1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  Before leaving Nuku Hiva, Porter ordered Marine Lieutenant John Gamble to continue America’s presence on the island until he returned or until five months had elapsed. To support Gamble, Porter left three of the captured whalers and a surprisingly small number of men—Midshipman William Feltus, twenty-one volunteers, and six prisoners.

  After easily thwarting a mutiny by a small number of men just before he was leaving, Porter set sail for Valparaiso in the refurbished Essex, intent on falling in with an enemy frigate. He knew British hunters were after him, and he meant to accommodate them. Lieutenant Downes and Essex Junior accompanied him. A stop at Valparaiso for supplies was unnecessary; Porter had enough to reach the South Atlantic safely or to sail west to East Asia, where he could have obtained provisions as well. He might also have been an important fighting force in either place. The need for supplies was not the reason he was going to Valparaiso. He was fixated on fighting a British frigate and achieving the glory that Isaac Hull had achieved—the very sort of wasteful dueling that Madison and Jones were dead set against.

  After an uneventful voyage, Porter arrived at Valparaiso on February 3, 1814. He did not have to wait long for his fondest wish to be fulfilled. After midnight on February 8, lookouts spotted two enemy warships in the distance, and the following morning, the 36-gun Phoebe, under Captain James Hillyar, and the 28-gun Cherub, under Captain Thomas J. Tucker, sailed into the harbor prepared for battle. Porter was ready for them. But he did not know quite what to expect, since Valparaiso was a neutral harbor. The larger frigate sailed near enough to the Essex for her jib boom to sweep uncomfortably close to the Essex’s forecastle. But it did not touch any part of the ship. That was fortunate for Hillyar: Porter was ready to respond to any touching with a ferocious broadside of powerful carronades. Evidently Hillyar hoped to take Porter by surprise, but seeing that he had not, he backed off, pretending he was respecting the neutrality of the port. Porter held his fire and let Hillyar recover, something he deeply regretted later.

  The Phoebe and the Cherub then took up stations outside the port to watch and perhaps to wait for more warships. Porter remained inside Valparaiso harbor. In the ensuing days and weeks he attempted to provoke Hillyar into a single-ship duel, but Hillyar would not accommodate him. Frustrated, Porter attempted a surprise night attack on the Phoebe using the Essex’s boats, but that too failed. During his attempts to lure Hillyar into battle, Porter discovered that the Essex was much faster than the Phoebe.

  Porter now decided that since Hillyar was never going to fight him one-on-one, he would make a run for it, before more British warships arrived. An opportunity presented itself the afternoon of March 28, when a strong southerly wind parted the Essex’s port anchor cable, and the ship started dragging her starboard anchor out to sea. Porter reacted quickly, taking up the anchor and arranging his sails; he was convinced that this was his opportunity.

  He took in the topgallants, which were set over single-reefed topsails, and braced up to pass to windward of the Phoebe and Cherub, who were in pursuit. Unfortunately, on rounding the western point of Valparaiso Bay, a sudden heavy squall carried away the Essex’s main topmast. Three men aloft fell into the sea and drowned. Porter decided to turn back and regain his original anchorage. But that proved impossible, and he was forced to put into the east side of the harbor within pistol shot of shore. Hillyar and the Cherub were right after him, and although Porter considered he was in neutral territory, Hillyar never hesitated, and a vicious battle developed.

  The Essex had forty thirty-two-pound carronades and six long twelve-pounders. The Phoebe had twenty-six long eighteen-pounders, two long twelve-pounders, two long nine-pounders, fourteen thirty-two-pound carronades, and two eighteen-pound carronades. The Cherub had eighteen thirty-two-pound carronades, four eighteen-pound carronades, and four long nine-pounders.

  The ever prudent Hillyar, who had obviously rehearsed for weeks how he was going to fight the Essex, used his big advantage in long guns to stay away from Porter’s deadly carronades. In the initial exchanges, however, Porter managed to use three of his long twelve-pounders so well that the Phoebe and Cherub had to haul off after thirty minutes to repair damages. Porter insisted that all his men “appeared determined to defend their ship to the last extremity and to die in preference to a shameful surrender.”

