by Hughes, Ben;
On 15 October HMS Tagus, Briton and Raccoon arrived. The frigates brought news from Nuka Hiva: one of the men Gamble had thought killed on the day of his departure had actually escaped into the mountains and been given sanctuary by an aging chieftain, Fort Madison and the American encampment had been destroyed and the four men who had deserted on 18 March had been seen at the island of Tahuata. One of them, Private Peter Swook, had signed up on board the Briton. The rest had decided to remain. After leaving Nuka Hiva, the Briton and Tagus had happened across the island of Pitcairn. Surprised to find it so far from the position marked on their charts, the British officers’ astonishment had grown when the occupants of a canoe which had come out to meet them answered their enquiries in English. These were the descendants of Fletcher Christian’s mutineers who had cast Captain Bligh loose in the South Pacific. It was the end to a mystery which had perplexed the Royal Navy since 1789.
The Raccoon, for its part, had had an unhappy voyage since parting from the Phoebe and Cherub in October 1813. Following an accident during gun drill which had killed eight and wounded twenty including John McDonald, one of the North West Company representatives, Captain William Black had proceeded to the Columbia River only to find the American trading post had already been bought by the British-owned Hudson Bay Company. The Raccoon had knocked off her false keel and started several planks from the bow in grounding on the bar on her way back out of the river and had had to call in at San Francisco, California for repairs.15
Following Gamble’s return to the US on 27 August 1815 (after a mid-Atlantic transfer from the Cherub onto an American merchantman), the only officers from the Essex left unaccounted for were Lieutenant McKnight and Midshipman Lyman. Their voyage from Rio to Falmouth on the Swedish brig Adonis had passed without particular note until 9 October 1814, when the Adonis was obliged to heave to by an armed stranger. It transpired she was USS Wasp, a sloop-of-war commanded by Master Commandant Johnston Blakeley which had scored a series of successes since setting sail from Portsmouth, New Hampshire on a commerce-raiding cruise on 1 May. As well as capturing twelve merchantmen, Blakeley had defeated three British ships of war. Learning that McKnight and Lyman were aboard, Blakely offered them the chance of joining him. The two officers accepted and the Wasp set sail southwards. There were no further confirmed sightings of Blakeley’s command. What happened remains a mystery, but it seems likely that she foundered in a storm and was lost with all hands.16
The fourteen men who had taken the Seringapatam from Gamble on 7 May 1814, reached Port Jackson, Australia on 1 July. Their arrival was reported in The Literary Panorama and National Register, whose editor noted, in stark contrast to Porter and Gamble’s views, that the men’s story afforded ‘a most praiseworthy instance of what bravery and resolution, governed by prudence and decision can accomplish’. The men, the Panorama continued, had been ‘treated with a cruelty scarcely ever known to have been practised among enlightened nations … they were wrought in heavy irons, exposed to every privation and doomed to linger in miserable captivity; but with a spirit peculiar to the sons of Britain, they bore their sufferings with resignation, watching an opportunity to effect their deliverance from their unfeeling tyrants; and … were at length happily furnished with an opportunity …’ Former Boatswain’s Mate Thomas Belcher and his companions had touched at Otaheite before sailing for Australia. Travelling to Sydney, Belcher attempted to secure an award for the salvage of the Seringapatam from the Court of the Vice-Admiralty, but the case was referred to London, prompting Belcher and his fellows to sail for England aided by one of the most formidable whaling captains of the era, the Massachusetts-born Eber Bunker.17 The last of Belcher’s former crewmates were not to reach home until June 1816.
