In Pursuit of the Essex

by Hughes, Ben;

  Nine days of frustrating calms followed. On 6 May Mary Fanning, the wife of an East India Company private on the Devaynes, gave birth to a daughter. Eight days later, ‘the long wished for breeze at length sprung up from the Southward and brought [the convoy] into the S.E. trades’. The captain of the John attempted to take advantage by sailing ahead, prompting Hillyar to fire several guns across his bows and the next morning, in the longitude of 22 degrees, the convoy crossed the line. Neptune was invited on board and the 140 men and boys on the Phoebe who had never sailed the southern seas were ducked and shaved. On 17 May the John parted company. Ignoring the Phoebe’s blue, white and black-striped signal flag, she disappeared over the horizon near the Racers, a hazardous, rocky shoal off the easternmost point of Brazil. The next three weeks saw the Phoebe and her remaining charges beating south down the coast towards Rio. Hillyar exercised his men at the great guns and small arms, a precaution also taken by captains MacTaggart and Short who knew they would soon have to fend for themselves. The next day Hillyar took the Isaac Todd in tow. Three days later squalls split the Phoebe’s maintopgallant sail ‘from the foot to the head’. Those on board the Isaac Todd passed the days harpoon fishing for ‘fierce sharks’ and green turtles, the latter of which proved ‘very superior … eating’. On the 26th the Koddington, another member of the wayward Brazil convoy, joined Hillyar’s flock and two days later the Devaynes and Ocean hoisted their colours in farewell and sailed for the Cape of Good Hope.6

  The last day of May saw the Phoebes gathered at the waist for a punishment parade. Ordinary Seaman John Evans, a 22-year-old Tamatave veteran from Branton, Northumberland was given twelve lashes for drunkenness. On 3 June, after a boat had been sent aboard the Delfina, a Portuguese ship from Rio bound for Oporto, soundings recorded a depth of 107 fathoms. Over the next week, as the convoy neared Rio, dozens of sails were seen and on the 9th, as the Phoebe rounded the lofty promontory of Cape Frio, seventy miles to the east of the Brazilian capital, Hillyar gathered his men at the waist once more. ‘I told them [that they would not be] allowed to go on shore at any of the ports we visited … [and] to make up their minds on the subject and to forgo the comforts of liberty until their return to England’, while ‘promis[ing] them that if we should be spared to see our native country … [I would] request their Lordships to indulge them with long leave.’ As an added incentive, Hillyar made several promotions. John Lunn, a fourteen-year-old First Class Volunteer, was made midshipman and William James, a 23-year-old who had been with the frigate for a little over a year, was promoted to able seaman. The new rating, which would see James’ wages increase by eight shillings a month, meant that he had served at sea for a minimum of three years. Able seamen were required to know every inch of the frigate’s miles of standing and running rigging; tie, worm, parcel, serve and splice ropes; run up the ratlines, furl or reef a wind filled sail; rig tackle from the yards; steer at the helm; heave the lead; load and fire the guns; stow the hold to retain the ship’s trim; and use a sailmaker’s needle to repair tears in the shrouds.7

  On the morning of 11 June the Phoebe, Isaac Todd and Koddington entered Rio’s Guanabra Bay. The views were stunning. Beyond the Sugar Loaf, which jutted ‘almost perpendicularly’ skywards at the southern entrance, several ‘high and singular peaks … softened with … luxurious foliage’ surrounded a vast anchorage dotted with fortified islands. Amongst the vessels at anchor were the John merchant brig, whose captain Hillyar promptly rebuked for breaking convoy and two British sloops-of-war, the 18-gun HMS Cherub, commanded by Captain Thomas Tudor Tucker, and the 24-gun HMS Raccoon under Captain William Black, both of which had recently returned from an uneventful cruise off Salvador de Bahia in search of American privateers. To the south stood the city. Built in a verdant valley leading gently upwards from the beach, Rio de Janeiro boasted several ‘pretty’ churches and public buildings and was dominated by an aqueduct whose double arches brought water six miles from a mountain named the Parrot’s Head.8

  The Phoebe’s arrival was a godsend for Rear-Admiral Manley Dixon, the 53-year-old commander of the Royal Navy’s Brazil Station. With no more than a handful of frigates and sloops and a single 74, Dixon was tasked with monitoring the volatile political situation in the Spanish colonies of Chile and the River Plate, protecting British trade across the South Atlantic and South Pacific, and providing convoy for quantities of gold and silver bullion generated by the growing number of British merchants resident in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Buenos Ayres, Santiago and Valparaiso. The opening of these new markets was a direct result of Napoleon’s 1805 closure of European ports refocusing British mercantile attention on emerging New World markets and the French invasions of Spain and Portugal which had forced Spanish America to allow foreign trade. By 1813 revenues amounted to over £1,000,000 per year. Diverted to the coffers of Britain’s army in the Peninsula, the money allowed Wellington to pay his troops and purchase provisions from the Portuguese and Spanish peasants in whose territory he was campaigning. This gave the British a decisive advantage over the French, the majority of whom were tied up protecting exposed lines of communication against the depredations of local guerrillas, enraged by Napoleon’s preference for ‘living off the land’.

