Mad for Glory

by Robert Booth

  Before Porter spoke again, a Yankee powder boy, still drunk from his big night ashore, saw a face grinning at him from an opposite gunport and snapped. “Damn your eyes, I’ll stop you laughing at me!” He went to touch his match to the cannon’s powder hole. In another second, the two ships would erupt in volcanic blood and fire, but Lieutenant McKnight, too quick, knocked the boy sprawling, and the gun stayed mute. Instead Porter roared, “Prepare to repel boarders!” Instantly, the kedge anchors went flying out to the ends of the yards, poised to drop to the enemy’s deck and fasten them in a fatal embrace.

  Hillyar ordered Ingram to back all yards, to reverse his ship’s progress and get clear if still possible. Furious now, Porter did not notice. He called out a final warning, “Sir, I am prepared to receive you! But know that I shall only act on the defensive!” Hillyar gathered himself, affecting nonchalance. Coolly, almost casually, he said, “Oh sir! I have no such intentions.” At that the bow of the Phoebe began pulling back in massive intimacy, very slowly, nearly grazing the forequarter of Essex alongside, almost touching the American’s yards overhead. Every eye watched the subtle movements, entranced. Phoebe was uncontrollable at this point, unresponsive to her helm, but Porter felt her malevolence, unaccompanied by any human hostility. “No contact! Not a rope yarn! All hands, prepare to board,” he cried hoarsely, and his men pressed harder against the rails, and the boys held their matches a little closer. Still they watched, calibrating, wincing, and Porter bellowed once more, “Board her, men—board her the instant the hulls touch!” Hillyar dropped his pose and pleaded, abjectly, trying to prevent the explosion: “I had no intention of getting on board of you! I had no intention of coming so near you! I am sorry I came so near you!”

  Out of her full stall—the classic maneuver for boarding the enemy, executed perfectly here in the Bay of Valparaiso—the Phoebe slowly slid away, stern foremost, toward the expectant Essex Junior, and at right angles to the silence of the bristling broadside carronades of the Essex.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” called out Hillyar’s Lieutenant Ingram, “we shall not touch you.” From the Essex, sword and pistol at the ready, Lieutenant McKnight responded, “We are not at all alarmed! And we wish you would touch us!”

  Hillyar raised his hands in surrender and apology, extending the moment, desperately trying to make contact across the years. Porter knew that Hillyar had meant to attack—but James kept calling to David, cajoling, apologizing for an accident, saying nothing hostile had been meant by it; it was a freak mistake. Horrified and calm, Hillyar endured the aftermath as his vessel backed into a position of total vulnerability. Porter had an ideal chance to destroy the Phoebe. In an instant, her deck would be swept by the gigantic firepower of the thirty-two-pound smashers, and she would not be able to answer; the carnage would be awesome.

  Glory came calling, but David Porter just stood there. “The Phoebe is at this moment completely at my mercy,” he thought. With a few words, he could still trigger the cataclysm to make the pleading face disappear and the vessel with it, in a chaos of smoke and thunder. The encounter would end in triumph, and the Pacific would be his. Porter, for once, held back. “I was disarmed by these assurances of Captain Hillyar,” he bravely confessed. The encounter had touched him at some deep level, at a core of gratitude, ten years dormant, toward a kind man who had welcomed him into his family. Despite a lifetime of navy training, Porter let the long moment pass; then he raised his speaking trumpet and called over to the Essex Junior: “Hold your fire, Lieutenant Downes! Hold your fire! It is my intention to allow Captain Hillyar to extricate himself from this situation!”

  Serenely, the drifting Phoebe swung around on her keel as the light breeze filled her sails, and James Hillyar got her under way and sailed right past the Essex Junior, looking straight ahead at the little fort in the distance with its unfamiliar flag. He brought Phoebe to anchor well beyond the range of Porter’s carronades and stood quietly on the quarterdeck for a while, by himself, thanking God Almighty and reflecting on his incredible error and the miracle of having his life and career handed back to him.

  Next day David Porter met with James Hillyar at the Englishman’s request. Porter, thirty-three, was dark, small, “ardent and impetuous,” and full of notions of chivalry. Hillyar, forty-four, was burly, pink, “cool and calculating.” They sat together affably, almost as if nothing had happened. After pleasantries—each sirred the other, like knights, in high genteel style—they discussed the terms of being together in the harbor of Valparaiso in time of war. Porter wanted it understood that only the concept of neutrality, so dear to Americans, had saved Phoebe from destruction: Do you intend, he asked, to respect the neutrality of this port? Hillyar gave him a look and replied, “Sir, you have paid such respect to the neutrality of this port that I feel myself bound in honour to do the same.” If Porter had not paid that respect, there would have been no meeting that morning of two brave captains who had flinched in the face of catastrophe—a good thing for them and for their men, but not for their careers or reputations—so this post-facto discussion of neutrality gave them some cover. Their old friendship and the shock of this encounter had suddenly turned them into inverse mirror images: Hillyar had been reckless, Porter restrained. Had Hillyar acted as intended, scores of Englishmen would have died and he would have lost his ship; had Porter reacted predictably, he would have won imperishable fame.

