by Hughes, Ben;
Leaving Hood’s Island on 13 September, Porter ran down for Charles’ Island, before sweeping on to the southernmost point of Albemarle. The next morning a stranger was spotted to the south. ‘On going aloft with my glass, I could perceive that she was … under very easy sail’, Porter recalled, ‘[and] apparently lying to.’ With the stranger directly to windward, Porter was determined not to panic her into flight. ‘I … directed the fore and main royal-yards to be sent down’, he explained, ‘and the masts to be housed, the ports to be shut in and the ship to be disguised … as a merchantman and kept plying to windward … under easy sail.’ By noon the Americans had closed to within five miles. Their quarry was in the process of cutting up a sperm whale and ‘from her general appearance’, seemed to be the same ship that had recently eluded the Americans near Abington Island. With the Essex four miles off, the stranger took flight, but it was too late. ‘After firing six or eight shot’, Porter recalled, ‘she bore down under our lee and struck her colours.’ To the Bostonian’s delight, she was indeed the ship that had previously escaped: the Sir Andrew Hammond, a 301-ton whaler of thirty-one crew and twelve guns registered to William Mellish, the same merchant-cum-politician who had owned the Seringapatam.18
After taking possession, Porter had his new prize searched for supplies. As well as an abundance of beef, pork, bread, water and wood, the whaler was carrying ‘two puncheons of choice Jamaica spirits’, a particularly welcome addition as the Essexes had been without liquor since the celebrations on 4 July. Another valuable commodity was the freshly-butchered strips of unrefined spermaceti blubber covering the main deck. Informed that they would produce as many as ninety barrels of oil worth $2,000–$3,000, Porter ordered Chaplain Adams and a prize crew of former whalers ‘to try out and stow away the oil with all possible expedition’.19
The Essex and Sir Andrew Hammond arrived in the Basin on 15 September. Having grown ‘heartily tired’ of such a ‘desolate and dreary place’, where the only occurrence of note was the nightly wailing of a nearby sea-lion colony, the men celebrated the frigate’s return. Their joy was complete when the recently captured Jamaican spirits were doled out, but Porter’s indulgence backfired. ‘Whether it was the great strength of the rum or the length of time they had been without, I cannot say; but our seamen were so much affected … that many were taken to their hammocks perfectly drunk; and … there was scarcely a seaman in the ship but what was in some degree intoxicated.’ Discipline suffered as a result. James Rynard, the rabble-rousing quarter-master who had come to prominence after the Essex had left Porto Praya eight months before, was the chief culprit. ‘I had directed him to proceed to superintend some duty on board one of the prizes’, Porter recalled. ‘He appeared … somewhat intoxicated and insolently told me he had not been sent from the ship in a proper manner … I directed him to stay aft on the quarter-deck until he was sober. He attempted, however, … to rush by me. His dinner was taken on deck to him by his messmates; this he threw overboard in the presence of the officer of the deck and at the same time demanded … to go below.’ Porter had Rynard put in irons and decided to discharge him from the service. ‘I … directed the purser to make out his accounts and send him on board the Seringapatam, until we should arrive at some place where he could be put on shore.’ The incident had a beneficial effect. ‘It rendered every man in the ship sober, attentive and active in the discharge of his duty and assiduous to please.’20
With his authority reasserted, Porter considered his next move. The Essex was in need of careening. Her copper bottom was coming away and the hull was alive with barnacles and seaweed. A second issue was the rats infesting the hold. ‘They had increased so fast as to become a most dreadful annoyance’ and were ‘destroying … provisions, eating through … water casks …, getting into the magazine and destroying … cartridges … and occasioning considerable destruction of … clothing, flags, [and] sails.’ A safe spot, with access to fresh water and provisions and far from passing British cruisers, was required to remedy these problems. With indiscipline increasing, Porter also wanted to give his men some well-earned recreation. The Marquesas Islands fit the bill. Over 4,000 miles west of the Galapagos, they were suitably remote while the attentions of the local women, famed for what Western sailors considered loose morals, would provide the men with the tonic they required.21
