by Robert Booth
The 357-ton Seringapatam was the finest British ship in the Pacific, and Porter took great pleasure in possessing her, for her Captain Stavers had captured the American whaleship Edward of Nantucket and still held American prisoners, who now joyously signed on with their liberator. In Porter’s opinion, Stavers “might have done great injury to the American commerce in those seas”—had there been any such commerce. Porter well knew that the Americans had all cleared out for home and that no other British vessel had captured even one other American; instead, they had been busy catching whales. Stavers had an expired commission as a privateer, which technically made him a pirate. Porter clapped him in irons but spared his officers, of whom the former prisoners gave a good report, unlike Stavers himself.
Once again in the grip of powerful ocean currents, Porter shed some of his fleet. The old Charlton he gave to her captain to take to Rio de Janeiro with forty-eight prisoners who, as Porter well knew, were mostly Americans from Nantucket with no interest in warfare or navies. They begged to be set adrift in whaleboats rather than be doomed to impressment into the Royal Navy, but Porter remained firm, and the whalemen accepted their fate with such good grace that they departed giving “three hearty cheers” to Porter’s fleet. Porter had no love for Nantucketers under any flag. Still blind to the viceroy’s anti-American policy and declaration of war on the Chilean rebels, he wrote an angry letter to the Edward’s owner alleging that Folger, putting greed ahead of honor, had cooperated with Stavers rather than proceed to recover his vessel in Lima “on a simple representation of the case to the Viceroy.”
Porter sent Georgiana, loaded with sperm oil, for the Atlantic; he calculated that the voyage would take five months. She stood a better chance of making an American port in wintertime, and Porter could shed the worst and sickest of his sailors whose enlistments had expired. Further, he could dispose of William Stavers, who was good at outguessing him. On July 25, Lieutenant James Wilson ordered the joyful men of the Georgiana to set the topsails and begin their voyage home.
Having captured almost every one of the British-flagged whalers in the Pacific, Porter needed an exit strategy. The Royal Navy would send out a squadron to hunt him down with his vulnerable fleet of whalers. In the absence of legal commerce and motivated buyers, none could be sold in the Pacific; all would have to get to American ports. To fail in this with even one prize was to forfeit great riches; to fail largely would be a disaster, not just in value unrealized but in existential terms: Why had he gone rogue and run such high risks if he were so likely to lose it all?
Porter, however, had unfinished business in the Galápagos. As far as he could tell, British-flagged whalers still roamed there, and he wanted all of them. Sure enough, while becalmed off Albemarle he “discovered a strange sail” which “appeared to be close on a wind under her topsails, with fresh breezes” as if sailing in a different sea. Porter caught a zephyr and started the chase, but the wind dropped and the current carried the Essex toward the seas heaving against the Rodondo shore with ship-crushing violence. All seemed lost as the frigate drifted closer to the killer coast, and only the sudden arrival of a “smart breeze” saved the Essex and her men. Porter, of course, continued to push his luck, doubtless to the dismay of his crew, who knew an ill omen when they saw one.
Unable to take this last prize, Porter focused on loading tortoises and, in his journal, excoriating Colnett, his British predecessor in these islands, whose charts Porter found so defective that he filled several pages with outraged contempt. As he did so, a tragedy unfolded. The rivalry between his new fourth lieutenant, John Cowan, and his chief of marines, John Gamble, was intense, and Porter, as their chief, failed to manage the problem. It culminated in a duel on shore at dawn, with seconds and perhaps others attending. After the countdown, each fired his pistol. Fortunately, both missed; unfortunately, they wished to continue. No one thought to notify their commander, and no one intervened. Instead, the young officers paced off and took another shot at each other; and again the bullets missed. On the third exchange, Cowan fell dead.
