In Pursuit of the Essex
Page 17
The flotilla stayed at Juan Fernandez for six days. The boats brought oxen and sheep from the village, filled the water casks onshore and gathered wood while a detachment of red-coated marines stood guard. Sailmaker Millery made repairs, the coopers knocked up new barrels to replace those which had rotted through, the butchers slaughtered the oxen and the cooks doled the meat out to the messes along with string bags full of boiled turnips which grew wild onshore. All was made more difficult by the exposed nature of the anchorage. High winds, gusting down from the mountain tops, roared across the bay and on 13 and 14 September the Cherub and the Raccoon were blown out to sea. While the latter was regaining the anchorage, the Phoebe lost her stream anchor: the hawsers chafed through by the rocks. Two of the frigate’s boats dredged the bay to recover it. That afternoon squalls blowing off the shore caused violent breakers to pound the beach and the Phoebe’s launch was driven onto the rocks. Her stern post and hull were damaged, but no lives were lost.
Early on the 16th, Hillyar took advantage of a lull in the weather to tow the ships closer in shore. The Phoebe came to with the small bower in 34 fathoms half a mile from the beach and the sloops anchored nearby. That afternoon, while the carpenter and his crew repaired the launch and the rest of the Phoebes stowed the hold or fished for bream and cod, five of the Brazilian sailors who had volunteered on the Cherub deserted. John Bates, a nineteen-year-old ordinary seaman from London who had been a Phoebe since before the Battle of Tamatave and Arthur Willis, a 28-year-old taken onto the frigate from the Salvador del Mundo at Plymouth, snuck down to the after hold and stove in the head of one of the pipes of wine purchased at Tenerife. By the time the crime was discovered, the pipe was ‘totally leaked out’ and both men were paralytic. Surflen charged the cost against their wages and the master at arms put them in irons.17
Meanwhile, the officers stretched their legs on shore. Gardiner, a keen student of fortification, inspected the town’s defences and noted that the peach trees planted by Commodore Anson had thrived. Several others visited the caves on the far side of the island once inhabited by Alexander Selkirk, a cantankerous Scottish pirate castaway on the island in 1704 long before the Spanish had colonised it. Surviving for four years by hunting feral goats, Selkirk was picked up by another British privateer and his story later inspired Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe. The Phoebes found three caves ‘in which his name is still to be seen cut in the rock’.
The highlight of the young officers’ stay was meeting Santa Maria’s youngest daughter, the beautiful María Isabel. A few days before the British left, she accompanied her father on board the Phoebe as Hillyar’s guest. Gardiner was amongst those chosen to escort them on board. ‘In course of conversation … [she] was asked how she liked being on an island, which at her age (about 19) without amusement or society, could not be supposed to be very agreeable’ the midshipman recalled. ‘She did not … hesitate, but turning to her Father with a smile on her countenance, said, “She was happy to be any where with him.” An answer so unexpected and which at the same time portrayed so much virtue and good sense, could not be disregarded by any of the company and only left us to regret that so fair a jewel, which would be an ornament to any society, should be concealed in such an unfrequented abode.’18
On the morning of 18 September signals were hoisted to warn the officers to retire on board. John McDonald, Takuane and the Canadian voyageurs moved their belongings from the Phoebe to the Raccoon, the boats were hoisted and at 3.30 p.m. the flotilla weighed anchor and sailed north. Over the next two weeks they made excellent progress towards the Equator. ‘During the whole of this run we … were not once becalmed’, Gardiner recalled. ‘What is more remarkable we had no rain, although the sky was almost continually clouded … [and we] were … refreshed by a steady and most delightful breeze.’ The day after leaving Juan Fernandez, the flotilla entered the southeast trades. That afternoon the Phoebe’s topmen set the gallant studding and fore topsails and on the 21st the Phoebe covered 220 miles in twenty-four hours, before altering course to the north-northwest to run parallel with the South American coastline.19