With Downes’ deadline of 2 October approaching, Porter prepared for sea. The New Zealander was re-caulked, the Sir Andrew Hammond painted and ‘put in order’, the sailors re-assigned amongst the prizes, and the supplies and provisions, including the tortoises taken from Hood’s Island, redistributed. By 28 September, the work was finished and attention turned to the lookout post on the hill to the north of Banks’ Bay. Two days later the Essex Junior was spotted and at 3 p.m. Downes anchored alongside the flotilla. The news from Valparaiso soon spread round the fleet. While the men celebrated the United States’ naval victories, they also no doubt piqued Porter’s pride. The latest captures meant that the Bostonian was in an unenviable minority of active US frigate captains yet to take a major prize. Also of interest was Downes’ report on the British squadron bound for the Pacific. Porter had met Captain Hillyar while on service in the Mediterranean in 1807. If the Bostonian could take the Phoebe, the feat would be even more impressive than the captures made by his peers. A final note of interest was the intelligence concerning the Mary-Ann. The news hardened Porter’s resolve to make the Marquesas his next destination. At 5 p.m. on 2 October, the six-ship flotilla sailed out of Bank’s Bay.22
Chapter 9
Tragedy at Tumbez: HMS Phoebe, 3 October 1813 – 10 December 1813
At daylight on 3 October 1813 the lookouts on HMS Phoebe and Cherub sighted land. Cape Blanco, a sheer sandstone cliff with ‘a bold shore’ rising out of the azure blue of the Pacific, put a homesick Gardiner in mind of Cornwall’s Lizard Point. At 8 a.m., with the ships running northwest along a low, sandy coast, backed by the distant Andes, a stranger was spotted in shore. Two shots from the Phoebe’s bow chasers brought her to and a boat was sent across to board her. She proved to be a Spanish brig from Panama bound for Paita. At 10 a.m. the flotilla made all sail and Hillyar mustered his men for divine service. Seven hours later, noting the colour of the water had changed, the Phoebe’s deck officer sounded in five fathoms with a muddy bottom. Hauling off shore, the ships ran out to sea, before dropping anchor at 6 p.m. in ten fathoms. That evening Hillyar held divine service for the second time. The Cherubs, once again, were left to their own devices.1
At 6 a.m. the next day the signal to weigh was raised at the Phoebe’s masthead. Intending to run up to the Island of the Dead for supplies, Hillyar sailed north sounding in 11 to 16 fathoms. At 10 a.m. a boat tested the current which was found to set three-quarters of a knot to the south and that afternoon, with the ships still a few leagues from their destination, a boat was observed off the weather bow. Firing a gun to signal for a pilot, Hillyar tacked and at 4 p.m. hove to as a local fisherman was brought on board. ‘We were informed that [the Island of the Dead] was not inhabited’, Gardiner recalled, ‘and that from that station it would be difficult to bear out of the bay with the sea breeze.’ Advised that ‘the best anchorage … was off the River Tumbez’, Hillyar spent the next two hours beating up towards the river. At 6 p.m., a league from the bar where the sea broke ‘with great violence’, the ships moored in seven fathoms, the Phoebe with an open hawse to the westward holding her against the surge of fresh water rushing out to sea. That evening the pursers checked their biscuit stores. The Phoebe had sixty-nine days’ supply remaining while the Cherub had forty-eight, prompting Hillyar to put both ships on half rations.2
The next morning, with the equatorial light streaming in through the stern windows, Hillyar wrote to Brigadier Juan Vasco y Pascual, the governor of Guayaquil. The letter asked about the Englishmen ‘Porter had made prisoner, biscuit & news’. The ships’ boats were lowered and sent in shore to gather fresh water. Approaching at low tide between tw
o exposed shoals, the men sounded the river mouth before rowing two miles upstream where Gardiner found a spot with ‘clear and excellent’ water. When they returned to the bay that afternoon, the tide had come in and the shoals were covered with violent breakers. The first boats passed safely, but at 8.15 p.m. the last was flipped and its crew thrown into the surf. ‘All [were] providentially saved’, Gardiner recalled and by sunset had reached the ships where Third Lieutenant Jago and Purser Surflen congratulated Gardiner on his safe return.3
The next morning the boats watered and gathered firewood while one proceeded thirteen miles upriver to purchase oxen, fruit and vegetables at Tumbez. On the Phoebe, Sailmaker Millery and his crew repaired an awning which stretched from the rigging over the frigate’s deck. That afternoon the wood and water was stowed and at sunset the boat from Tumbez returned. As well as oxen and vegetables, she carried a solitary Englishman found at the village, perhaps one of Porter’s captives who had been released on parole. ‘The accounts given us by the Spanish brig [on 29 September] respecting the enemy were now authenticated’, Gardiner recalled.