The Marquesas were calling, and the Essex was infested with rats. Porter hunted down and captured one more hapless British-flagged whaler, Sir Andrew Hammond, and celebrated by hosting a feast for his crew, washed down with two captured puncheons “of choice Jamaica spirits.” The navy men, without their dram since clearing Tumbez, were soon inebriated, and “many were taken to their hammocks perfectly drunk.” And the rum started them grumbling. It was a critical moment in the history of this strange cruise, for the crew had good reasons to kick against Porter. There were, evidently, no more whaleships to capture, and their enlistments had expired. When were they going home? Porter heard them in their cups and was inclined to lenity, except toward James Rynard, a quartermaster who, in the past, had advocated for the crew and played peacemaker with the officers. Porter could not tolerate any degree of divided allegiance; he still had big plans that must be kept secret, and he needed to know if his men were still with him. Had the foxy Rynard kindled serious discontent?
Seeing his chance, Porter put on a show, accosting the half-drunk Rynard and ordering him to go aboard one of the prizes and get to work. Predictably, Rynard objected, at which Porter called him out for drunkenness and ordered him aft until he was sober. Instead, Rynard defiantly rushed forward past Porter, for which he was made to sit under guard. His messmates brought him supper, but he threw it overboard and left the deck. Porter had him put in irons; Rynard groused that his enlistment was up, and Porter put him on board the Seringapatam to be deposited ashore. Rynard showed no fear or remorse; he was glad to go. In their set piece he had pushed back at every insult, and Porter had affirmed his authority at the very edge of sadism. For Rynard, banishment from the Essex community was not some unthinkable punishment; it was liberation, even if it left him stranded on a desert island.
Porter rightly wondered about the effect on the crew. Not one of them, presumably, would have signed up for a cruise that was in its tenth month with no end in sight. But the showdown had “rendered every man in the ship sober, attentive, and active in the discharge of his duty, and assiduous to please.” Porter still owned them, and he was not yet ready to depart.
New Zealander was caulked and Sir Andrew Hammond was painted. Each of the five vessels was stocked with tortoise and made ready for an extended cruise, and on August 28, 1813, just as these preparations were completed, Lieutenant John Downes showed up. Received with three cheers, he brought much news from Valparaiso. Peru and Chile were fighting an all-out war. Madison had been reelected president, and the navy had triumphed “in every instance where our ships had encountered an enemy of equal force.”
Downes reported that he had left the prizes Montezuma, Catherine, and Hector at Valparaiso, which was still in the hands of Carrera’s rebels, and he had learned that several British merchant ships were expected with valuable cargoes, while another, the Mary Ann, was already there, “richly laden, and on the point of sailing for India.” He had escorted four American whalers from Valparaiso partway to Concepcion, along with the Policy, which he had ordered into the Atlantic in the track of the Georgiana. The last free British whaleship in the Pacific, the Comet, a twenty-gun letter of marque (privateer), now lay at Talcahuano, shorn of her guns by the Chilean rebels.
Finally, Downes handed Porter a packet from Poinsett, just received from a spy in Buenos Aires, who wrote: “on the 5th July the British frigate Phoebe, of 36 guns, and the Raccoon and Cherub sloops of war, of 24 guns each, accompanied by a store-ship of 20 guns, had sailed from Rio de Janeiro for the Pacific Ocean, in pursuit of the Essex.” Porter was not surprised; it was news that he had long expected, and he welcomed it. But it came with a truly disturbing twist at the end: his British nemesis, the head of the wolf pack sent to hunt him down, was a man who knew him very well. It was none other than Porter’s only friend in the Royal Navy, his dear companion from happy days at Gibraltar, the admirable Captain James Hillyar.
At Chilla
n, Carrera kept up the siege while his army devoured the crops and cattle of the unwilling people of the province. Far to the south, the royalists retook the large port of Valdivia and built up their base at the island of Chiloe. They formed an alliance with the Arauco chiefs and made good use of the many shipments of munitions and provisions that arrived regularly on vessels sent from the viceroy’s warehouses at Callao, free of any concerns about a patriot naval force.