On 22 September John Bates and Arthur Willis, the two seamen who had stolen wine from the Phoebe’s after hold, were given thirty-six and twenty-four lashes respectively. Private Thomas Presser received two dozen for disobedience and Private John Eves was given the same for theft. Over the next five days Captains Hillyar and Tucker exercised their great guns and small arms and on the 23rd the Phoebes practised with live ammunition, firing three broadsides into the Pacific. Midshipman Lane was discharged into HMS Raccoon to bring Captain Black’s complement up to strength before he separated, while the carpenter and armourer constructed a new carriage and ring bolts for one of the sloop’s cannon. On 25 September Quartermaster John Williams, a 47-year-old from Memmell in Prussia who had fought at Trafalgar, was given twenty-four lashes for drunkenness and demoted to able seaman. Two days later the Raccoon’s jolly boat and gig were hoisted onto the Phoebe for repairs.20
On 29 September, with the flotilla 100 miles west of Lima, a stranger was spotted on the larboard bow. Shifting the starboard studding sails and hauling to the westward, Hillyar gave chase. The stranger hoisted Spanish colours and hove to at midday. She proved to be a Spanish brig from Guayaquil bound for Lima. Her captain revealed that ‘the Essex had been in the bay of Guayaquil two months since … and had there landed a number of South Sea-men’. Learning that the prisoners had been ‘in great distress’, Hillyar decided to sail for Tumbez without delay ‘to relieve them as well as gain [further] information’. Over forty-eight hours, the flotilla progressed 300 miles and on 2 October, having exchanged final telegraphs wishing each other good luck, the Raccoon sailed north for the Cocos Islands, while the Phoebe and Cherub stood in for land.21
Captain David Porter (1780–1843). Portrait in oils possibly by John Trumbull. US Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland.
A controversial, hot-headed character, Porter saw action in the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Mediterranean. As well as serving his native United States, the Bostonian was employed by the Mexican Navy and later worked in Istanbul as US trade consul to the Ottoman Empire.
USS Essex. Watercolour attributed to Joseph Howard. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
A 32-gun frigate launched in 1799, the Essex carried a complement of 315 men and boys. She served in the Indian Ocean during the Quasi-War with France, becoming the first US navy vessel to cross the Equator and round the Cape of Good Hope, and in the Mediterranean during the First Barbary War.
David Glasgow Farragut (1801–70). Portrait in oils. William Swain. National Portrait Gallery, Washington.
Pictured above as a 38-year-old on his way to becoming the United States’ first admiral, Farragut participated in the Essex’s Pacific cruise as an eleven-year-old midshipman. Brave and resourceful, he was memorably referred to as ‘three pounds of uniform and seventy pounds of fight’.
Commodore John Downes (1786–1854). Portrait in oils. Canton Historical Society, Massachusetts.
Downes served as Porter’s First Lieutenant. Efficient and reliable, he had proved his bravery during the First Barbary War and, despite humble beginnings, would rise to the rank of commodore.
The Liberty of the Subject [the Press Gang]. Caricature. Print. W. Humphrey & James Gillray, 1779, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
Impressment was viewed as a necessary evil by the Admiralty. Without it the Royal Navy would not have been able to meet its country’s demands. Nevertheless, the press remained controversial at home and was also a major cause of the War of 1812.
The Essex capturing the Alert. Taken from Our Country in War by Murat Halstead (1998).
Porter captured the 20-gun Alert on 13 August 1812 while returning from a Caribbean commerce-raiding mission. As the United States’ first success over a British ship of war, the capture won Porter numerous plaudits, but was later overshadowed by a string of single-ship frigate victories.
With a career spanning some twenty years, the 36-gun HMS Phoebe was one of the Royal Navy’s most successful frigates. She saw action in the French Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Her crews would receive six clasps to their General Service Medals.
Captain James Hillyar (1769–1843). Miniature. Artist unknown. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
Eleven years Porter’s senior, Hillyar was vastly experienced. Calm and calculating where the Bostonian was impetuous, his measured approach would prove superior in Valparaiso Bay.
Allen F. Gardiner (1794–1851). Taken from The Story of Commander Allen Gardiner, R.N, sixth edition, John W. Marsh and W. H. Stirling (London, James Nisbett & co. 1883).
An educated and observant midshipman, Gardiner compiled a journal of his impressions during the Phoebe’s voyage. Although originally intended for publication, it remained unknown to naval historian for some time.
