In Pursuit of the Essex

by Hughes, Ben;

  At dawn on 13 February, with the wind fresh and visibility reduced to a mile, flocks of ‘cape pigeons’ flew overhead, a clear sign land was nearby. ‘I … caused a good lookout to be kept’, Porter recalled, ‘took in [the] topgallant sails, double-reefed the topsails, [and] furled the mainsail.’ Later that morning breakers were spotted through the fog three-quarters of a mile to the southeast. A dark mass of land reared up and soundings of forty-five fathoms on a rocky bottom were taken. Porter had miscalculated. Rather than being to the east of Staten Land, the Essex was on a lee shore in the Straights of Marie and threatened with imminent destruction. Banking on riding the wind to safety, Porter ordered the topmen to set all sail and prepared to tack. It was an impetuous move. With such a heavy press of canvas, the forecastle was repeatedly pitched under the waves. All on deck had to hold on or risk being swept overboard. The jib was ‘blown to pieces’, but the rest of the sails held. Praising God, ‘the excellent qualities of the ship’ and the strength of New England white oak, the men rejoiced as the Essex’s bow swung round to open water. Accompanied by a spouting sperm whale, which the lookouts ‘first took for a rock’, the frigate was swept through the channel ‘with great rapidity’ and was soon clear of the straights.6

  Afterwards Porter ‘thought it … prudent to keep aloof from the land’. On 14 February Cowell set a course for Diego Ramirez, a rocky island southwest of the Horn. At noon, the Cape was in sight. Aside from some storm clouds far to the north, the air was clear and the sun bright. The Horn bore due north and Diego Ramirez stood to the northwest. Thinking themselves over the worst, the men congratulated one another, but it proved premature. ‘While we were indulging ourselves’, Porter recalled, ‘the black clouds, hanging over Cape Horn, burst upon us with a fury … and reduced us in a few minutes to a reefed foresail and close-reefed main-topsail and in a few hours afterwards to our storm-staysails … it produced an irregular and dangerous sea, that threatened to jerk away our masts at every roll of the ship.’ Steering southwards in an attempt to outrun the weather, Porter only succeeded in burying the frigate in the eye of the storm. That night, the Essex pitched and rolled violently. An eclipse of the moon was taken as an omen of imminent doom. The waves swept the decks and forced their way past the battened hatches to drench the men shivering below.7

  The storm blew for four days. With hard gales, ‘heavy rain, cold, disagreeable weather and a dangerous sea’, the Essex sailed ever further southwest. The sea broke over the deck, filled the fore-topmast sail and carried away the spritsail-yard and the bees of the bowsprit. On the 15th, a fresh, clear day with intermittent squalls, Feltus shot an albatross. It ‘proved to be very fat’ and measured ‘10ft across the wings’. Having had the bird roasted in the galley stove, the seventeen-year-old shared the meal with his messmates. With much of the bread, dried peas and beans having been devoured by worms and weevils, the men had taken to hunting the rats infesting the hold. Some even ate the monkeys acquired at Porto Praya.8

  On 18 February, judging the ship to be sufficiently far to the westward to round the Horn, Porter looked to the heavens for a change in the wind. ‘The movement of every passing cloud was anxiously watched … and our chief employment was comparing the weather … with the accounts of those who had preceded us.’ That afternoon a fierce gale sprung up from the westward. Despite the danger, Porter ordered the men to set a close-reefed main-topsail alongside the fore, main and mizzen storm-staysails he had been using for several days. ‘With this … we were enabled to force the ship about two knots, through a tremendous head sea’, he recalled, but by noon on 19 February, the gale had increased to such a velocity that he was forced to revert to bare poles. At noon, accompanied by sharp falls of hail, the wind hauled round to the southwest. Her storm-staysails set and yards secured with preventer braces, the Essex ran northward at 6 knots. It was bitterly cold. There was constant rain and hail. A high wind caused the clouds to scud across the sky and the watch received frequent soakings. To confound their misery, Cook Haden was unable to light the galley stove and no hot meals were served for several days. Some began to suffer the first symptoms of frostbite – losing sensation in their fingers and toes – making even the simplest jobs impossible. The conditions also aggravated old wounds. Porter had been shot once in 1800 during his encounter with the Haitian pirates and twice during the Barbary War. The first had left a deep graze in his right thigh. The second had gone clean through his left.9

