by Robert Booth
With ghoulish pleasure, Porter kept Wyer talking. He toyed with the earnest Nantucket captain who had been so helpful to the Americans holed up at Talcahuano. Little did Wyer know that he was now cast in an elaborate piece of theater, produced, directed, and acted by David Porter, who was playing God. Porter kept it up long enough to confirm that the “polished gentleman” Wyer “evidently possessed a corrupt heart, and, like all other renegadoes, was desirous of doing his native country all the injury in his power.” Suddenly the interview was over, and Wyer was confronted with the truth. Chagrined, he tried “to apologize away the impression his conduct had made, improvising artfully” as he pleaded his cause. Porter, having already scored a “triumph over the wretch,” was “willing to make some allowances for his conduct”—one renegado to another.
At that moment a cry went up as another sail was sighted. Drawing alongside in the night, Porter ordered the captain to surrender but was loudly refused. In response, Porter fired a cannonball between her masts and threatened a broadside, which proved persuasive to John Shuttleworth of the ten-gun whale ship Greenwich. He clambered aboard the Essex drunk and full of fight, but Porter merely laughed and locked him in a cabin with Wyer. Later, Porter paid a visit to “this haughty Englishman” and “this renegade” and worked himself into such a fury that he had them groveling. “They would have licked the dust from my feet,” he wrote, “had it been required of them to do so.”
David Porter now moved out at the head of a fleet of six vessels. He had found 800 tortoises and 100 tons of water on his prizes, which solved his provisioning needs. Lieutenant McKnight was given command of the Atlantic, while the Greenwich was put under Lieutenant John Gamble of the marines, a non-sailor whose nautical ignorance was balanced by advice from his mates, both expert seamen.
On the night of June 6, 1813, as they ghosted along, a volcano erupted nearby, which “illuminated the whole atmosphere”—a seaman’s good omen, for next day the winds freshened from the southeast and finally, after six weeks of trying, they sailed out of the clutches of the Encantadas and into the wide blue waters of the Pacific.
Porter headed for the Peruvian coast looking for food, water, and buyers for some of his ships. So recently despairing of finding any prey, Porter now could not find a way to dispose of his surfeit of prizes. They constituted the fortune that he had intended to make and the evidence that his renegade action was more than a manic episode, but they also made him vulnerable to attack by Peruvian privateers or by a Royal Navy squadron, and Viceroy Abascal certainly would not permit him to sell British vessels at Callao.
Porter put in at the port of Tumbez. Although it had no market for ships or oil, the mayor agreed to find buyers at nearby Guayaquil on commission. Meanwhile, Porter and a few others played tourist in the “wretched” bayou town, whose friendly inhabitants “invited me into their huts.” As usual, the locals did not measure up: “The men of this place seem to be of the lowest class of those who call themselves civilized; and the women, although of fine forms, animated, cheerful, and handsome countenances, are destitute of all that delicacy the possession of which only can render the female lovely in our eyes.”
Porter’s Guayaquil connection did not pay off, and this rejection was accompanied by the news that three well-armed British whalers were headed for the Galápagos to hunt him down. Returning in a foul mood to the Essex, he found his deck officer, Lieutenant James P. Wilmer, stinking drunk and passed out in his cabin. Wilmer, an alcoholic, had stayed dry for months, but his relapse was total. Roughly awakened, he quietly stated that he intended to kill himself as soon as possible.
With Wilmer sidelined and the officer corps spread throughout his growing fleet, Porter decided to make changes. Downes, off on a side trip, remained first officer. McKnight was moved up to second officer and rejoined the Essex from the Atlantic, which was put under David Adams—the only navy chaplain ever to command an armed vessel. In another surprise move, Porter played favorites and awarded McKnight’s vacated third lieutenancy to the doughty sailing master, John Glover Cowell, twenty-eight. Midshipman John S. Cowan, twenty-one, was promoted to fourth lieutenant, and Midshipman William H. Odenheimer got Cowell’s former job. Porter thrilled the younger midshipmen by making them prize masters of the captured vessels “with careful seamen,” he wrote, “in whom I could confide, to take care of them.” With a new team in place, Porter prepared to head back to the Galápagos, but first he had to recover his purser, Shaw, who had not returned from haggling for provisions in Tumbez.
