; and that there were no British vessels there expected to sail shortly’. Having assembled a prize crew of six Americans and three prisoners under Midshipman Charles T. Clarke, a 25-year-old from Georgetown, Maryland, Porter sent them across to the Elizabeth ‘with orders to go direct to North America’. The six other crewmembers of the prize, including her captain, John Helt, were confined on the Essex along with those from the Nocton, while Porter ordered all sail set and cut away to the windward in pursuit of the Juniper and her convoy.21

  That night the Essex’s ‘main-topmast trussel-trees [sic]’, an integral part of the upper rigging, were ‘carried away’ by a squall. Despite expecting that ‘at any moment … [the] topmast, rigging and topgallant-mast, would come tumbling about our heads’, Porter instructed the topmen to make temporary repairs and pressed on. On the morning of 1 January the lookout at the fore-topgallant masthead spotted four sail. ‘The ship was immediately in an uproar’, Porter recalled, but the apparition soon ‘proved to be nothing but small clouds rising from the horizon’. On 2 and 3 January, two more sails were spotted, but were soon discovered to be Portuguese merchantmen from Salvador. Both informed Porter that the Bonne Citoyenne remained in the harbour while a large frigate and sloop of war were cruising off shore. This was the best proof of Bainbridge’s whereabouts that Porter had had since the letter at Fernando de Noronha. Meanwhile, the damage to the tops required urgent repair. On 3 January, under lowering skies and heavy rain, the main and mizzen topmasts were brought down and stripped of their rigging while Carpenter Waters and his mate, John Langley, made new trestle-trees. By 6 a.m. the next morning the repairs were complete and the pursuit continued.22

  On 5 January 1813 a passing Spanish troop transport bound for Montevideo reported that two American men of war were off Salvador and on the 6th the winds turned against the Essex, persistently blowing from the northward until 12 January when Porter admitted defeat, wore round and returned south. ‘My intention’, Porter explained, ‘was to run into St. Sebastian’s or St. Catherine’s, as the wind should suit … to procure … wood and water, which were both getting low and … refreshments for my crew … I gave the preference to St. Catherine’s … as [it was] … more distant from Rio … and I should have an opportunity of getting to sea again, before the enemy could hear of me�
�. At 3.30 p.m. that afternoon, while 100 leagues off Cape Frio, a large ship was sighted through the haze on the weather bow. Porter made all sail in chase and at 4.30 p.m. hoisted British colours and cleared for action. The chase, a large sloop of war, responded by hoisting the Portuguese ensign and pennant at her mizzen peak. One hour later, after hoisting American colours and firing a gun to bring the sloop to, Porter demanded that an officer be sent across to the Essex. The Portuguese obliged. The ship was the Calypso of 22 guns. Porter misinformed the officer that the ship under his command was USS Constitution and that he was expecting to meet USS Essex. ‘[He] could not be persuaded that we were Americans;’ Porter recalled, ‘and left us, as I am convinced, under the belief that we were English.’23

  The next five days passed uneventfully. ‘The weather continued remarkably fine’, Porter noted. ‘We saw and spoke but [a] few … Portuguese coasters’ carrying jerked beef to northern Brazil from Rio Grande. Having been out from Porto Praya for six weeks, Porter reduced the rum ration by half in a bid to preserve his dwindling supplies. The decision caused widespread discontent. Quartermaster James Rynard, a troublesome sailor noted for his rabble-rousing, revolutionary bent who had been on the Essex for four years, formed a committee to blackmail the captain into changing his mind. ‘Every man in the ship refused to receive any [grog]’, Porter explained, ‘unless he could get full allowance; stating that when there should be no more on board, they would willingly go without; but so long as it lasted, they wished their full allowance.’ Porter was having none of it. ‘I … directed that the grog-tub should be upset in fifteen minutes after they were called to grog; the consequence was, that every man hastened to the tub for fear of losing his allowance. After this, no further complaint was made.’ To sweeten the pill, Porter distributed some of the prize money due for the capture of the Nocton. A spate of gambling ensued. Losses led to theft and the mood darkened. ‘I … soon put a stop to it’, Porter recalled. The chief culprits were punished and an announcement made ‘that all moneys, staked … should be forfeited to the informer, whose name remained secret’.24