  By 21 February Porter was confident he had rounded the Horn. Although the constant cloud cover meant that no lunar reckonings could be made and the chronometer had been affected by the cold, he anticipated his imminent arrival at a Chilean port by increasing the bread ration to a little over nine ounces a day. With their bellies fuller than they had been since leaving Saint Catherine’s, the men began to look forward to the adventures they would have in the Pacific. Some dreamt of the islanders’ lack of sexual taboos. Others began to count the prize money they would make. On the night of the 22nd a break in the cloud enabled the officers to make their first lunar reading in several days. The Essex was further to the east than Porter had believed, but favourable winds saw her make good headway and by the 24th the meridian longitude reading revealed they had made sufficient westing to turn north for warmer climes. The news, announced from the quarterdeck, had not come a moment too soon. Discipline was beginning to break down. Several thefts had occurred and the culprits been put in irons in the hold.10

  On 28 February Porter ordered the long guns brought up to the quarterdeck. No sooner had this been achieved, however, than a huge sea rolled in and a gale reduced the frigate to storm staysails and a close-reefed main top. Sightings of birds and kelp led many to fear a lee shore. With the ship rolling violently, the pumps became blocked with ballast and the water in the hold rose. ‘The sea … increased to such a height, as to threaten to swallow us at every instant’, Porter recalled, ‘[and] the whole ocean was one continued foam of breakers.’ Several men were thrown off their feet and down the hatchways. Able Seaman Robert Scatterley suffered a sprained ankle, Quarter Gunner Adam Roach ‘contused [his] wrist and arm’, Able Seaman John Lingham bruised his hand and Thomas Charlton suffered a ‘contused shoulder and foot’. After falling three times, Porter confined himself to his cabin where he watched his furniture washed from side to side.11

  On 2 March, Lewis Price, a marine private who had been sick with consumption for several weeks, died. His body was left swinging in its hammock in the sickbay alongside Seaman Benjamin Hamilton, whose amorous exploits at Saint Catherine’s had resulted in a dose of venereal disease. At 3 a.m. the gale reached its height. ‘We shipped a sea that stove in the [gun] ports from the bow to the quarter’, Farragut recalled. ‘[It] carried the weather quarter boat on to the wheel and took the lee boat off the davits, ‘our spare spars [were] washed from the chains … [and] our head-rails washed away.’ The wave flooded the cramped lower decks knocking several men out of their hammocks ‘Many of the marines and … sailors [took to] … their knees at prayer’ and prisoner Richard John, formerly the boatswain of HMP Nocton, leapt to his feet and yelled that ‘the ship’s broadside was stove in and that she was sinking’. The panic spread until Boatswain’s Mate William Kingsbury, the ‘trusty old’ tar who had impersonated Neptune at the line, took control. ‘Damn your eyes’, he bellowed at John. ‘Put your best foot forward, as there is one side left of her yet.’12

  At 5 a.m. the storm abated. With sunrise, fresh winds set in from the southwest, carrying the Essex up the Chilean coast under a serene blue sky. Four hours later Porter mustered the crew. Those who had performed well were promoted to fill the vacancies occasioned by manning the prizes in the Atlantic. That evening rain began to fall, but the wind remained constant and by 5 March the sunshine had returned. The dead-lights were knocked out of the gun ports and fresh breezes expunged the stench that had gathered below decks. Sailmaker Navarro sewed up the tears in the courses; Carpenter Waters and his mate, John Langley, rebui
lt the head-rails and repaired the boats; while Porter studied his map of the Pacific, searching for a suitable spot to resupply. Through his telescope, he could make out the waves breaking on the gloomy, black-rock shores of the Chilean coast, twenty miles away. Beyond were green, forested hills, cut by babbling brooks framed by the snow-capped Andes. Ringed by soft cloud, their peaks glimmered in the afternoon haze. Albatrosses, said to be possessed by the restless spirits of bankrupt pursers seeking a ship to make good their debts, wheeled in the air and several sunfish, strange and ungainly giants from the depths, basked alongside the ship amongst slicks of a gelatinous white substance which Porter was at a loss to explain.13

