by Robert Booth
After that, Porter set his British prisoners free in Valparaiso, but he remained obsessed with Hillyar and Phoebe. Somehow she had to be brought to combat before she was reinforced and he could neither fight nor escape. His restless inventiveness and piratical imagination led to more strange proceedings. One night Porter gathered his crews and filled ten boats with armed men. Away they went over the moonless sea toward the sleeping Phoebe, to take her by boarding. The Americans made it to their target undetected, and Porter himself got under her bows, ready to spring; but in the blackness above he heard the English crewmen chatting, and discovered that Captain Hillyar had them drilling that night at battle quarters.
Events in Chile had continued to be unfavorable to Poinsett and the interests of the United States. After being informed by the new junto that he was to surrender the command of the armies to O’Higgins, José Miguel Carrera was visited by O’Higgins in Concepcion. They had spent a year together fighting, not always happily but with respect and the deep friendship of brothers in arms. They had battled ceaselessly for their country, and Chile meant more to both of them than any personal interest. O’Higgins had come away from this meeting still loyal to his chief and had gone on to meet with the junto at Talca. There he had declared his unwillingness to take on the generalship, while allowing that Carrera had said he would be willing to step aside in order to save the republic of Chile.
O’Higgins reminded the junto members that he had begun as “an ordinary guerilla” and “lacked the training for a senior officer commanding armies.” They had conferred, and replied that Carrera was out and would never be reinstated and that all of the Carreras had been stripped of their commissions and banished from service. O’Higgins had submitted without protest. Agreeing to consult the junto in all important war-related matters, he had returned to Concepcion. On February 2, 1814, O’Higgins had become commander in chief of the patriot army, reduced to 1,800 soldiers, with hundreds leaving in anger because of the expulsion of their leader, José Miguel Carrera, and his gallant brothers, Colonel Luis and General Juan José.
At about that same time, Viceroy Abascal had sent out a new commander, Brigadier General Gabino Gainza, with 200 troops and large amounts of arms and provisions, to land in the south at Arauco and demand the capitulation of Concepcion and the surrender of the rebels. O’Higgins, in his first test, had been advised by the junto to clear out of the south and retreat to the Maule River, which was held by the newly promoted General Juan Mackenna and his army. O’Higgins hesitated. Should he not renew the attack on Chillan before the two royalist forces combined? He continued to consult Carrera, whose brother Juan José Carrera, furious, organized a troop and set off for Santiago, vowing in public to overthrow the junto that had betrayed his great-hearted brother.
The junto ordered José Miguel and Luis to leave the province of Concepcion. With thirty-one loyal officers—the flower of the patriot army—and seventy retainers, they started out for Santiago on March 2, 1814. At dawn two days later, while sleeping at a farmhouse, the party was attacked by a detachment of royalists. Several of the guards were killed before the Carreras and other officers could surrender. As they were brought into Chillan, the royalist troops chanted, “Long live the king! Death to the Carreras!” They were led into the presence of Gainza, who sat with a big sombrero pulled down over his eyes at a small table with a candle on a watermelon rind. His prisoner boldly proposed that Gainza join him in a war against the Larrains; José Miguel Carrera had no doubt that he could take over the government at Santiago and restore independence to Chile. Gainza laughed and told Carrera that he was crazy and that he and his brother would be kept under guard until they were arraigned on charges of treason against the king.
After Carrera’s resignation, the rebel army at Concepcion dwindled, and news arrived that Britain had achieved victory in Spain and restored the rule of Fernando VII, who intended to reassemble Spain’s shattered empire. Under General Gainza, Abascal’s army at Chillan was reinforced from Lima and began its march northward. The junto fled toward Santiago. On March 8, when the capital learned of the fall of Talca, “terror, dismay, and confusion reigned among all classes of its citizens.”
