In Pursuit of the Essex

by Hughes, Ben;

  With contradictory evidence on both sides, the incident of 27 February is open to interpretation. The Americans claimed Hillyar had run from the fight. Porter was ‘extremely indignant’ and Farragut was incensed. ‘This I consider the 2nd breach of faith on the part of Capt. H’, the midshipman wrote. ‘By his manoeuvres in both [the incident of 27 February and that which occurred when the two ships had met on the 8] it was evident, he either had not the courage or wanted the good faith of a high toned chivalrous spirit, to act out the original intention.’ Both British ships’ logs and Midshipman Gardiner, on the other hand, maintained that it was Porter who had fled while Hillyar himself remained characteristically unmoved. ‘I should not have thought this circumstance of sufficient consideration to detail to their lordships’, he informed Secretary Croker, ‘had not Capn. Porter’s unkind assertion [made several months later] called it forth.’ One consequence was that the British now felt that the Americans had twice breached the neutrality of the port. Interpreting the two shots Porter had fired as an act of aggression undertaken within the extremities of the bay, the feeling that the Americans had no right to claim further protection was rapidly gaining currency.37

  On the 28th Hillyar and Tucker resumed their positions off Angels Point. There they would remain for the next four weeks. Both practised regular boarding drills by divisions and exercised their great guns and small arms, while a stream of boats came out from the Emily with supplies. Occasionally, Porter would attempt to provoke Hillyar into making a mistake. Ordering the Essex Junior to sally out to the mouth of the bay, he had her towed in again as soon as the British reacted.38

  Meanwhile, in the Chilean south, the Peruvian-backed Royalists were gaining the upper hand. At the end of February, under pressure from General Gainza, O’Higgins abandoned his base at Talca; on 3 March a Loyalist column occupied the town after massacring the garrison and the next day Royalist guerrillas captured José and Luis Carrera. The news caused panic in Santiago. A Cabildo Abierto39 vested power in Governor Lastra with the title of Supreme Director while O’Higgins rallied his troops and attempted to bar Gainza’s route north. One consequence was that on 8 March Lastra left for the capital, appointing the 32-year-old Captain Francisco de Formas as governor of Valparaiso in his stead. An ineffectual leader, Formas had gained a reputation for cowardice when serving the Carreras and proved unable to assert his authority. With a power vacuum in Valparaiso, Hillyar and Porter were free to act as they chose.40

  On 9 March the Essexes printed a letter in the local newspaper, the Aurora. ‘The sons of liberty and commerce on board the saucy Essex … present their compliments to their oppressed brother tars, on board the ship whose motto is too tedious to mention’, it began. ‘[We] hope … [you] will put an end to all this nonsense of singing, sporting, hunting and writing, which we know less about than the use of our guns. Send the Cherub away, we will meet your frigate and fight you, then shake hands and be friends … if we take you, we shall respect the rights of a sailor, hail you as brethren whom we have liberated from slavery and place you in future beyond the reach of a press gang.’41

  The next day Gardiner responded in verse:

  To you, Americans, who seek redress,

  For fancied wrongs from Britons you’ve sustained;

  Hear what we Britons now to you address,

  From malice free, from blasphemy unstain’d;

  Think not, vain boasters, that your insidious lay,

  Which calls for vengeance from the Almighty God Can

  from their duty Britons lead away,

  Or path of honor which they have always trod.

  No-Your vile infamy can never fail,

  To excite disgust in each true Briton’s heart;

  Your proffered liberty cannot avail,

  For virtue is the sons of Albion’s crest.

  Our God, our king, our country and our Laws,

  We proudly reverence like Britons true;

  Our captain who defends such glorious cause,

  Meets due respect from all his grateful crew.

  When to the battle we’re by duty called,

  Our cause, like Britons, bravely we’ll maintain;

  We’ll fight like men whom fear ne’er yet appall’d,

  And hope, AMERICANS! you’ll do the same.