  On 6 March the island of Mocha was sighted on the starboard bow. A mountainous, verdant height, twenty miles in circumference, Mocha’s slopes were blanketed with tall pine. Numerous streams cascaded westward onto black sand beaches. Originally colonised by ocean-going Polynesians, the Spanish had arrived in 1544, but had declined to occupy the island. Over the next 150 years it had hosted a string of Dutch, French and English traders, pirates and privateers, the most famous of whom was Francis Drake. Ambushed by Lafkenche Indians, a coastal tribe of the Mapuche, Drake had been struck by three arrows. Two of his men had been captured and two others had died of their wounds on the Golden Hind. In 1685 the Spanish Governor in Santiago, José de Garro, had had the island forcibly depopulated. It remained undisturbed until the latter part of the eighteenth century when British, American and French whalers and sealers began to take advantage of abundant wood, water, fruit, fowl and game. A contemporary visitor was Mocha Dick, an albino male sperm whale. Notorious for his aggression, Dick was said to have survived one hundred skirmishes with whaling boats, many would blame him for the 1820 sinking of the whale-ship Essex and it seems likely that he inspired Melville’s Moby Dick.14

  Skirting the breakers on the sandy southeast point, Cowell steered round the barren east coast, took a wide berth round the rocks to the north and at 1 p.m. sailed inside a large coral reef that stretched round a bay on the western side of the island. The forecastle-men dropped the larboard anchor in eleven fathoms on a bottom of fine sand. Porter was rowed ashore through a crowd of seals. ‘The sea was beating furiously against the beach and rocks’, he recalled, ‘and it was some time before we could … [land] in a small cove … [w]here we found the water perfectly smooth.’ Having spotted several hogs and horses running wild, the men hauled the boats up the beach, while the officers set off in pursuit. The day passed pleasantly. The men enjoyed a ‘good run on shore’ and by dusk the officers ‘had killed … ten hogs, with some young pigs, which the seamen had run down’.15

  As the Americans were about to embark, another herd of horses was spotted. Positioning his men behind the boats, Porter waited until his quarry approached before firing. ‘One horse was crippled’, he recalled, ‘and … [three or four] seamen [and Quarter-Gunner James Spafford] ran forward with clubs to knock him down.’ Just then a late arrival, the short-sighted acting Fifth Lieutenant, Stephen Decatur McKnight, opened fire. The ball passed through the horse’s neck and struck Spafford. ‘Sir you have shot me!’ he cried. ‘I am a dying man!’ Coughing blood, Spafford was rowed back to the Essex and examined by Surgeon Miller. The ball had entered the right side of his chest and perforated his lungs, exiting below his right shoulder alongside the backbone. Miller’s prognosis was not good. ‘All were struck with consternation [at the news]’, Farragut recalled. ‘McKnight was nearly crazed and embraced Spafford, imploring his forgiveness.’ Meanwhile, the rest of the crew butchered the animals brought on board. The hogs were tough. The horse was ‘much fatter and more tender’.16

  The next morning the cutter took First Lieutenant Downes ashore. Porter had given him two hours to hunt, but at 7 a.m. the skies ‘took on a menacing aspect’ and a fresh wind caused the frigate to drag her anchor. Porter ordered the cornet raised and fired three signal guns to attract Downes’ attention. In the process of butchering a wild horse, the lieutenant and his men left three-quarters of the carcass on shore in their haste to get back to the ship and at 9.30 a.m. the Essex swept northwards out of the bay. That afternoon Feltus admired the view of the Chilean mainland. ‘[It is] a beautiful prospect’, he noted. ‘One part of the coast is level to the waters edge & coverd with herbage & another part is perpendicular … as if it had been broken off from some other land by an earthquake … the rocks and hills are covered … with herbage [and] behind all stand the … Andes reaching their lofty tops above the clouds.’ By 5 p.m. Cowell had brought the ship to within three leagues of the Island of Santa Maria where Porter hoped to stop for supplies, but hazy weather and insufficient knowledge of the shore made the approach dangerous. With a gale picking up, Porter stood off to the north in the failing light.17