The Essex had been here in the latter end of … [June], but they could not give us any certain information concerning their subsequent proceedings. It was however generally supposed that she was either at the Gallipagoes or cruising to the windward off the coast of Chili. They had expected us here for some time and orders had been issued all along the coast to supply us with every provision. The greater part of the prisoners [which Porter had released at Tumbez on 27 June] … had been sent to Lima, a number had volunteered on board a Spanish Privateer and a few yet remained at Guayaquil.4
On the morning of 7 October Gardiner visited Tumbez. A local carnival was taking place and the Indians had dressed up ‘in a most singular and ridiculous manner, with silk mantles, feathers in their heads, silver caps on their knees, & looking glasses on their breasts. Some wore masks’, the midshipman recalled, ‘others had their faces painted … [and] all held in the left hands a little effigy of a woman, probably the Virgin Mary. Thus equipped, they formed several companies and went about the town performing, rather than dancing to the sound of a drum and fife, which were both played by one man … To this simple music they moved round in a circle, keeping tune with their feet and exerting every limb with an expression and grace, which we little expected to find among these rude people.’ Gardiner was also struck by the mother of the town’s priest, ‘a fine, interesting, old woman’ who was ‘extremely grateful’ for a gift of ‘a few Spanish Testaments and other religious books’ Hillyar had sent to her son.5
After purchasing oranges, limes, pumpkins and potatoes, Gardiner and his companions rowed back to the bay early the next morning. October 9th dawned bright and clear. The Phoebe’s butcher slaughtered two oxen. The men received fresh beef with their vegetables and a few got a prized piece of liver. At 7 a.m. a boat was sent to Tumbez to settle the accounts. Intending to combine the trip with a spot of fowling upriver, Third Lieutenant Jago finished his morning prayers and set off with Purser Surflen. It was a decision which would cost the devout young Devonian his life. Half an hour after leaving the frigate, his boat was swamped on the bar. The officer of the watch immediately sent the rest of the Phoebe’s boats to aid the men struggling in the surf. Most of the crew were saved, but Jago, Surflen and Joseph Findley, an eighteen-year-old from Yorkshire who was amongst the men pressed at Plymouth in February, were lost. The boats dragged the riverbed for their bodies, but it was thought the tide had carried them out to sea and at sunset the search was called off. That night there was considerable speculation as to the cause of the deaths. ‘Whether they were drowned or eaten by the Alligators is uncertain’, one officer opined. ‘[As] several of these frightful creatures were seen … basking … in the sun and both these gentlemen being good swimmers, one may be led to conclude they reached the shore only to die a more wretched death.’6
At 11 a.m. the next morning Hillyar remembered the dead at divine service. That afternoon a brig arrived from Guayaquil to sell fresh fruit and Hillyar made three promotions. Nicholas Nickenson, captain’s clerk, was made acting purser, Henry J. Gardner, the Phoebe’s nineteen-year-old master’s mate from Ayr, was made acting Third Lieutenant and Samuel Thornton Junior, a sixteen-year-old First Class volunteer, was raised to the rank of Ordinary Seaman. Thornton’s promotion saw his pay increase from £9 per year to £1 5s 6d a month, not that he needed the money. As the third and youngest son of the MP for the County of Surrey, Director of the Bank of England and Governor of Guy’s Hospital and the Russian Company, Thornton was rich by any standards. Having turned down the chance to follow his older brothers to Trinity College and his mother’s plans for him to enter the ministry, he had joined HMS Amazon, a 38-gun frigate commanded by Captain William Parker, at the age of eleven. As well as witnessing the celebrated destruction of a French convoy near the Penmark Rocks, Thornton had taken part in several cutting-out operations with another young officer who would go on to join the Phoebe, First Lieutenant William Ingram. He had then joined the Armide, another 38-gun frigate, before being transferred to the Phoebe shortly before her current cruise. Like many of the younger crewmembers, the sixteen-year-old messed with Gunner Lawson in the gunroom. Thornton could not have wished for a more experienced mentor. A veteran of fifteen years’ service, Lawson had been bloodied at the Battle of the Nile aboard HMS Swiftsure and had fought at Cape Ortegal and the Basque Roads. Despite the discrepancies in their age, experience and background, a friendship had blossomed which would last until the end of Lawson’s days.7
On 11 October the Phoebe’s new purser was put to work. As Surflen’s replacement, the Admiralty would hold Nickenson financially responsible for the ship’s supplies, so his first order of business was to conduct a general survey. Touring the hold with a hooded lantern while the purser and master of HMS Cherub acted as witnesses, Nickenson noted that the Phoebe held 18,584lbs of bread, 1,496 gallons of wine, 2,009 gallons of spirits, 816 pieces of salt beef, 616 pieces of salt pork, 674lbs of suet, 1,370lbs of cocoa, 100 barrels of oatmeal, 1,100lbs of rice, twenty barrels of pumpkins, 5,750lbs of sugar, 830 gallons of vinegar, 130 bushels of peas, 1,712lbs of tobacco, 336lbs of raisins, eighteen barrels of punch, twelve live oxen, 100lbs of fresh vegetables, 200 oranges and thirty-five bottles of lime juice.