The junto faced a crisis. Gainza’s royalist army having defeated Mackenna’s forces, Santiago was exposed and O’Higgins had to withdraw from Concepcion province. Forfeiting all to the royalists, he slowly went north, with his men dragging the cannons for lack of mules. Gainza moved between the two rebel armies. O’Higgins, coming on, engaged and defeated a small force. Mackenna’s troops did the same. On March 23 they finally combined and began the sprint for Santiago to try to block Gainza.
Both armies raced across the Rio Maule. Gainza, with the smaller force, saw that he could not sustain an attack on Santiago due to the oncoming winter and the need to increase the size and supply lines for his troops. He decided to withdraw to Talca or Chillan. The patriot army was given a respite to recruit its strength and to hold and consolidate the province of Santiago. People were very unhappy. Central Chile had suffered great losses in crops, cattle, and men, and there had been no trade with Peru and little with anyone else. The popular favorite, José Miguel Carrera, betrayed by the junto, was still in prison or perhaps dead somewhere to the south. Chile might still be subject to devastating punishment from the royalists. Other independence movements in South America were failing too—even in Buenos Aires, where there was fatal internecine political rivalry but good military leadership from the man who had emerged as the top general, José de San Martin, governor at Mendoza.
The junto, reviled on suspicion of having sold out the country, was surrounded by a large crowd and rescued by Juan José Carrera, at the head of the artillery, who pledged to carry out the will of the assembled people. Meeting en masse, they voted to expel the junto and install a new system led by a dictator who would rule on behalf of the Larrains. The names of Irissari and Lastra were proposed. On March 14, 1814, the people chose Francisco de la Lastra, thirty-eight, former governor of Valparaiso, as the supreme director of Chile. Lastra had once confessed to David Porter that he doubted whether independence was right for Chile; now, as head of government, he looked forward to talks with Captain Hillyar and others who might solve the problem of what to do with a semi-sovereign state that was retracting its revolution.
In its final act, the junto signed a decree declaring its own dissolution and requiring that all men in Santiago be issued weapons, and that all royalists be placed on board prison ships at Valparaiso. Lastra gave the job at Valparaiso to “a certain Captain Formas, who had been disgraced by Carrera for cowardice.” In Santiago, Lastra ignored the resolutions of the junto regarding arming a militia and imprisoning royalists, but he eagerly proceeded with the ceremony in which he was invested with the title and powers of supreme director.
Poinsett had to recognize these events as the end of his mission. In acknowledging the demise of an independent Chile, he had to give up on his hopes for the liberation of the rest of Spanish America. In the absence of José Miguel Carrera, he drew close to Porter, the only other American official in Chile. Porter, for his part, told Poinsett that he was ready to escape. He too had given up—had abandoned, regretfully, his fantasy of knights errant jousting offshore, frigate to frigate, for all the glory in the Pacific. He had failed to sting the Englishman into combat. Disciplined and determined, terrified of failure and obedient to the Admiralty’s ban on one-on-one frigate battles, Hillyar had maintained his strategy of inglorious containment while enduring the taunts and feints of the angry little American.
Concealing his intent, Porter shuttled back and forth to the wharves. Poinsett was a frequent visitor and confrere, and Porter sent ashore his purser, John Shaw, to act the part of a provision-dealer conspicuously offering a weeklong opportunity for trade. Poinsett and Porter had a lot to talk about, including the likelihood of a land-based royalist attack and the possibility of enough confusion that Porter might sneak off to sea. At the same time, Poinsett’s contacts
among the rebels were reporting rumors of the near approach of another British battleship.
Porter, the illusionist, let go of the illusion of victory. Knowing that he could outsail both of his tormentors, his escape was mainly a matter of proper timing and sleight-of-ship, of seizing the moment with a favorable wind and opponents who were too far to leeward to stop him when he jumped. His adventure would end, he knew, without the glory that he had sought in the Pacific, but the Atlantic was full of British frigates, and who was to say that he would not defeat one on his way to New York?
*Whatever the rating of a vessel in terms of her standard armament, the captain was at liberty to add more weaponry as long as it did not affect seaworthiness. Long guns were much heavier than carronades, for example, so that fewer long guns could make way for many more carronades or other types of shorter-range guns.