  On 8 March the Essexes found themselves to the north of Concepción. A northerly wind brought a heavy fog which was burnt off by the afternoon sun. Equidistant between Concepción and Valparaiso, Porter believed himself in a good position to cruise for British whalers and rode the currents for the next three days. The fog returned the next day. With visibility at three miles, the Americans’ chances of success were reduced, but the lack of wind meant that Porter had little choice but to remain. The crew grew increasingly frustrated. ‘We have not had a fair view of the coast since the 8th, Feltus noted ‘[and] … have not seen any thing like a sail since we doubled Cape Horn.’ Porter was equally disheartened. ‘Nothing could have exceeded our impatience’, he recalled.18

  The Essexes’ lack of success was down to bad luck. In the thirty-seven years since its genesis in 1788, when the Emilia, a London-based whaler owned by the city’s principal whaling firm, Samuel Enderby and Sons, had rounded Cape Horn, the British South Seas whaling trade had grown into an industry that deployed over sixty 300-ton vessels to the Pacific each year. Their principal quarry, the physeter microcephalus (sperm whale or cachalot), was hunted for the high-grade liquid wax stored in a 2,000-litre cavity in its head. Prized for its bright, smokeless flame, which made it ideal for interior lighting, spermaceti oil was so lucrative that revenues for the South Seas trade soon overtook those from Britain’s traditional whaling grounds off Greenland and by the 1790s the industry was being nurtured by governmental decree. Whalers, along with fishermen, colliers, crews of ships contracted by the Victualing Board and the mates and masters of merchant ships, were given exemption from the press and in 1793 Prime Minister William Pitt ordered Captain James Colnett to find a suitable whaling base among the uninhabited islands of the South Pacific in order to liberate the trade from its reliance on the jealously-guarded Spanish-American ports.

  Although Colnett’s mission, undertaken in HMS Rattler, was of limited value, Pitt’s interest remained. Realising that the United States held the advantage due to the unparalleled experience of the whalers of Nantucket, he offered financial incentives to any willing to emigrate to the British Isles. The policy was immediately successful. The islanders considered themselves a breed apart from their mainland compatriots and London, whose streets boasted more oil lamps than any other city in the world, was by far their biggest market. During the American War of Independence the principal players in Nantucket had even sought an independent peace to ensure that their livelihood could continue and the heavy import tax placed on American whale oil by the British government convinced many that Pitt’s offer was too good to refuse. Principal amongst those who accepted was a hard-headed Quaker named Benjamin Rotch. Bringing several whaling masters, harpooners, boat steerers and fully-equipped whaling vessels with him, Rotch was instrumental in setting up a colony of ‘British’ Nantucketers in Milford Haven in Wales.

  In 1795, with growing competition from France and Nantucketers operating out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Pitt pushed an act through the House of Commons establishing a system of cash incentives to boost the British industry. A £600 bonus was offered to the captain who returned with the most oil each year, and £500 was awarded to the seven next most successfu
l. As a result, the industry went from strength to strength. British hands were taken on by Nantucket captains to meet the demand and a consortium set up a base to rival Milford Haven in the British capital. With annual returns of up to 44 per cent, merchants, governors of the Bank of England and even sitting MPs began investing. By 1813 such was the trade’s ubiquity that a dozen British whalers were constantly plying the grounds of the Chilean coast. Had the Essex arrived off Mocha five days earlier, she would have intercepted at least one of them. The Comet, a ship based in Hull, had spent the whole of February off the island catching blackfish and a solitary sperm whale. Her captain, Able Scurr, had spoken three American whalers in the vicinity, the George, the John & James and the Gardener and one British vessel, the Lima, before sailing to Concepción on 4 March to resupply. Reaching the port two days later, Scurr found seven more Americans and another English whaler, the 355-ton Atlantic.19