  Your vile letter, which on board, was brought,

  We scorn to answer, tho’ with malice frought;

  But if, by such foul means, you think to make

  Dissentions rise our loyalty to shake,

  Know then we are Britons all, both stout and true,

  We love our king, our country, captain too;

  When honor calls, we’ll glory in his name,

  Acquit like men and hope you’ll do the same.42

  On 12 March there was another dead calm. With the Phoebe and Cherub maintaining position off the point with their stream anchors, Porter decided to attempt a nighttime cutting-out operation. After dark ten boats filled with heavily-armed men set out with muffled oars. They were spotted in the roads, however, and a message dispatched to Hillyar warning him of the imminent attack. The Phoebe’s and Cherub’s cutters were lowered to tow the ships, thus preventing them from being a sitting target, while the men armed themselves. As the Americans approached, Porter overheard a conversation on the Phoebe’s quarterdeck and learnt that his plan had been discovered. Ordering the boats to return to port, he left the British to ponder another American attempt to violate Chilean neutrality.43

  In mid-March the war of words intensified. The British labelled their enemies ‘Blackguard[s]’ and damned them for writing ‘Blasphemous productions’. The Americans responded in kind. Both sides alleged the other had fled on 27 February and on 15 March rumours reached Hillyar that Porter had accused him of cowardice. His honour besmirched, at 5 p.m. the British captain ordered Ingram to row to the Essex under a flag of truce ‘to ascertain the truth’. Porter admitted he had called Hillyar a coward, ‘and still thought [him] so. [Ingram] then stated’, as Porter recalled, ‘that Captain Hillyar had entrusted him to tell me, that his firing a gun and hoisting the flag [on 27 February], was not intended as a challenge, but as a signal to the Cherub.’ Porter dismissed the explanation, insisting that all who had witnessed the event agreed that Hillyar had deliberately shied away. ‘Again [Ingram] … assured me of the mistake;’ Porter recalled, ‘adding, that Captain Hillyar was a religious man and did not approve of sending challenges.’ Having long since established his reputation for bravery, as the First Lieutenant explained, Hillyar intended to adhere to ‘an implicit obedience to his orders to capture the Essex, at the least possible risk to his vessel and crew’.

  Although Ingram followed Hillyar’s orders, he did not concur with his strategy. Yet to win his laurels on the field of battle, the First Lieutenant was as keen as Porter to establish his martial reputation. Combined with his ‘manly, frank and chivalrous bearing[, this sentiment] quite won the hearts of’ the American officers who had gathered in Porter’s cabin. Warming to his audience, Ingram professed that ‘it would be the happiest moment of his life’, if the Phoebe were to prove victorious and he was ordered ‘to take … [the Essex as a prize] to England’, but only if she was taken ‘in equal fight’. Porter’s reply matched his guest’s in chivalry. ‘If such an event had to occur’, the Bostonian stated, ‘he knew of no British officer to whom he would more readily yield his honour.’ It was a sentiment with which Farragut and the rest of the American ‘officers and crew sincerely coincided’.44

  A day of squalls followed Ingram’s visit. The Phoebe and Cherub struggled to maintain their stations, but on 18 March the breeze moderated, allowing the British ships to take on canvas, cannon balls, twine, rope and hides. The next day a dead calm prompted Hillyar and Tucker to deploy their stream anchors and that night the British boats rowed guard. The next morning, after divine service, Hillyar received a letter from Thomas Crompton. Having travelled to Santiago, the merchant had learnt that the Carrera brothers had be
en placed under arrest and that a ship from Guernsey, recently arrived at Buenos Ayres, had brought news from Europe. Dresden and Leipzig had been taken from the French; Marshal Davout was cut off in Hamburg; Soult had been defeated by Wellington; the British were laying siege to Bayonne; and Napoleon was in Paris in a desperate attempt to conscript a further 350,000 men. Less encouragingly, fifteen French frigates were rumoured to have escaped the blockade at Brest and the US Navy was boasting of having captured a British East Indiaman with $2 million on board.45