On the morning of June 24, three ships approached the harbor of Tumbez. Porter prepared for an attack, but it proved to be John Downes in the Georgiana followed by two new prizes, the 270-ton whaleships Hector and Catherine. Cheered on board the Essex, Downes reported that, off James Island, he had easily taken the ships Catherine and Rose but had been resisted by the Hector. Downes had fired a damaging shot into her stern and repeated his demand for surrender. Crying “No, no!” her captain had ordered his men to make sail and defend themselves. Downes had let loose with five unanswered broadsides that killed two sailors and wounded six more. Starting for Tumbez with his prizes, Downes had found the Rose too slow, and so he had dumped her guns and oil, put seventy-five prisoners aboard, and sent her for St. Helena in the South Atlantic.
Porter rewarded Downes with command of the superior Atlantic, refitted with twenty guns and renamed (by Porter) Essex Junior. After converting Greenwich into an armed store ship, with food and water enough for the fleet for seven months—but still without rum—Porter prepared for sea. Once more he put midshipmen in charge of prizes: William Feltus, fourteen, proudly commanded the Montezuma. Porter’s last act was to free his prisoners; the boats took them into Tumbez, and he said goodbye to Shuttleworth and Wyer. On July 1, Porter and company cleared the Gulf of Guayaquil, nine handsome vessels stretching “away to the westward, to fall in with the easterly trade winds.”
Next day, Porter wrote to his old adversary Navy Secretary Paul Hamilton for the first time since leaving the Delaware, not knowing that Hamilton had been replaced by William Jones, a man with a very different outlook on naval operations. Porter recounted his Pacific triumphs, from the taking of the Nereyda to the capture of eight British whalers mounting a total of sixty-three guns, and the recapture of the American whaler Barclay. “The Governors in Peru,” he wrote proudly, were “excessively alarmed at my appearance on the coast, as my fleet now amounts to nine sail of vessels, all formidable.” The viceroy’s minions “would, if they dare, treat us with a hostility little short of declared enemies.” He boasted of prizes “which would be worth in England two millions of dollars.” Referring indirectly to Poinsett, he wrote, “the State Department will no doubt inform you of the effect our presence has produced in a political view [so] on that head I will be silent”—a silence that concealed his blunders regarding Abascal and Carrera, driving one toward the British and leaving the other without a naval force as he tried to create a new nation. Warning that “it is not probable that you will hear of me for several months to come unless some disaster happens,” he closed, “I expect to be pursued, but shall be prepared.”
On the other side of the continent, British captain James Hillyar was arriving at Rio after a short voyage from London, where he had been selected to carry out a secret mission. Temperate, deliberate, and deeply devout, Hillyar had earned the confidence of the Admiralty for steadiness in combat and a profound sense of duty to the king and his navy. He was no aristocrat and had none of the arrogance typical of his rank. At forty-three, he was still strapping, with a sturdy physique, fair, wavy hair, and a boyishly ruddy complexion.
Before departing Britain, he had been briefed on imperial policy toward Spain and Spanish America. There was little doubt that Britain’s coalition forces would prevail in Europe in the next year or so. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia had failed disastrously; the Prussians were about to reenter the war; and General Wellesley, Marquess (later Duke) of Wellington—who, in tw
o years, would defeat Napoleon for good at Waterloo—had scored great victories over the French with his English-Spanish-Portuguese army in Spain. London intended to restore Fernando to the Spanish throne, subject to the Spanish Constitution of 1812, combining a weak monarchy with a republican parliament like Britain’s own. The future of Spanish America was unclear; the colonial system was disintegrating, and patriot juntos controlled many areas, as in Chile, where the rebels had a government and an army but had yet to win a war of independence.
Hillyar’s secret assignment from the Admiralty in London was to go to the Pacific and destroy the American trading post on the Northwest coast.* It was no longer just a matter of fur-trading rivalries, but of war, in which London intended to annex the entire area to Canada and to achieve total domination of the upper Pacific coast. An English merchant brig had already been sent ahead to inform the “Spanish ports” in Chile, Peru, and Mexico that “the object of the expedition” would not bring harm to them.