  With the outbreak of the War of 1812, Dixon’s job had become more complicated. As the American flour Wellington had previously relied on was now unavailable, the rear-admiral had been ordered to send Chilean grain to Europe – an apparently simple task which would have unforeseen complications. Dixon also had to contend with swarms of American privateers harassing British merchant shipping off the Brazilian coast and in recent months his station had been threatened by the presence of at least three US men-of-war. In December USS Constitution and USS Hornet had narrowly missed capturing HMS Bonne Citoyenne, a lightly-armed sloop carrying one of the crucial bullion shipments to Wellington’s troops. The Americans had gone on to destroy HMS Java off Salvador before disappearing without trace. Meanwhile, with Dixon absent escorting the Bonne Citoyenne to safety with the only ship on his station capable of besting the Americans, the 74-gun HMS Montague, USS Essex had been sighted off the Island of Saint Catherine’s by a Portuguese sloop. HMS Cherub and Raccoon had set off in pursuit, but their efforts had proved fruitless. Aside from sending a certain Captain John Helt and several other prisoners into Rio on parole, the Essex had not been heard from since.9

  Thus had matters stood until 3 June when Dixon had received a letter from Captain Peter Heywood of the frigate HMS Nereus, at anchor off Buenos Ayres. Contained was intelligence forwarded from British merchants in Valparaiso stating that the Essex had arrived on 15 March. They added that the Americans intended ‘to take and destroy the English whalers’ working the coast before ‘[running] across the Pacific to India, where [it is said] … she is to join the Constitution and Hornet, who were to go thither from the coast of Brazil with orders to destroy, but capture nothing’. The merchants also mentioned contradictory rumours that stated that the Essex intended to return ‘back round Cape Horn and touch at the mouth of the [River] Plate and on the coast of Brazil again on her return to America’. The mention of British whalers was of particular concern to Dixon. On 30 April he had received orders to send HMS Cherub and Raccoon into the Pacific to protect this all-important trade. Preoccupied with the threat posed by USS Constitution, the rear-admiral had ignored the missive and kept his sloops on the Brazilian coast instead. Their Lordships had been most displeased, but the Phoebe’s unexpected arrival presented Dixon with an opportunity to make amends.10

  By the end of June, having consulted with Captain Hillyar and Messers MacTavish and McDonald, Dixon came up with a plan. The Phoebe, Raccoon, Cherub and Isaac Todd would sail for the Pacific under Hillyar’s command. Such a squadron would be more than capable of dealing with the Essex as well as completing the Admiralty’s ‘secret’ mission. Dixon even factored in the worst-case scenario of the poor-sailing Todd not making it round Cape Horn, by specifying that the stores and personnel she
carried – crucial for establishing a British base on the Columbia River – were to be distributed amongst the fleet. Meanwhile, the imminent arrival of HMS Porcupine with the long-delayed Brazil convoy would enable Dixon to send another shipment of specie (£16,000 in bullion and £60,000 in Brazilian diamonds) to England, while the return of HMS Montague would provide a strike force in the event any American cruisers were still lurking off the Brazilian coast.11

  The Phoebes spent nearly a month at Rio. On 12 June the lower rigging was set up and the hold cleared to receive supplies. The next four weeks saw hard biscuit, coal, fresh beef, live bullocks, barrels of suet, raisins, cocoa, lime juice, salt pork and fresh vegetables, bags of bread and casks of flour, vinegar, split peas, oatmeal, rice, tobacco and spirits brought out from the victualing office and stowed below. Boat parties, watched by Lieutenant Burrow’s marines, filled the ship’s water casks at the streams spilling into Guanabra Bay or gathered firewood from the forests and twigs to make brooms to sweep the decks, while Cooper James Fullarton, a 23-year-old from Montrose, knocked up barrels to replace those that had rotted through and the caulkers and carpenter’s crew, having received new saws and files and a boatload of tropical hardwood from Dixon’s warehouse, readied the Phoebe and Isaac Todd for sea. On 14 June the Phoebe’s surgeon, Jason Smith and his assistant, Adam Simpson, checked their stores of amputating saws, knives, needles, bone nippers, bandages and cat gut. Two days later a survey was conducted on the ship’s sails and rigging. The sailmakers and boatswains from HMS Cherub, Raccoon and Montague brought on board to conduct the process found the frigate’s fore and mizzen topgallant sails, the fore and main topgallant studding sails and parts of the upper rigging unfit for further use. That afternoon the Phoebe’s ailing boatswain, John Pomfrey, struggled ashore to requisition the supplies Sailmaker Thomas Millery and his associate, Ropemaker George Clarke, would need to make the repairs. On 17 June the yards and spars were blacked. Sand from Rio’s beaches was brought on board as ballast and the carpenter and his crew rowed across the anchorage to make a new jib boom for the Isaac Todd.12