The Chilean army, or what was left of it, remained loyal to José Miguel Carrera and the dream of an independent Chile. Poinsett remained at Santiago, out of the fight; Carrera, without his advisor, relied on O’Higgins to stir up battles. At El Roble the fight went against them, and Carrera, targeted by the enemy, fled on horseback toward the camp of his brother Juan; O’Higgins, though wounded, directed a successful counterattack. As usual, the battle meant nothing strategically, but it did raise O’Higgins in the esteem of the men.
Six months had passed since Carrera had made himself commander in chief and gone to the front, leaving a hastily appointed Santiago junto to run the government. He had given his all to the war, and had not returned to Santiago or taken a break, but had relied on the people and officials of the capital to support him and his army in the field. His faith was badly misplaced.
In Santiago, the Larrains, far removed from battle and bloodshed, had never once conceded the control of Chile to Carrera and his adherents. Throughout the military campaign, they had undermined his leadership and criticized his motives and abilities. Remaining in the field to lead the army and to continue the siege that Mackenna had advised, Carrera, by his absence, gave his rivals an opportunity to betray him in the capital.
On October 8, the Larrain faction took control of the government and installed José Ignacio Cienfuegos, a Dominican friar and bitter enemy of Carrera, as head of the new junto. Leaving Father Joaquin Larrain in charge at Santiago with his own fighting force, the junto moved 160 miles south to Talca, where they arranged for the arrival of a battalion of 300 Buenos Airean soldiers from Mendoza. The foreigners were commanded by Colonel Marcos Balcarce, who had been the governor of Cuyo, western Argentina, until succeeded the year before by General José Francisco de San Martin, just arrived from years of fighting in Spain.
Without informing Carrera of their presence, Cienfuegos and the junto contacted Sanchez, the royalist commander at Chillan, demanding his surrender. When he scornfully refused, they sent a messenger to General José Miguel Carrera ordering him to resign. Carrera reacted violently, accusing them of treason and defying their authority in the strongest possible terms. O’Higgins agreed, and wrote to the junto to support Carrera and his brothers, brave soldiers who had devoted everything to winning the war. “Once the independence of the country has been achieved,” wrote O’Higgins, “they will make any sacrifice to secure its civil liberty.”
The junto was not much interested in civil liberty. In fact, they had decided to replace Carrera with their own Argentinian mercenary, Balcarce. Unknown to O’Higgins, Mackenna had gone to Talca to meet with his relatives in the junto and to plot against his hated rivals, the Carreras. When Mackenna suggested to the junto that Balcarce could not lead the Chilean army, and that their only choice was his friend O’Higgins, the junto decreed the appointment of Bernardo O’Higgins as commander in chief. Carrera, receiving the message at Concepcion, tore it up and threw the messenger in prison. His entire officer corps reacted with disgust and outrage and refused to accept the decree.
Split between the army in the south and the politicians in the north, between Larrains and Carreras, between appeasement and independence, the republic of Chile was coming apart.
*Hillyar was “to destroy and, if possible, totally annihilate any settlements which the Americans may have formed either on the Columbia River or on the neighboring coasts.” His orders from London did not include pursuit of Porter or negotiation with Abascal or the Chileans. The purpose was to preserve British dominance in the area by dispossessing the Americans of their newly built fort, Astoria, from which they conducted a fur trade sponsored by John Jacob Astor of Manhattan. The Americans there realized what was afoot and cannily sold Astoria to their British colleagues.
*A sloop of war was not a sloop as the term is understood today—i.e., a single-masted sailing vessel; rather, it was a large, ship-rigged vessel with three masts, built stoutly for warfare and carrying many large guns and up to 200 men.
*Perhaps Hillyar did not tell Dixon about his old acquaintance with Porter.
Chapter Nine
Opotee in Nooaheevah
The Porter fleet started out across the Pacific with the Essex as flagship, followed by the well-armed Seringapatam, the Greenwich, the New Zealander, the Sir Andrew Hammond, and the Essex Junior under John Downes. Having formerly deserted the Atlantic and the wartime constraints of duty, authority, and responsibility, Porter now was leaving behind the last coast of the modern world and crossing a 3,000-mile stretch of ocean into the islands of a Stone Age people. He went with no regrets about his apostasy or his ignorance of the fate of his beleaguered country or old friends and famous ships on which he had served.