At Rio, Hillyar met with Admiral Sir Manley Dixon, chief of station at the center of British power in the South Atlantic, who had a very different mission for the new arrival and his squadron. To fail at it would cost Hillyar his career and perhaps his life. Dixon, who had arrived at Rio just as the U.S. Congress had declared war on Britain, knew everything worth knowing about conditions in South America; through dozens of agents and informers, he tracked the progress of the continent’s independence movements, and he was well aware of Poinsett’s anti-British successes at Buenos Aires and his partisan role in Chile. In many regions, Spain’s colonial viceroys contended with Bolivar, San Martin, Carrera, and other revolutionists. Spanish armies near Buenos Aires had been defeated by the forces of the United Provinces. Of England’s possible imperial rivals in South America, Portugal could do no more than hold onto Brazil, and the United States, with a tiny navy, was obviously incapable of extending protection and support to potential client states. This made the success achieved by Poinsett—“the arch-enemy of British interests in the region”—all the more unacceptable.
James Hillyar (1769–1843), a devout Christian and distinguished captain in the Royal Navy, befriended the young Commander David Porter, USN, in 1804 while the two men were on joint maneuvers in the Mediterranean. Ten years later, Hillyar was given the assignment of hunting down Porter and eliminating the American presence in the Pacific in order to ensure British postwar dominance there. (National Maritime Museum, London)
Dixon had deftly managed the South American enterprise. Establishing Britain as the naval giant of the continent, he had driven the Yankees out of the South Atlantic and had befriended all players in their struggles to get power or hold onto it. On the Pacific side, the great prizes were the resource-rich markets of Chile and Peru, opened up after 300 years of Spanish monopoly. London was aware of American influence in Chile, and one faction of rebel leaders was known to admire the United States. Consul Poinsett was agitating at Santiago, and Captain Porter, Dixon understood, was protecting American shipping. But the status of the Chilean rebellion was doubtful, and the Americans had yet to send munitions or even to recognize Chile as a nation. This he heard from British merchants in Valparaiso, good friends of the port’s governor, Lastra, and good at smuggling weapons and powder to his colleagues, especially O’Higgins.
Dixon had assessed Viceroy Abascal as capable of maintaining authority in Peru and perhaps regaining control of Chile. Certainly, he should be well disposed to Britain, the champion of the anti-Napoleonic forces in Spain and fully capable, through sea power, of dominating the Pacific coast. Under Abascal or as a semi-autonomous state, Chile might well be reconciled to Spain, especially if Fernando were restored to the throne. However these matters played out, London expected to establish British commerce as preeminent on the postwar seas of the South Atlantic and Pacific.
The one wild card was Porter and the Essex. Dixon, unaware of the renegade nature of Porter’s cruise, admired the U.S. Navy planners for their presumed acuity in sending him into the Pacific to tear up the British whaling fleet and to work with Poinsett to support Carrera’s revolution in Chile. Like the Admiralty in London, Dixon had been concerned about the Pacific; he had just ordered a foray by the sloops of war Cherub, twenty-six guns, and Racoon, eighteen guns, to hunt down the Essex.* Now Hillyar came to him bound for the Pacific as well. Reviewing the two missions—his own decision to stop Porter and the Admiralty’s wish to capture the trading post—Admiral Dixon decided to combine them under Hillyar, whose record was well known. In December 1810, Hillyar had defeated a French flotilla off Madagascar, creating an impressive advantage for his squadron before engaging in battle. Since then, he had been stationed in the Orient without opportunity for further honors. The Pacific venture would give him that chance.
If Hillyar did his job, British trade at Concepcion and Valparaiso could continue prosperously and usefully, and Porter’s British prizes could easily be retaken by the Royal Navy. Hillyar was to find Porter and stop his rampage; after that, he would be expected to play the diplomat with the viceroy and to act as the Pacific emissary of Great Britain, forging positive, permanent relations on the west coast of the Americas while eliminating any and all United States presence from Nootka Sound to the Bay of Concepcion.
Hillyar was given a four-vessel battle group and broad authority for the results. In issuing his orders, Dixon regretted that spies in Rio and Buenos Aires would inform Poinsett about Hillyar’s destinations “long before you arrive there.” Some of his British opponents had a healthy respect for Poinsett; one British captain noted that Poinsett had damaged Britain badly at Buenos Aires, “and now again [in Chile] Mr. Poinsett is busy in contaminating the whole population on that side of the continent.”