  That night the Phoebe’s and Cherub’s boats rowed guard duty in shore. As well as ensuring that no American boats slipped by, they were charged with keeping an eye on the Essex. If she were to sail, they were to purse her at a distance and light blue flares to attract Hillyar’s attention. On the Phoebe Lieutenant Ingram wrote to his mother. ‘I have a presentiment that this will be the night’, he began, ‘[and] knowing how uncertain the fate of war is … it is my first prayer to the almighty that he will endow me with that courage becoming my situation and protect me through the battle … Should it be his divine will to take me from this world through the mercy of our blessed saviour [I pray] to have all my various sins forgiven [and] that he will protect my beloved mother, sister & brother.’ At the foot of the letter Ingram composed his will. All his possessions and future pay and prize money were left to his mother, to divide up amongst herself and his siblings, aside from ‘four or five pounds’ which he owed to ‘Mr George of Plymouth’ and £400 which he bequeathed to ‘Miss Slade’ – presumably the young lady to whom he had recently become engaged. Lieutenant Burrow of the marines and Acting Third Lieutenant Henry Gardner served as witnesses.46

  Despite Ingram’s ‘presentiment’, the night passed uneventfully and dawn revealed the Americans ships remained in the roads. That morning James Tucker, a 28-year-old able seaman from Portsmouth who had joined the Essex after being captured from the New Zealander, ‘made his escape’ and signed up on board the Phoebe. On 19 March Hillyar received another letter from Crompton. The merchant had learnt ‘that the Tagus Frigate had arrived off Montevideo bound around Cape Horn in search of the … Essex’. The news dramatically altered the dynamic at Valparaiso. If Porter continued to delay, he ran the risk of his enemies being reinforced. Paradoxically, the Phoebes and Cherubs, unwilling to lessen their share of the potential prize money, were equally keen to bring the contest to a conclusion.47

  Over the next three days both sides’ preparations gathered pace. The British were hampered by a series of squalls interspersed by calm weather when the stream anchors were employed. The gunners turned their powder supplies, while the crews chipped the rough edges from the roundshot. Each night boats, supplied with blue signal flares, went in shore to watch the Americans and both Hillyar and Tucker exercised their great guns twice daily while the marines fired at targets suspended from the yards. Porter, meanwhile, was taking every volunteer he could get. On 26 March Samuel Burr Johnson, the American newspaperman, was signed up as the Essex’s lieutenant of marines. In the second week of March, Joel Poinsett, the American trade consul who had been fighting with the patriot armies in the south, returned to Valparaiso. As well as confirming the imminent arrival of the Tagus, he had also heard rumours that two more British frigates were en route and that HMS Raccoon was expected to call in at Valparaiso on her way home. The odds were stacking ever further in Hillyar’s favour. Porter had run out of time.48

  Chapter 13

  The Battle¸ 27–28 March 1814

  On the morning of 27 March 1814 Porter informed Downes he intended to sail early the next day. While Porter drew the Phoebe and Cherub out to sea, where the Essex’s superior sailing would place her beyond Hillyar’s reach, the Essex Junior was to escape to the north. The ships would make for a pre-arranged rendezvous before returning to Nuka Hiva, provisioning and sailing for the Horn. After nearly a year and a half at sea, the Americans were heading home. That evening Purser Shaw was sent into town as a decoy where he would remain until the ships had sailed in an attempt to convince Hillyar that the Essex was not yet ready for sea.1

  After nightfall Porter deployed his second ruse de guerre. John Maury, acting First Lieutenant on the Essex Junior, was ordered to take the fastest boat and slip past the British crew rowing guard. The first part of his instructions successfully completed, Maury turned northwest and heading up the coast beyond Point Piedra. Shortly after midnight he lit several blue flares. Hillyar and Tucker were both taken in. Believing the lights to be a signal from their own boat indicating that the Essex had put to sea, they cleared for action and gave chase. At 1 a.m., as the British ships closed with fresh breezes, Maury lit another flare, flashed a signal light and fired a rocket into the darkness. He then spun his boat around and returned to the anchorage as fast as he could.2

  Hillyar was beginning to smell a rat. At 1.30 a.m. he ordered a signal lantern flashed to the north and when no answer was forthcoming, became convinced he had been duped. Shortening sail, he hauled to the larboard tack and ordered Tucker to follow him back to the bay. The British were in a race against time. Worried that the Essex and Essex Junior were escaping, Hillyar had his men tack and wear repeatedly, beating southwards against the wind. At 1.40 a.m. the frigate’s main topsail split under the pressure. Racing up the ratlines, the men replaced it and by 4 a.m. the Phoebe had regained her station off Angels Point. Unsure if his enemies had fled, Hillyar faced an agonising two-and-a-half hour wait until dawn.3

  Porter had spent the night preparing for sea. Final checks were made to the sails and rigging and Edward Lawson and the other poison plotters were transferred to the Essex Junior. In the small hours, when the decoy boat returned, Porter summoned Maury to his cabin. Informed that the British were still several miles to leeward, the captain sped up his preparations, but at 6.30 a.m. first light revealed the British ships in their customary position off Angels Point. Porter was as surprised as Hillyar was relieved.