Signatures of Captain James Hillyar and the Phoebe’s First Lieutenant, William Ingram. Taken from the Phoebe’s Muster Roll, ADM 36/16809, National Archives, Kew.
Although no portrait of Ingram could be sourced, his signature appears several times in the primary sources. ‘A tall, handsome man’, the lieutenant became engaged during the voyage, but was mortally wounded in Valparaiso Bay.
Portsmouth Point. Hand-coloured Etching. Thomas Rowlandson. 1811. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
Rowlandson’s caricature, depicting the crew of a man-of-war saying their farewells, gives an idea of the atmosphere at Portsmouth in the age of sail. The Phoebe resupplied here before embarking on her Pacific cruise.
‘A Marine & Seaman fishing off the Anchor on board the Pallas in Senegal Road, jany 1795.’ Watercolour. Gabriel Bray. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
This intimate scene provides an unusual glimpse of shipboard life in the Royal Navy during the age of sail.
Saturday Night at Sea. George Cruikshank. 1841. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
This image gives an impression of the confined nature of life below decks. Note the mess table suspended from the deck above and the guns tightly stowed.
A nineteenth-century map of Rio de Janeiro.
Rio was the headquarters of the Royal Navy’s Brazil Station and a major stopping-off point on the Phoebe’s cruise. Note the Valongo Slave Market at number 14 and the main square near number 5.
Slave Market in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, c.1824. Edward Francis Finden. Taken from Journal of a voyage to Brazil, and residence there … by Maria Graham (London, J. Murray, 1824).
Midshipman Gardiner, a budding evangelical and the product of emancipation-era England, was appalled by the scenes at Valongo, one of the principal slave markets in the Americas.
Vista de la Bahia de Valparaiso. 1830. Copy of a lithograph by E. Dumont. Museo Histórico Nacional de Chile.
By the early nineteenth century, Valparaiso was one of the most important ports in the Southern Pacific. As the Chilean patriots distanced themselves from Spain, the port saw the arrival of an increasing number of foreign merchants, whalers and men of war.
Lima, Plaza de Armas. 1854.
In the early nineteenth century, Lima was still the hub of Spanish South America. Several officers from HMS Phoebe visited the city and its environs in December 1813.
Juan Fernandez Island. Carte Particuliere de L’Isel de Juan Fernandez du Voyage de L’Amiral Anson. Jacques Nicolas Bellin. 1775.
Juan Fernandez Island had been a popular provisioning point for pirates, whalers, privateers, men of war and explorers since the sixteenth century. In 1741 Admiral Anson called in having rounded Cape Horn, as did the Phoebe in 1813.
Engraving. 1744. Taken from Relacion histórica del viaje a la América Meridional by Antonio y Jorge Juan de Ulloa.
Chile was the breadbasket of the Spanish Pacific colonies. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, however, stirrings of independence had begun to reduce inter-colonial trade.
‘At daylight we saw a shoal of sperm whales.’ Drawing. Perry G. Wing. 1854. New Bedford Whaling Museum, Massachusetts.
Whaling was big business. With the Americans looking to gain hegemony, the British Pacific whaling fleet made an attractive target, both financially and strategically, for the USS Essex.
Map of the Galapagos Islands. 1684. Taken from A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean by James Burney.
The inaccuracies in the map above illustrate Captain Porter’s frustrations when attempting to navigate the archipelago in 1813. Dead calms, changeable currents and unpredictable winds added to his difficulties.
Mouina. Chief Warrior of the Tayehs [sic]. Engraved, c.1813, by William Strickland. Taken from Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific by David Porter.
The Taeehs of Nuka Hiva were initially Porter’s allies and Mouina took part in several joint operations against his tribe’s traditional enemies, the Happah. The relationship later soured.
Marquesan War Canoe. Engraved, c.1813, by William Strickland. Taken from Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific by David Porter.
Porter’s first raid against the Typees, the largest tribe on Nuka Hiva, was led by the USS Essex Junior, accompanied by four ship’s boats and twenty Marquesan war canoes.
Commodore Porter off Nuka Hiva. Engraved, c.1813, by William Strickland. Taken from Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific by David Porter.