  The Phoebe’s officers were occupied with less laborious pursuits. First Lieutenant Ingram took advantage of an English merchant ship’s imminent departure to write a letter to his mother Anne; several others visited the waterfall at Tajuca or explored town. In 1808 Rio de Janeiro had been transformed into the hub of the Portuguese Empire with the arrival of the Prince Regent, Dom Joao VI, and 10,000 of his countrymen following the French invasion of his homeland. Nevertheless, Gardiner ‘was … much disappointed … All which from the ship had the appearance of beauty and grandeur seemed to vanish when I entered the … city’, he explained. The streets were ‘narrow and dirty’ and there was ‘such an intermixture of fine houses and miserable looking shops, that the latter destroy[ed] the effect of the former’. Gardiner found the city’s elite ‘ridiculous’ and ‘vain’ and abhorred the infamous Valongo Slave Market, where 20,000 human souls were traded each year ‘with as much unconcern as a horse or a sheep would be [sold] in Europe’. Rio’s churches, on the other hand, were ‘neat and richly ornamented’; the city’s botanical gardens boasted brilliantly-coloured blooms; and there was a finely situated main square. Paved with granite and fronted by a stone fountain dedicated to the goddess Phoebe, it was open to the east offering stunning views of the anchorage. Dom Joao’s tiled Royal Palace stood to the south, while the west was dominated by a whitewashed cathedral rich in gold ornamentation and oil paintings of Christ.13

  In early June two of the Isaac Todd’s mates, demoralised by the situation on board, resigned. Later, during a particularly ‘dark night’, seven of the Todd’s sailors stole one of her boats and deserted. Rear-Admiral Dixon had several others confined on HMS Montague to ensure they could not follow suit. The Phoebes were also prone to desertion. On 25 June Midshipman Michael Lane took a party on the jolly boat to the victualing yard to pick up provisions. Having filled up their bags with fresh oranges from the vegetable house, Ordinary Seamen Peter Carlan and Peter Mortraugh, both pressed men from Drogheda, fled into town. The next morning at daylight, Third Lieutenant Jago was ordered to lead a search party, but it was Captain Smith of the Isaac Todd who was approached by a Portuguese guard who had apprehended the two men after being tipped off by a British merchant. ‘They immediately declared they belonged to the Phoebe’, Smith recalled. ‘Both … were crying … and Mortraugh knelt down and begged I would intercede with Captain Hillyar that they might not be punished.’14

  A court martial took place on HMS Phoebe three days later. The men manned the yards to receive Rear-Admiral Dixon, a single cannon was fired and the Union Flag ran up at the mizzen peak to indicate that the trial had begun. Besides Hillyar and Dixon, Captains Tucker, Black and Robert Elliot, the commander of HMS Porcupine who had arrived with the Brazil convoy and HMS Montague on the 13th, were present. The evidence was delivered by Higgins, Jago and Smith and a plea for clemency based on the men’s previous behaviour delivered by First Lieutenant Ingram. Within half an hour the officers had made up their minds. ‘In consideration of the … [prisoners’] former good character’, Carlan and Mortraugh were sentenced ‘to receive fifty lashes … with a cat-of-nine-tails, on their bare backs.’ The punishment was relatively lenient. Three other deserters, one from HMS Raccoon and two from HMS Montague, had been sentenced to 100 lashes each that very morning.15

  On 1 July Rear-Admiral Dixon placed HMS Cherub and Raccoon under Hillyar’s command. To give him the best chance of intercepting the Essex, Hillyar was advised ‘to sail to the Southern Pacific … Whale fishery from the 17° of South Latitude to the Equator or Gallipegas Islands, cruizing from ten to one hundred leagues from the Land … The additional force … [of the two sloops] will … afford you the double prospect of succeeding on the Service pointed out in your Most Secret Orders’. Dixon’s letter closed with a warning.