Chapter Twelve
Victory
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, March 27, 1814, one year after he had sailed from England, James Hillyar was awoken in his cabin and told what his lookouts had seen. He made a quick assessment and in a few minutes Phoebe and Cherub were surging downwind toward small dancing blue lights and then the white flare of rockets. Hillyar signaled repeatedly but was not answered, and by half past one he knew that he was chasing “the enemy’s boats as a decoy.” Not to be fooled further, he came about and spoke the Cherub, instructing Captain Tucker to follow him upwind toward the harbor, where he spied the outline of the tall spars of the sleeping Essex, still riding at anchor. The breeze was strong, much fresher than he had thought, and suddenly, with a noise like a gunshot, Hillyar’s main topsail split. In a few minutes it was replaced and a triple-reef taken, and he prudently double-reefed the other topsails out of respect for the squall.
At dawn, Porter saw his British opponents, royals doused, sailing to windward of the Point of Angels, the headland beyond the western limits of the harbor. This was a disappointment, for he had hoped that Phoebe and Cherub might be to leeward, where Lieutenant Maury’s blue-light boats had lured them the night before. Still, anything could happen on this day, which began cloudy, with light winds in the harbor promising to turn nasty offshore. Consul Poinsett, who had spent the night on board, spent the day with Porter discussing rumors and assessing possibilities. Poinsett, as it happened, was not ready to depart; he had been hearing reports from the south of massing armies and the possibility of a great victory for O’Higgins and the realization of Chilean independence. As the hours passed, Porter grew cheerful. The weather was making up from the southwest and had “increased to a strong gale.” The Essex was a splendid heavy-weather sailer, and conditions were perfect for a race that Porter’s ship would win—but he wanted to get a great start.
A few of his officers, ashore in town that afternoon to secure fresh provisions, were “in the midst of emptying a few bottles in the home of the Rosales family,” staunch friends of Americans, when the sound of the cannon, Porter’s signal, “made them all snatch up their caps and, without further goodbye than ‘Farewell forever!’ dash into their boat shouting huzzahs.” They got on board at about three o’clock. With final plans made and his uppermost royal masts lowered, Porter hailed the Essex Junior to send a boat. About a half-mile away, Hillyar and Tucker came bowling in toward the anchorage area. They could not see Porter cut his port anchor cable and raise the starboard anchor. Poinsett left in the boat, Porter shouted his commands, and suddenly the Essex blossomed in canvas and charged off to windward, opposite the incoming British. A little late, Hillyar brought his vessels about and started the chase. He set his mainsail in the “fresh gales and heavy squalls,” and he and Tucker each streamed their ensigns reading “God & Country, British Sailors’ Best Rights, Traitors Offend Both.”
Porter flew ahead of them, carrying a perilously heavy press of canvas; but he had done it before, in the desperate weather of Cape Horn, and he had seamen aloft to take in sail if ordered. His escape plan was working. He stepped back to inspect his flexing topmasts and straining topsails, and he muttered to the storm gods as the frigate crashed forward, groaning in the squall, surging along by the high bluffs at the head of the Point of Angels. A hundred yards from the open sea, she suddenly slowed amid the thunder of luffing canvas. Porter cursed violently. He had sailed too close to the cliffs and lost his wind; but the Essex rode along on momentum, and in a minute she would be in the clear. Astern were the British pursuers; aloft were the men on the yardarms; ahead lay the wide ocean and a clear path to America. Porter gave no orders, trusting to the strength of the Essex. As the vessel emerged from the unwanted calm of the shore, she caught the renewed force of the gale and the great ship leaped ahead, heeling so hard that the deckhands had to scramble as she buried her lee rail. And then there was a terrible noise as the main topmast and its tower of sails came crashing down and two men went screaming into space. In an instant, at the very verge of freedom, the Essex had broken.