American armies had not done well. Their invasion of Canada had been turned back, and the Canadians and British had destroyed the town of Buffalo and crossed the Great Lakes frontier. The British, with their naval power, seemed capable of landing an army at any point along the coast; they had captured towns in Maine and burned plantations in the south. General Jackson, in the south and west, was engaging and occasionally slaughtering Indian tribes, but most people in the United States realized that they were losing the war and might even forfeit their independence.
Only the U.S. Navy had given them some hope for military success. Having appointed William Jones as navy secretary in January 1813, President Madison had reinstated naval planning as a priority in the overall war effort. By virtue of victories in ship-to-ship duels, the navy had won over the American public and the U.S. Congress, which had allotted funds for the construction of six forty-four-gun heavy frigates and four seventy-four-gun ships of the line, the largest vessels ever built in America. Conceding the immense strength of the British blockade along the American seacoast, Jones made two key recommendations: build some smaller vessels, and defend the lakes along the Canadian border, where a strong American naval presence might block supply lines essential to any major British invasion.
Congress authorized Jones to produce freshwater warships, including two corvettes for Lake Erie, and to begin construction of six seagoing battleships of a new class. Smaller than frigates and produced faster and cheaper, these so-called sloops of war would be superior commerce raiders and perhaps cause the British to divert some blockading vessels. A good example was the Wasp, to be built at Newburyport, up the coast from the Salem shipyard that had produced the Essex. With about half the crew of a frigate, she would match up if necessary against Royal Navy sloops and brigs of war. The Wasp would displace 509 tons, carry twenty-two cannon and 173 men, and would measure 117 feet in length and 31.5 feet in beam, with a draft of 14.5 feet. The Essex, displacing 864 tons, measured 141 feet long and 37 feet in beam, with a deeper draft.
The navy’s most ambitious commanders, formerly colleagues of David Porter, lined up to get a crack at these new vessels or to build their own. On Lake Erie, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry rapidly assembled a squadron of nine warships, including the new corvettes Lawrence and Niagara. On September 10, 1813, Perry sailed against the British lake fleet. In the first large-scale battle of the inland naval war, he brought up his vessels in a battle line, got a favorable wind shift, and won the fight. As the victor at the Battle of Lake Erie, Perry blocked the British effort in the west and became the idol of his nation.
In the larger war overseas, the tide had finally turned against Napoleon. In Spain, Wellington’s combined army—British, Spanish, and Portuguese—had been winning battles throughout the spring of 1813, and in June, at the Battle of Vitoria, Wellington defeated the vastl
y outnumbered Napoleonic forces. By the end of the year, all Spanish territory was held by the British alliance, which made possible the restoration of the Bourbon king, Fernando VII.
The war went no better for Napoleon on the eastern front. His invasion of Russia, while penetrating all the way to Moscow, had resulted in disaster as his huge Grand Armée was decimated by disease and the ravages of a Russian winter. Defeated in Spain, Russia, and then Germany, Napoleon retreated into France with his remaining forces and would abdicate his throne in April 1814.
These events left London in an even stronger position to blockade the coasts of North and South America and to defeat the American armies. Soon large numbers of troops would be transported to Canada, and a Royal Navy fleet would be cruising in the Chesapeake Bay while another squelched maritime commerce from New York to Maine. Despite the daunting strength of Britain in Atlantic waters, however, personal glory might still be won in naval battles between smaller cruisers. Assigned to supervise construction of the Wasp, Commander Johnston Blakeley turned over the brig of war Enterprize—once commanded by David Porter in the Mediterranean—to Lieutenant William Burrows, who, on September 5, 1813, off the coast of Maine, defeated the Royal Navy’s Boxer. With more such fast, elusive warships, Americans could take the war across the Atlantic to Africa, Europe, and even to Britain’s home waters, preying on shipping there and adding measurably to the enormous toll, in the hundreds of vessels and the millions of pounds sterling in property, that was already being taken by American privateers.