  When Hillyar resumed the battle, he positioned the Phoebe out of range of Essex’s carronades, where Porter could not bring his long guns to bear either. Porter tried again and again to get springs on his cable, but he could not. The Essex was a sitting duck. Porter tried closing with Hillyar and boarding, but the Essex was so shot up he failed. Porter then tried to run the Essex on shore and destroy her, but when the wind would not cooperate, he had to give that up as well.

  The grisly slaughter went on for two and a half hours before Porter finally surrendered at twenty minutes after six. His butcher’s bill was appalling. Out of a crew of 255 he had 58 killed, 39 severely wounded, 26 slightly wounded, and 31 missing. Hillyar had 5 killed and 10 wounded. Porter himself was unscathed, although he had been in the thick of the fight the entire time.

  Theodore Roosevelt wrote that “history does not afford a single instance of so determined a defense against such frightful odds.” Porter said of his crew, “More bravery, skill, patriotism, and zeal were never displayed on any occasion.”

  “We have been unfortunate, but not disgraced,” Porter wrote to the secretary of the navy. “The defense of the Essex has not been less honorable to her officers and crew, than the capture of an equal force; and I now consider my situation less unpleasant than that of Commodore Hillyar, who in violation of every principle of honor and generosity, and regardless of the rights of nations, attacked the Essex in her crippled state, within pistol shot of a neutral shore—when for six weeks I had daily offered him fair and honorable combat, on terms greatly to his advantage; the blood of the slain must be upon his head.” Porter added that “I must in justification of myself observe that with our six twelve-pounders only we fought this action, our carronades being almost useless.”

  Looking back many years later, Midshipman David Farragut, who had fought alongside the captain, had these observations about Porter’s tactics: “In the first place, I consider that our original and greatest mistake was in attempting to regain the anchorage; as, being greatly superior to the enemy in sailing qualities, I think we should have borne up and run before the wind. If the Phoebe caught the Essex, then Porter could have taken her by boarding. If Hillyar outmaneuvered the Essex and avoided her grasp, the Essex could have taken her fire and passed on, replacing her topmast as she went and sailing beyond Hillyar’s reach.” The slow-sailing Cherub would not have entered into the action and would have been left far behind, according to Farragut.

  “Secondly,” he wrote, “it was apparent to everyone that we had no chance of success, under the circumstances, the ship should have been run ashore, throwing her broadside to the beach, to prevent raking, [and] fought as long as was consistent with humanity, and then set fire to her.”

  The Cherub had been engaged in the battle only briefly, while Essex Junior, with her light armament and tiny crew of sixty, kept out of the fight entirely. Hillyar treated the survivors with great care, allowing Porter and his crew to return home on parole in the undamaged Essex Junior. One hundred and thirty men, including Porter, left Valparaiso on April 27. Two of the wounded were left behind.

  Good weather accompanied Porter the entire way home. They rounded Cape Horn under topgallant studding sails and were off New York on July 5. Before they reached Sandy Hook, however, the British razee Saturn, under Captain James Nash, stopped them and, despite Hillyar’s safe-conduct pass, detained them. Porter was furious. On the spur of the moment, he left Lieutenant Downes in charge and fled in a whaleboat with a few men, rowing sixty miles to Long Island. Nash later reconsidered and released Essex Junior. Downes, after some additional trouble, sailed her into New York, where he was reunited with Porter. The city
gave them a stupendous reception.

  Lieutenant Gamble, meanwhile, had as difficult a time on Nuku Hiva as Porter did in Valparaiso. In May, Gamble barely escaped from the island after some islanders—urged on by a man named Wilson, Porter’s English interpreter, whom he found living on the island when he arrived—killed Midshipman Feltus and were about to do the same to the rest of them. Miraculously, Gamble managed to get away and sail all the way to Hawaii in the Sir Andrew Hammond, one of the captured whale ships, only to be caught by the Cherub, fresh from her triumph at Valparaiso. Gamble was eventually paroled. He finally reached the United States on August 27, 1815, long after the war was over.