  This Expedition …, I am sorry to say, appears to be … generally known and I have no doubt … [news] will reach the Western coast of [South] America long before you arrive … It must solely depend upon you’, he reminded Hillyar, ‘to exercise your Judgement and discretion, how far it may be necessary either to take both … [sloops] on to the extent of your destination or leave one or both … for the purpose of Cruising … for the protection of the Whale-fishery.16

  Dixon’s concerns were well-founded. On 27 June Thomas Sumpter, the local US trade consul, had written a report on the comings and goings of the Royal Navy’s ships on Dixon’s station. Not only did it give details about Hillyar’s destination and target, but also listed the ships under his command and their relative strengths. Sumpter dispatched the letter to William Gilchrist Miller, his colleague in Buenos Ayres, who forwarded it to Joel Roberts Poinsett, the trade consul in Santiago. Another copy made its way to the United States where it was published in Niles’ Weekly Register in September 1813. The first of a series of glowing reports concerning the whereabouts of the US’s ever-elusive ‘Admiral of the Great South Sea’, the article gave the Essex’s crewmembers’ friends and family the first definitive indication of their loved ones’ whereabouts since they had left Delaware eleven months before.17

  At the beginning of July the British captains made their final preparations for putting to sea. Hillyar had ten sailors pressed from British merchantmen in the bay bringing the Phoebe’s complement to 284; Captain Tucker took thirteen Brazilian landsmen on board the Cherub and several more were pressed into service on the ever-unhappy Isaac Todd. On 3 July Rear-Admiral Dixon received a letter from Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, Sixth Viscount Strangford, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to His Britannic Majesty at Rio de Janeiro informing him that Peruvian privateers had seized two of the ships Strangford had sent to Chile to purchase flour and grain for the British army in Portugal. The Boriska, a Baltimore merchantman granted special license, and the Hunter, a British ship, had been detained at Callao and Strangford feared that the Fama, the armed Portuguese merchantman he had d
ispatched on the same mission at the end of 1812, had suffered a similar fate. Having learnt ‘that some of his Majesty’s ships are about to proceed … to the western coast of this continent’, Strangford asked Dixon to ‘give … [them] orders … for the purpose of obtaining from … Viceroy [Abascal] of Peru the restitution of these vessels as well as of their cargoes’. Dixon passed on the request to Hillyar who promised to look into the matter.18

  The same morning Dom Joao VI visited the Phoebe on his royal barge, accompanied by ‘several other boats of state’. Hillyar welcomed the regent with a 21-gun salute. After inspecting the men, Joao, a portly 46-year-old, boarded HMS Montague to the sound of another royal salute and was bade farewell with a third. The next morning Lord Strangford went on board the Phoebe to brief Hillyar on his mission at Callao and at 7 a.m. on 5 July, with all four ships packed with seven months’ provisions and the Isaac Todd full of shingle ballast in an attempt to improve her sailing, Hillyar gave the signal to weigh. A sea breeze and a flood tide forced the captain to spend the night at anchor. The following day the unfavourable conditions continued and on the 8th a heavy sea poured into the bay causing panic as the ships rolled violently with the swell. That afternoon, as the boats were employed to drag the ships out to sea, Juan Evastine, one of the thirteen local landsmen taken on board HMS Cherub, jumped overboard and deserted. On 9 July, the weather turned. With light breezes, the flotilla worked its way out of the harbour under a cloudy sky and, with the ungainly Isaac Todd taking the lead, set a course for Cape Horn.19

  Chapter 6

  The Galapagos Islands: USS Essex, 11 April 1813 – 9 July 1813

  Sped by steady breezes, the Essex’s crossing from Payta to the Galapagos took six days. Having learnt that the islands, dubbed Las Encantadas (‘the Enchanted Ones’) by the Spanish, were notorious for dead calms, strong currents and baffling breezes, Porter prepared for independent boat action. The carpenter’s crew checked the barge, longboat, yawl and cutter and the three whaleboats acquired from the Charles and Barclay were in a state of good repair; plans of attack and signals were established; and extra crew were selected for each boat to serve as boarders. Gunners’ Mates George Martin and James Steady, the latter newly promoted to replace the disgraced Lawrence Miller, ensured the powder barrels in the magazine were in good condition while the ship’s armourer, Bennet Field, checked the small arms. Muskets and pistols were cleaned and oiled and flints checked for signs of wear, while the boarders honed their cutlasses, axes, knives and pikes with a grindstone set up on the spar deck.1