That afternoon another brig arrived from Guayaquil. On board was Señor Villanueva, aide of the governor of Guayaquil, who informed Hillyar that the Essex had called in five weeks previously, having taken thirteen prizes. In contrast to local opinion, which held that Porter had returned to the Galapagos Islands, Villanueva believed the Americans had set out for home via Valparaiso. With Villanueva were four of Porter’s former prisoners, all that the authorities at Guayaquil had been able to muster. After being questioned, two of them, being ‘on their beam-ends’ as naval parlance would have it, chose to join up. Both were rated able seamen. Charles Turner, a 22-year-old from Rotherhithe, Surrey, had been captured on board the Greenwich on 29 May.8
The next day Lieutenant Burrow of the marines wrote to Edward Jago – also an officer in the Royal Navy – informing him of his brother’s death. The letter praised Nathaniel’s character and devotion to God. Later a dispatch from Guayaquil arrived overland, informing Hillyar that the Essex, in company with seven armed ships, had been fired on by shore batteries at Callao eighteen days before. Even though more of Porter’s ex-prisoners were en route from Guayaquil and only 2,200lbs of biscuit had been taken on board, Hillyar decided to proceed to Lima without delay. As well as ascertaining if the rumours of Porter’s presence were true, the English captain had to fulfil the promise he had made to Lord Strangford concerning the British ships detained by the Peruvian authorities. En route he determined to pass by the bays ‘where whalers generally fish’ in the Galapagos. With the entire Peruvian coast closed to the Essex, the islands were the only place Porter could resupply. That night the Blue Peter was raised, the boats were hoisted and the Cherubs and the Phoebes pre
pared for sea. The gun crews were put through their paces and Lieutenant Burrow’s marines practised firing musket volleys from the deck. At 8.30 a.m. the next morning, setting the courses and driver, Hillyar stood out to sea with the tide. With Jago’s and Surflen’s bodies left behind, their comrades ‘took [their] leave of … [Tumbez], with emotions scarcely to be described’.9
The voyage to the Galapagos was a pleasant one. ‘We had constantly a fine steady breeze’, Gardiner recalled, ‘and the most delightful weather.’ Hillyar used the time to prepare for battle. The Cherub’s gunner turned the powder in the magazine, extra shot were hauled out of the Phoebe’s hold and every day the ocean echoed to the sound of live drill with the great guns. On 17 October Lieutenant Burrow wrote a second letter to Edward Jago, enclosing a copy of Nathaniel’s will and explaining that he had been chosen as the executor. Over the next forty-eight hours the ships covered over 200 miles, sailing steadily to the northwest and on the morning of the 19th, the Phoebe sounded in 100 fathoms, indicating her imminent arrival at the islands. At 11 a.m. Ordinary Seaman Christopher Lambert, a twenty-year-old from Wexford who had fought at Tamatave, was punished with thirty-six lashes for striking a senior officer. The following day, as the ships altered course due west, Manuello Antonio, one of the Portuguese sailors who had volunteered on the Cherub in Rio de Janeiro, was given twelve lashes for fighting.10