Having been deemed in too serious a condition to undertake the voyage back round the horn on the Essex Junior, eight of the Essex’s ratings had been left at Valparaiso. Although four had since died, in early 1816 William Cole, Joshua Wipple, Peter Coddington and William Whitney had recovered sufficiently to set sail. Once their vessel had arrived at New York, Cole applied for his navy pension. He secured it on 9 July 1816.18
On 13 September 1815 the second distribution of the prize money for the capture of the Essex was paid at No. 22 Norfolk Street, Islington, London. Hillyar received £299 2s 9d. The payments awarded to the lower ranks fell proportionately. £1 8d was paid to the ship’s boys.19
In late December 1815 John Swayne was summoned to the High Court of the Admiralty. Sir Christopher Robinson, the King’s Advocate, presented the case to the jury. Thomas Jervis, King’s Counsel, then examined Captain Stavers who told the story of the Seringapatam’s voyage from her departure from England in March 1812 to her capture off the Galapagos Islands in July the following year. Stavers explained how Swayne had taken a bounty to serve under Porter, how he had sworn that as a Scotsman he was free to fight the English if he so chose and how he had answered to his name at the Essex’s daily roll call. Edward Lawson, the former master of the Sir Andrew Hammond, also gave evidence, stating that he had known the Scot when he had served on the Seringapatam and had been surprised to see him on board the Essex at the time of the Sir Andrew Hammond’s capture. The final witness for the prosecution was John Hamilton, the Phoebe’s assistant clerk, who testified that he had been present when Swayne signed up on board the Phoebe at Valparaiso after the battle of 28 March.
In his defence, Swayne assured the court he had never raised his hand against his countrymen. He claimed he had been on board the ‘Little Essex’ at the time of the battle and had therefore not taken part. Captain Hillyar testified ‘to … [Swayne’s] general good conduct while on board the Phoebe, but [stated that he] considered him rather silly in his demeanour and of exceeding weak intellect’. The jury delivered a verdict of guilty, while recommending ‘the Prisoner to mercy on account of … Hillyer[’s]’ evidence. The judge, Sir William Scott, sentenced Swayne to death, but the punishment was later commuted to transportation for life and in November 1816, Swayne boarded the Morley transport with 174 others bound for New South Wales. He arrived safely after a six-month voyage and was forwarded to Parramatta for distribution. Seven years later Swayne appears as the convict servant of one Henry Russell of the Field of Mars before disappearing from the historical record forever.20
In Britain the War of 1812 soon faded into obscurity. The Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon’s subsequent exile and the Congress of Vienna fully occupied the public imagination. Aside from a few calculating heads in the Admiralty, who would take great pains to learn the lessons of 1812 and 1813, the war with America was swiftly forgotten. In the United States the opposite was true. Taking advantage of the vacuum of interest across the Atlantic, President Madison’s Republican administration created its own version of events for posterity, their motivation political necessity. The war had divided the country into two camps. The Federalists, their power base in New England dominated by a merchant class whose economic interests centred round oceanic trade, had firmly opposed the war which Madison’s Republicans had prosecuted. With the peace, it was necessary for the Republicans to paint the conflict in positive colours. In this way they would not only maintain public support, but would also be given ammunition to belittle their opponents and label them cowards, collaborators and defeatists.
Such reinvention was no easy undertaking. Madison had failed to achieve any of his war aims; the matter of impressment and international maritime rights remained unresolved; the Indians who inhabited the border regions with Canada and received support from the British remained as bellicose and anti-union as ever; the US economy had been crippled and her armed forces had suffered several humiliating reverses. In spite of this, the conflict was widely viewed as a victory. Painted as the second war of independence, it was seen as the moment when the country finally emerged from Britain’s shadow and became a major player on the international stage. The early naval triumphs in the Atlantic and those later won on the Great Lakes were trumpeted along with Jackson’s v
ictory at New Orleans. The reverses were downplayed or re-imagined as heroic failures or moral victories snatched against impossible odds or blamed on conspiratorial, weak (and preferably Federalist) scapegoats within US society.