But not David Porter. If he could get his ship back to the neutral zone of the harbor, all would be well. It was possible; it was certain. He gave orders to put her on starboard tack and to cut away the main topsail, fouled by the wreckage. Someone thought to toss over the wooden life buoy. Crewmen swarmed up and onto the yards and worked furiously, but the Essex could not get around in time to beat her pursuers to the anchorage—Hillyar and Tucker blocked her from whatever safety the harbor anchorage might have afforded, and the guns of the fort at Castello Viejo were silent. Captain Formas was not about to intervene on behalf of the arrogant American.
Porter panicked. He could not head out to sea; his vessel was injured, and Hillyar and Tucker would run him down like wolves. His best chance was to get near the shore and claim protection. Others on board thought Porter mad; the Essex was by far the fastest of the battleships, and they ought to keep going. A new topmast could be sent up and new sails bent on—the drills of a very long cruise had made the crew crackerjack at such things. Although Phoebe would gain during the process, Cherub was a “dull sailer” that would not keep up, and no vessel could carry full topsails and topgallants in the storm anyway. At close quarters the Essex, with twenty, thirty-two-pound carronade guns to a side, would devastate Phoebe in the first exchange and set up the chance for boarding or for pulling away.
For whatever reasons, David Porter did not consider this scenario, which was the only one that drew on the considerable strengths of his vessel and her armament. He had survived Phoebe’s first pass in February by maintaining his rights at anchorage, and now he thought of a spot along the coast about three miles distant. Hillyar, following, was incredulous when he saw Porter run the Essex into a cove, douse his sails, and anchor half a pistol-shot from the shore, more than a mile from the harbor’s eastern fort, the Castello El Baron. Poinsett, ashore, had followed the action on horseback, first riding toward the old fort near the Point of Angels, then doubling back once the Essex had fallen off toward the north, across the harbor. With Samuel Johnston and a posse of Americans, he quickly closed the three-mile gap and arrived at full gallop calling for the commandant to defend his coastline and fire the guns, but the British battleships had already passed out of range. Poinsett demanded that the guns be turned over to him on carriages so that he could move them to the hillside to help defend the Essex; the Chilean commander, however, had received no orders and could not allow El Consul to strip his fort of its armament.
Rashly, Porter broke out the white pennants with their taunting mottoes. As they lifted in the breeze, he had his crew start to fix the damage. “In this situation,” wrote Porter, “we considered ourselves perfectly secure.” Actually, only he did, on the assumption that they occupied neutral waters. Many of his loyal men felt that he was dead wrong and had forfeited any claim of immunity by leaving the harbor at the Point of Angels. Phoebe and Cherub came on toward the motionless Essex lying head-to-sea, the perfect target for raking fire. With a numbing sense of dread, Porter’s sailors watched the British battleships advance. They now had “no
chance of success” and every chance of a bloodbath unless their ship was “run ashore, throwing her broadside to the beach to prevent raking.” This would let them fight “as long as consistent with humanity, and then set fire to her.” Stuck in a cove, far from the harbor anchorage and the possible protection of the three Valparaiso forts, they had already lost.
About ten minutes later, at 3:55, Phoebe glided into position and dropped anchor, and Cherub, under sail, set up opposite. On board the Phoebe, Lieutenant Ingram pleaded with Captain Hillyar not to conduct the assault in this fashion. War should be an honorable exercise, respectful of one’s opponent and of one’s own feelings as a gentleman: “Let us have no Cherub to help us, but with the Phoebe alone lay the Essex aboard, yardarm to yard-arm, and fight like Britons.” Hillyar, incredulous, turned on Ingram. Stupidity was the last thing he expected from his gallant chief. “It is our duty,” he stated sharply, “to capture the Essex with the least possible risk to this vessel and crew. We will use whatever means are placed at our disposal to take the enemy—an enemy who has done so much damage to British commerce, and whose escape will be attended with the most serious consequences.” Ingram took the blow, apologized, and returned to the duty of preparing his gunners for a shooting gallery.