  By noon the sun had burnt through the cloud cover and the wind was blowing ever stronger out of the south southwest. Not wishing to lose another sail, Hillyar ordered his men to take down the royal yards and close reef the topsails. Five miles to the east, Porter followed suit. That afternoon the weather deteriorated and by 2 p.m. fresh gales interspersed with heavy squalls were tearing across the bay.

  At 2.45 p.m. a particularly violent squall struck the Essex. Her top and mainsails taut under the pressure, the frigate tore her larboard cable and began dragging her starboard anchor across the bay. With the rest of his cables stowed on the orlop deck, Porter had no choice but to put to sea. Ordering Downes to send a boat to take Poinsett on shore, he cut his remaining cable, set the topgallant sails and sailed westwards out of the roads. Downes followed once the trade consul had been taken ashore. By now a crowd of locals had gathered on the hills to watch the drama develop and George O’Brien, who had been working on shore with the Phoebe’s cutter, had himself rowed out to the British ships with Mr N. Murphy, the master of the Good Friends. Both were desperate not to miss out on the action. Porter, meanwhile, was set upon a perilous course. Trusting on his ship’s superiority when hauling close to the wind, he took a line tight round the rocks off Angels Point, intending to run into the open sea to the south before the British could get within range.

  At 3.05 p.m. Hillyar ordered his men to give chase and clear for action. ‘[The topmen] immediately made all sail’, Gardiner recalled, while the boatswains beat to quarters. The wardroom partitions were pulled down, the officers’ furniture stowed below the waterline, the men’s mess tables were hoisted to the ceiling and tied off and their hammocks tightly rolled into dense tubes, taken to the quarterdeck and secured round the bulwarks to provide extra protection. The decks were covered in sand to soak up the blood; livestock were hurled overboard; a net, known as a sauve-tete, was rigged to catch any blocks shot out of the tops; and the boats were lowered and towed astern. On the gun deck the men opened the ports, removed the tompions, allowing them to hang by the
muzzles and hauled at the breeching ropes to run out the guns. Shot, wadding, matches, match tubs, powder horns, sponges, hand spikes and worms were laid out; Gunner Lawson made up fresh cartridges in the magazine, while Surgeon Smith and his assistant, Adam Simpson, readied knives, bandages and bone saws in the cockpit.

  At 3.10 p.m. the Essex luffed round Angels Point, the wind howling round the rocks from the open sea. With his mainmast creaking under the pressure, Porter ordered the topgallant sails taken in. The topmen clambered up the ratlines, edged along the spars and gathered in the courses, but the order had come too late. ‘Scarcely had the … sails been clewed down, when a squall struck the ship.’ Resigning themselves to losing the sail, the topmen let the halyards slip through their fingers, but the yards jammed. The Essex heeled over with the strain. With waves crashing over her gunwales, for a moment it seemed as if she might founder. Then, with a terrible splintering, the lower cap snapped and the main topmast, trailing ropes and torn canvas, crashed into the sea, pitching Ordinary Seaman Samuel Miller and Able Seamen Thomas Browne into the brine. As they struck out for the ship’s lifebuoy, the Essex righted and sailed on. Realising he could no longer escape, Porter decided to return to the roads. Dragging the wreckage of the maintop and mainsail through 225 degrees, he wore the ship and hauled to the wind on the starboard tack. The debris was cut away, but the frigate was crippled and driven north eastwards by the gale. At 3.20 p.m. Porter gave up on his attempts to regain the roads and bore up for a small bay on the far side of Point Piedra instead. As a Spanish 24-pounder had been set up on a bluff to the east, the bay was technically neutral ground. Whether Hillyar would respect the convention remained to be seen.