  Like the rest of the country, President Madison, although regretting the loss of the Essex and so many of her brave men, celebrated the heroism of Porter and the other survivors. Madison blamed the disaster on Captain Hillyar for attacking the Essex in neutral waters. Hillyar claimed that Porter violated Valparaiso’s neutrality first, but the president was determined to make Porter a hero. On September 20, 1814, in his opening message to the third session of the 13th Congress, Madison acknowledged the capture of the Essex, but wrote that “the loss is hidden in the blaze of heroism with which she was defended . . . till humanity tore down the colors which valor had nailed to the mast.... [Captain Porter] and his brave 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.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Burning Washington

  COMMODORES RODGERS AND Porter, as well as Oliver Hazard Perry, were available in the summer of 1814 to help defend against Vice Admiral Cochrane’s east coast raids. It had been obvious for some time that Cochrane would concentrate on the Chesapeake Bay area, since it contained both the capital and Baltimore, the city with the largest and most bothersome privateer fleet. New York and Philadelphia were much harder to get at, and the ports of Federalist New England seemed even less likely targets. Secretary Jones positioned Rodgers, Porter, and Perry so that they could help defend whatever city Cochrane struck.

  On April 4, Rear Admiral Cockburn began operations in Chesapeake Bay by establishing a forward base on Tangier Island, where he could receive escaped slaves and spread the news to others that a secure retreat awaited them. Alerted by friends, runaways watched for British barges rowing up rivers and creeks at night. Lighted candles signaled that boats were ready to take men, women, and children to safety. They came by the dozens and then the hundreds to an uncertain future. Anything was better than the hell they were experiencing, however. Cockburn’s operation was so successful that as early as the middle of June he was employing former slaves as soldiers in the small-scale, hit-and-run raids he had resumed.

  Situated ten miles southeast of the Potomac, Tangier Island was also an ideal base from which to attack Washington, Annapolis, and Baltimore. Cockburn could keep an eye on Joshua Barney’s flotilla from there as well. Before attacking any of the major cities, Cockburn first had to deal with Barney. Small though they were, Barney’s row galleys were the only naval force challenging the British in the bay.

  On April 26 Barney was promoted to the rank of captain in the American Flotilla Service. He had been building his fleet in Baltimore all winter. It wasn’t easy. Money was tight, as were men and resources, but by the third week in May, Barney had thirteen specially constructed galleys ready with one twelve-pounder in their bows and a single powerful carronade mounted in the stern. Each was powered primarily with oars. He also had a gunboat, a smaller galley, another smaller boat for surveillance, and the 5-gun cutter Scorpion, commanded by William Barney, his eldest son. The Scorpion was Barney’s flagship. The schooner Asp joined him later.

  On May 24, Barney set out with his fleet for a surprise attack on Tangier Island. A few courageous merchantmen, who wanted to get to the Atlantic, accompanied him. After leaving Baltimore, they stopped at the Patuxent River and then sailed south on June 1. At nine o’clock in the morning, they ran into a strong British squadron that included the 74-gun Dragon, under Captain Robert Barrie; the 13-gun armed schooner St. Lawrence, under Commander David Boyd; and a number of smaller boats. For a brief time the Dragon was separated from the others, which gave Barney an opportunity to attack the rest of the squadron, but he missed it, and when the Dragon reappeared he retreated in a big hurry to the Patuxent, twenty-five miles north of the Potomac and sixty miles south of Baltimore. Shots were exchanged at the mouth of the river near Cedar Point, but adverse weather and general fatigue made further fighting too difficult, and both sides pulled back. The Patuxent was a safe refuge for Barney’s flotilla. His shallow draft vessels could travel forty miles upriver beyond Pig Point, where low water levels protected them from all British warships. Smaller enemy barges could get at the flotilla, but Barney was confident he could deal with them.