The Essex is depicted at anchor in Port Anna Maria alongside her prizes. Fort Madison can be seen on the hilltop to the left and the Taeeh settlement is on the right.
USS Essex vs HMSs Phoebe and Cherub. Engraved, c.1813, by William Strickland. Taken from Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific by David Porter.
Porter’s depiction of the battle gives the impression that the Cherub (far right) was closely engaged. From an examination of the primary sources it is apparent that this was only the case at the beginning of the engagement.
View of Valparaiso Bay. 2015. Author’s collection.
The anchorage where the Essex and her prizes moored is to the left of the picture. The battle took place beyond the first point on the right.
William Morgan’s General Service Medal. Image taken from DNW Auctioneers website. http://www.dnw.co.uk/
Known to his shipmates as the ‘Methodist Parson’, Morgan was a marine who ran the Phoebe’s lower deck prayer meetings. He saw action at Tamatave as well as Valparaiso Bay, rising to the rank of corporal before being dismissed ‘unservicable’ due to ‘wounded thighs’ in December 1814.
Master’s Log Book, HMS Phoebe. Entry for 28 March 1814. Taken from ADM 52/4236, National Archives, Kew.
Sailing Master Miller’s entry for the Battle of Valparaiso is particularly detailed. Alongside the Cherub’s log book, the reports written by Captain Hillyar, and the accounts penned by Midshipmen Gardiner and Thornton Junior and Lieutenant Sampson, it provides a counterbalance to the US accounts previously relied on.
Memorial to the USS Essex, 2015. Author’s collection.
The memorial above stands on a hill overlooking Valparaiso Bay in the Cementario de los Disidentes. The site office also records the burials of Sailing Master Cowell and First Lieutenant William Ingram. Their resting places can no longer be found.
Chapter 8
A Matter of Honour: USS Essex, 9 July 1813 – 2 October 1813
On the morning of 9 July 1813, four days after his twelfth birthday, Midshipman Farragut’s ‘day of trial … arrived’. One hundred leagues off the South American mainland, Farragut had been granted his first independent command: the Barclay, the New Bedford whaler Porter had liberated from Peruvian privateers over two months before. Such an occasion would normally have been cause for celebration, but Farragut had serious concerns. With the Essex and her armed consorts, the Greenwich and Georgiana, disappearing to the east and the Essex Ju
nior and the rest of the prizes making sail to the south for Valparaiso, the Barclay would soon be isolated in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. To make matters worse, the whaler’s former captain, the 61-year-old New Englander, Gideon Randall, had been in command nearly as long as Farragut had been alive. The whaler was damned if he was going to stand aside while some wet-behind-the-ears ‘nutshell’ took over his ship. ‘I was a little afraid of the old fellow’, Farragut admitted, ‘but the time had come for me at least to play the man, so I mustered up courage and informed [him] … that I desired the main topsail filled away, in order to close up with the Essex Junior. He replied that he would shoot any man who dared to touch a rope without his orders … then went below for his pistols.’ Determined not to be intimidated, Farragut ordered his right-hand man, a fellow Essex assigned to help the young midshipman, to fill the sail. ‘He answered with a clear “Ay, ay, sir”’ and by the time Randall re-emerged, Farragut had the confidence to threaten to have him thrown overboard if he appeared on deck with his pistols again.1
The rest of Farragut’s voyage proved uneventful. Headed by Downes in the Essex Junior, the convoy (the Barclay, Policy, Montezuma, Hector and Catherine) sailed south for Valparaiso. The first seven days brought fresh breezes interspersed with squalls. On 10 July Downes took the Montezuma in tow and seven days later a violent gust blew away part of the latter’s standing rigging. Two days of dead calms followed. Towards the end of the month the fleet was forced to repeatedly tack into the wind and on the 29th a breeze sprung up out of the northwest. With all sail set, the convoy cut swiftly east-southeast and on 3 August Midshipman Feltus set the Montezuma‘s studding sails. Flying before the wind, the convoy made Juan Fernandez on the 8th, a little over a month before Captain Hillyar would arrive, and four days later sighted Valparaiso. At 5 p.m. the following afternoon, the Americans dropped anchor in twenty-five fathoms in the bay.2