These misconceptions were aided by several factors. Having endured so many hardships, the people wanted to believe the war had been worthwhile. The time delay in transatlantic communication led to a fortuitous misunderstanding of cause and effect and the Republicans’ version of events was given space to thrive by British indifference. Although the Battle of New Orleans took place after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent and therefore had no impact on negotiations, as news of the peace reached the US after the publication of Jackson’s victory dispatches, it was widely believed the defeat had forced the timorous British to sue for peace. The frigate victories of 1812 and 1813 were also little understood. Popular belief was that they had come about due to superior US seamanship and valour or the notion that while the oppressed British tars laboured under the lash and therefore had little personal interest in victory, the American sailor was motivated by higher ideals. The cold truth of weights of broadside, hull thickness, wood density and crew size were overlooked as was the fact that the British had grown complacent about victory having spent the best part of the last twenty-five years fighting a demoralised and unprofessional enemy who believed himself defeated before even leaving port.21
The Essex’s Pacific cruise played a role in Madison’s mythologising. An official court of enquiry to look into the loss of the frigate, scheduled for August 1814, was postponed due to the pressures of the war. Later, despite protocol and somewhat suspiciously, the process was abandoned and Madison chose to glorify Porter’s actions instead. ‘The loss [of the Essex]’, he assured Congress, ‘is hidden in the blaze of heroism with which she was defended. Captain Porter … maintained a sanguinary contest against two ships … till humanity tore down the colours, which valour had nailed to the mast. This officer and his comrades have added much to the rising glory of the American flag; and have merited all the effusions of gratitude, which their country is ever ready to bestow, on the champions of its rights and of its safety.’ This unquestioning hagiography was supported by Porter’s Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean, published in 1815. Detailed, entertaining, energetic and ambitious, the book was also biased, self-serving, selective in its coverage and shied away from inconvenient truths. The Bostonian overlooks no opportunity to contrast the cruelty of his opponents towards their men with the near-universal enthusiasm with which he claimed his own sailors took to their work. Hillyar is held culpable for the Essex’s defeat for refusing to accept Porter’s honourable challenge to single-ship combat despite the fact that by doing so the British captain would have sacrificed every advantage he had held. Porter is also consistently coy as to his own failings. His use of the lash is never directly referred to; he claimed to have treated his prisoners well throughout, despite considerable evidence to the contrary; and the fact that he sacrificed the success of his mission and his country’s prime interests to his own yearnings for personal glory is unacknowledged.22
Equally questionable are Porter’s conclusions as to the success of his mission: ‘I had completely broken up the British navigation in the Pacific’, he claimed in his Journal, ‘the vessels which had not been captured by me, were laid up and dared not venture out. I had afforded the most ample protection to our own vessels … The valuable whale fishery there, is entirely destroyed and the … injury we have done … may be estimated at two and a half millions of dollars.’ Such claims fail to stand up to close scrutiny. Although the Essex was successful in capturing British whalers, the damage had little permanent effect and it wasn’t until the mid-1830s that the US gained hegemony in the South Seas whaling trade. Only one of the twelve ships taken, the Atlantic, reached the US (as the Essex Junior). With the exceptions of the Montezuma, which is believed to have been sold at Valparaiso and the Rose and Charlton, which were used as prisoner cartels in the Galapagos in mid-1813, the rest were destroyed or retaken by the Royal Navy. The Hector and Catherine were burnt at Valparaiso; the Seringapatam was retaken by mutineers and prisoners of war; the Greenwich was burnt at Nuka Hiva; the Sir Andrew Hammond was captured by the Cherub off the Sandwich Islands; the Georgiana was retaken by HMS Barossa in the Caribbean; the Policy was retaken off the coast of North America by HMS Loire and Ramillies; and the New Zealander was retaken by HMS Belvidera one day shy of reaching New York. Equally dubious are Porter’s claims that his cruise obliged the Royal Navy to divert resources worth $6 million to hunt him down. While it is true that HMS Briton and Tagus were dispatched for that purpose, the Phoebe, Cherub and Raccoon had all been destined for the region long before the Admiralty was even aware of Porter’s presence.