  After the fight at Cedar Point, Cockburn went after Barney in earnest. He reinforced Barrie’s Dragon and St. Lawrence with the 50-gun razee Loire, under Captain Thomas Brown; the 18-gun brig-sloop Jaseur, under Commander George E. Watts; and more barges. Barney responded by moving his flotilla farther up the Patuxent.

  On June 8 and 9, all of Barrie’s larger ships, except the Dragon, sailed up the Patuxent with fifteen barges. Barney drew back into St. Leonard’s Creek for protection, where the barges attacked him. They began firing Congreve rockets at eight o’clock in the morning on June 9. The projectiles screeched as they flew at the Americans, but they all missed and did no damage. The small missiles were only good for frightening an opponent. Barney rowed his undamaged barges forward, firing twelve pounders, forcing the enemy barges to retreat back to the larger ships. When they did, he withdrew up the creek.

  On June 10 Barrie made a more determined attack, but Barney stood firm, and the British retreated again. This time Barney pursued them down the creek, attacking fiercely, driving them back. The ferocity of his attack took the St. Lawrence, which was at the mouth of the creek, off guard, and in the ensuing melee she ran aground. Barney continued his assault, cutting up the stranded schooner and nearly capturing her before the larger ships, which were also taken by surprise, came to the rescue and forced Barney to retire. The battle lasted six grueling hours.

  On June 26, after careful preparation, Barney attacked the larger warships blockading him in St. Leonard’s Creek. He was supported this time by a battery firing from elevated ground at the mouth of the creek. His combined land and sea barrage forced Captain Brown to withdraw the Loire farther down the Patuxent. When he did, Barney escaped from the creek and rowed north up the Patuxent to safety above Pig Point.

  BARNEY’S FLOTILLA WAS still secure in the Patuxent when, on July 24, forty-seven-year-old Major General Robert Ross arrived at Bermuda with 3,500 battletested veterans of Wellington’s army in France, men who thought they’d be going home after defeating Napoleon. Instead, they were confined in the bowels of troop transports for a long, uncomfortable voyage. They were supplemented by 1,000 marines, bringing Ross’s army to a total of 4,500 men.

  Ross was expected to work closely with Admiral Cochrane to conduct large-scale raids along the American coast. Cochrane would decide where the raids were made, but Ross would command on the ground and have a veto if he disagreed about the places or timing of the raids. The Admiralty cautioned Cochrane not to advance his modest army “so far into the country as to risk its power of retreating to its embarkation.”

  According to Lord Bathurst the overall purpose of the raids was to “effect a diversion on the coast of the United States . . . in favor of the army employed in the defense of Upper and Lower Canada,” but Cochrane intended to do more than simply create a diversion. He wanted to punish Americans for the atrocities they had committed along the Canadian frontier. Colonel Campbell’s depredations at Long Point in May had so infuriated Governor-General Prevost that on June 2 he had asked Cochrane to “assist in inflicting that measure of retaliation whic
h shall deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages.” Cochrane was only too happy to comply. On July 18 he ordered his commanders “to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts upon the coast as you may find assailable. You will hold strictly in view the conduct of the American army towards His Majesty’s unoffending Canadian subjects, and you will spare the lives merely of the unarmed inhabitants of the United States.” Cochrane and Prevost ignored British massacres and depredations against American soldiers and civilians, acting as if only the United States savaged civilians.

  Over a month later Cochrane sent a copy of his order to Secretary of State Monroe, who wrote back the first week of September, explaining that any acts of destruction or outrages committed by American troops were not sanctioned by the government, as Cochrane charged, and those responsible were disciplined. Cochrane was not interested in winning an argument, however; he intended to carry out a course of destruction no matter what, since it was what his government wanted and, indeed, what his countrymen wanted.

  Although Cochrane told Prevost months before that he would be conducting raids in Chesapeake Bay, by August he had doubts about the timing. The heat, humidity, and generally unhealthy climate during the summer made it the worst time for an attack on Washington. Cochrane preferred October, when the weather was milder and the climate not so sickly. He also had to think about New Orleans. The battles in the Chesapeake, however important, were only diversions. New Orleans was a far more important objective, and it would take time to gather the forces for the invasion.