British merchant vessels, Dixon had learned, had been detained by Abascal for reasons unknown, and something had to be done about that without inflaming the royalists or encouraging the rebels. Hillyar had thorough guidance from Dixon: “On your arrival at the Spanish ports, you are to use every endeavor to cultivate the most friendly understanding between the two nations, and if you should find any reprisals to have been made of British vessels or their cargoes by Spanish privateers or Garda Costas, or by the authorities of their ports (relative to which the accompanying intelligence speaks positively), you are to inquire the cause thereof and to do your utmost by conciliation to leave them restored, according to the laws subsisting between the two nations.” Should he be refused, he was “to have the case drawn up” for the information of the Admiralty, making certain not to become embroiled in any “cause of politics between Spain and her colonies, but to act with the most perfect neutrality towards them both.”
The pressure of this mission on Hillyar was compounded by the shock of learning that his prey was David Porter—his dear companion from the days of their service in the Mediterranean, when the young American had been an intimate of the Hillyar family. It was a strange fortune of war to be tracking him down, perhaps to kill him, but Hillyar recognized it as part of his duty,* and on July 9, 1813, he departed from Rio for Cape Horn in command of the Phoebe, the Cherub, the Racoon, and the armed store ship Isaac Todd.
After six weeks of hard sailing, the warships made it through to the Pacific and proceeded up the coast of Chile separately from the store ship. At the island of Juan Fernandez, Hillyar was informed that not one but two American frigates were cruising nearby and had recently taken an armed British vessel, perhaps the Todd. These rumors changed things. Hillyar weighed his options and decided to stay on to make connections and to find the British whalers. He could not know that all of them had already sailed for home or been captured by Porter, nor could he know that the Isaac Todd was bowling along northward to California. He sent the Racoon to the Northwest coast to “annihilate” the American trading post while he and Captain Tucker of the Cherub looked for the frigates, the whalers, and the missing store ship.
As Hillyar was making his way from Rio to Cape Horn, Porter, his prey, tried once more t
o sell some of his prizes. Lieutenant John Downes and the Essex Junior were sent to Valparaiso with the Barclay and four other vessels, three of which were to be sold there while the oil-laden Policy was to sail for the United States. Downes was to get provisions and plenty of rum and reunite with the Essex at the Galápagos.
Downes’ squadron had a smooth voyage south, though one that was not without its moments of excitement. The whaling captain Gideon Randall, on board his former command the Barclay, blew up at her captain, twelve-year-old Midshipman Glasgow “Gatty” Farragut. Swearing that he would not work for a “damned nutshell” and would shoot anyone who touched a rope without his orders, Randall slatted off to get his pistols below. Gatty coolly ordered a sailor to inform the old whaleman that he ought to take a long nap in his cabin if he did not wish to be thrown overboard.
Downes could not know it, but Porter had turned his full attention to the pursuit of his own long-held fantasy of life and lust in paradise. Porter had given him sealed orders, to be opened only after Downes had departed Valparaiso, telling him to proceed to the Galápagos and check for messages in bottles buried at certain beaches, but not to expect a rendezvous, for Porter would be long-gone to “the island of Chitahoo, or Santa Christiana, one of the Marquesas, where you will find me at anchor, or hear from me, at Resolution Bay, in the latter part of September, and first of October. I intend there to refit my ship.”
The Marquesas were three thousand miles to the west, and October was a long way off.
Porter arrived in the Galápagos once more on July 12 and hove to off Charles Island. Two days later, in the morning, while cruising toward Banks’ Bay, he spotted three sails “standing on a wind, some distance from each other”—the same vessels that had left Tumbez to capture the Essex. In short order, Porter and Adams captured the ten-gun Charlton and the New Zealander without a fight. Volcanoes were erupting on nearby islands as the third ship, heavily armed, tried to escape. From the deck of the Essex, Porter and his men followed the maneuvers of Marine Lieutenant Gamble in the Greenwich, with eighteen men and ten guns, as they approached Seringapatam with thirty-one men and fourteen guns. As the Greenwich came within distant pistol shot of her opponent, the silence was shattered by thunderous broadsides. Each vessel passed unscathed out of the smoke. Over time, four more broadsides were exchanged, with neither crew able to top the other. Cool and patient, Gamble eventually outmaneuvered his opponent, gave them a devastating broadside, and watched as her flag came down.