Paradoxically, the haste with which Porter’s journal was edited and published – a fact influenced by political concerns – led to the book containing some rather embarrassingly naive confessions which the Bostonian’s detractors would later delight in using against him. Chief amongst them were Porter’s reflections on the destruction he had inflicted on Typee territory on 1 December 1813. ‘When I had reached the summit of the mountain [on my return from the mission]’, Porter had written, ‘I stopped to contemplate that valley which, in the morning, we had viewed in all its beauty, the scene of abundance and happiness. A long line of smoking ruins now marked our traces from one end to the other; the opposite hills were covered with the unhappy fugitives and the whole presented a scene of desolation and horror.’ Such passages and those that detailed the Essexes’ sexual adventures, caused outrage on both sides of the Atlantic. The Quarterly Review, the house journal of Lord Liverpool’s Tory Ministry, denounced Porter as a pirate in a venomous 31-page attack published in early December 1815; William James, Britain’s pre-eminent contemporary naval historian, dismissed Porter’s writing as ‘filth and falsehood’; while The Salem Gazette claimed that Porter should have been court-martialled ‘for laying … waste [to Nuka Hiva] by fire and sword and slaughtering the natives’.23
Porter’s post-war career was equally controversial. In 1815 he was one of three veterans appointed to the Board of Navy Commissioners by President Madison. He took to the role with enthusiasm. Based in the Navy Building just to the west of the White House, the board ensured that control of the service was no longer the exclusive domain of politicians. Porter oversaw improvements to the navy’s yards, ships and guns and tried to regulate the officer class through the implementation of service-wide standards and training programmes. Although some reforms were successful, such as the imposition of an examination for would-be midshipmen, the board’s attempts to close inefficient naval yards were thwarted by local mercantile and political interests. It proved equally impossible to weed out the undesirable elements from the officer class. During the seven years he held the post, Porter also struggled on a personal level: his attempts to aid José Carrera when the former Chilean president visited the US in 1816 to seek support were undone by a lack of financial backing and political interest; in 1820 Commodore Stephen Decatur, Porter’s friend and colleague, was killed in a duel while Porter was serving as his second; a year later Carrera, who had returned to South America after eleven frustrating months in the US, was shot by an Argentine firing squad; and in 1822 Porter’s hand was crippled when an innovative gunlock exploded during a trial. Even more debilitating were the Bostonian’s financial woes: the costs of a mansion he had built to keep up with Washington’s high rollers spiralled out of control; his farming projects and business schemes backfired; and his ever growing family heaped pressure on his beleaguered finances. Porter’s salary of $3,500 proved inadequate. The prize money he had accumulated during the war was soon spent and he fell into debt to a range of individuals including his former First Lieutenant John Downes.
By 1822 it was clear that Porter’s financial situation was untenable. Resigning as Commissioner, he accepted command of the US Navy’s West Indies Squadron. The situation
in the Caribbean was chaotic. Unwilling to accept the political changes that had taken place in South and Central America, Spain continued to fight her former colonies. Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico responded by unleashing swarms of privateers. With the British and French having already dispatched squadrons to convoy their countrymen through the troubled waters, it was Porter’s job to protect US bottoms. He achieved some initial success, but the privateers soon learnt that they could evade Porter’s ships by sailing into Spanish waters where international regulations forbade the Americans from pursuing. Porter grew increasingly frustrated and a series of embarrassing incidents followed. First Porter fell out with some of his own officers and later had a run in with the British authorities with whom he was nominally allied. Then in 1824, Porter made an armed landing at the port of Fajardo on the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico, having learnt that the local authorities were in cahoots with the South American privateers. The incident led to Porter’s recall. At first the authorities were content with a mere court of enquiry, but Porter’s undisguised contempt led to his court martial in July 1825 for disobedience of orders and insubordinate conduct unbecoming an officer. Found guilty on both charges, Porter was suspended without pay for six months. Although the punishment was lenient, Porter’s pride would not permit him to accept it. Resigning his commission, he sought employment abroad.
In 1826 Porter was appointed commodore of the Mexican Navy. Arriving to much fanfare in Veracruz accompanied by his 21-year-old nephew and namesake, Lieutenant David H. Porter and two of his sons, Porter’s new post began promisingly. The recently appointed US Minister to Mexico, Porter’s friend, Joel Poinsett, helped the commodore navigate his way through Mexico’s murky political waters, but the men under his command proved less amenable. The rank and file of the Mexican Navy was ill-disciplined and poorly-trained, while many of the officers were ex-Royal Navy. Unsurprisingly, a mutual antagonism soon developed. Nevertheless, Porter captured several of Spain’s commercial vessels, but in 1827 courted controversy once again. By using the US territory of Key West, Florida as a base for raids against Cuban shipping, Porter came close to causing an international incident and was ousted from the territory by the US at the end of the year.