  Hillyar sized up his companion. At Gibraltar, in days of American-British peace, he had known Porter as a charming, restless, curious specimen of American self-creation, eager to learn and always good company. He had not considered him as an opponent, but as a brash, interesting young friend. What did he know about him now, except that, in yesterday’s showdown, each had surprised the other? Obviously Porter had been having it all his own way in the South Sea, ultimately embarrassing the Admiralty with his unexpected pillaging, but a rampage through a dozen undefended whaleships manned largely by American Quakers could not be considered a feat of naval arms. Bainbridge, Hull, and Lawrence had made their names as American heroes of the Atlantic, capable of defeating the best of the Royal Navy in a fair fight, but Porter of the Pacific remained a rogue, a ruffian robbing civilians, untested in the rigorous and unforgiving arena of heavyweight combat at sea. Hillyar had fought those battles for years; he had learned the craft of the victor, and he had presided at the funerals of those who had helped him win his laurels. It was a serious business. God was in it, and it required the highest talents of good decision-making and the combination of several rare qualities in one man, able to exercise his gifts under great pressure, in extremity.

  Looking into Porter’s lively brown eyes, Hillyar wondered about this man with a face so sunburned and scarred, and thought about the meaning of their encounter the day before and its portents for the next one. What was he doing here? If he had captured all of the English whalers and sent them on their way across the seas, as he obviously had, why was he still at Valparaiso? Hillyar could reach no logical conclusion. It was a mystery, and they were both stuck with it.

  Hillyar also wondered about himself, and whether he would have fired his guns had he stood in Porter’s boots. For his part, he had miscalculated his opponent’s strength and balked at the last second. It was not a good moment for him, and it might still cost him his life, yet he could feel that he had done the right thing. Porter was in the more difficult position. At the critical instant, he had not exercised the right of self-defense, especially when he had the upper hand over a superior force. Was it a noble and chivalrous forbearance, or was it a weakness, a failure? Porter must have had deeply mixed emotions as he sat sipping with his fortunate former friend.

  Porter had been at Valparaiso for only five days before Phoebe’s arrival; earlier, he had been cruising nearby for two weeks, looking for Hillyar and British shipping. As Opotee, fresh from Nukuhiva, he had been re-acclimating to the reality that he was matched against ruthless uniformed men, his equals, warriors sent out on fatal missions
. He had called on the city governor, Francisco de la Lastra, to discuss the status of his anchorage in the harbor and his hope that he would be protected as his vessels lay under the guns of the city’s forts. Porter did not realize, nor did Lastra inform him, that Hillyar had already visited Valparaiso on his mission to eliminate Americans from the Pacific.

  Hillyar had met Lastra in January upon arriving from the palace at Lima, quite pleased at his progress with Abascal. Unable to hold power without the support of the British, whose army was closing out the war against Napoleon in Spain and whose navy dominated the seas, the viceroy had agreed with Hillyar on the shape of things to come, expressed in a peace treaty that would re-establish Spanish royal control over Chile without reprisals against the rebels. To show good faith, Abascal had given him eleven Chilean prisoners, captured during the debacle of the Perla and the Potrillo, to be taken to Valparaiso and set free.

  Hillyar had divulged to Lastra that Abascal had authorized him to offer terms of peace in Chile, perhaps implying that these were not negotiable. Lastra had no intention of rejecting a proposal delivered by Captain Hillyar offering a way to end a conflict that was verging on civil war, and to restore the connection of Chile to its true king, Fernando VII. These were not the special pleadings of an individual but the policies of the great nations from which all power in the world ultimately derived. Indeed, Hillyar “might have been said to govern the country from the moment he came to an anchor in Valparaiso.” Abascal’s terms had been presented as follows: Chile should dissolve the junto, resume the former arrangement with Lima, and recognize the sovereignty of King Fernando; Lima would evacuate its troops from the territory of Chile; and Chile would be allowed to open her ports to the commerce of England.

  Hillyar had known that Lastra would impress upon the junto the wisdom of acceptance. To give them time, Hillyar had gathered up his vessels and men and cleared the Bay of Valparaiso to go looking for the Essex.

  Moving on from the chilly Lastra, Porter met with Samuel Johnston and Edward Barnewall and heard the story of their betrayal as officers of Lastra’s Chilean navy. After five months of imprisonment, illness, and brutal treatment in Lima, they had been sent to Valparaiso in November. Then Hillyar met with Consul Poinsett and learned what Lastra had withheld from him: the Carreras had been betrayed—José Miguel and Luis were in prison at Chillan, and Juan José had been banished to Mendoza—and Hillyar was negotiating with the viceroy and with O’Higgins and the junto for the surrender of Chile.

  With an imperial policy in place and a long record of achievement, Britain—defender of Spain and sender of ships, men, munitions, and Hillyar’s squadron—had gained the advantage. Poinsett, fighting in the field for the nationalists, had done his best, but the U.S. Congress and Porter had not delivered in the ways that London and Hillyar had.

  When Captain Hillyar next met with the governor, he insisted that Lastra seize Porter and his vessels and prizes in the harbor. The American had obviously violated neutrality and had no right to hold British whaleships in Chilean waters. Lastra responded that he did not have the authority, at which Hillyar threatened to delegate the authority to himself. Then he went straight to the junto to see if they could be bullied.

  Hillyar figured that Porter would try to escape soon, for other Royal Navy vessels were on their way. Flight was far more likely than fight; the Essex was much faster than Hillyar’s vessels and could not vanquish the team of the Phoebe, at fifty-three actual guns,* and Cherub, at twenty-eight—the converted whaler called the Essex Junior would be nearly useless in a naval battle. Hillyar meant to get food and water aboard his ships swiftly and then blockade the Americans until reinforcements arrived, but he was unprepared for what happened next. Porter’s men started taunting the English boatmen as they sailed past on their provision runs, and they took to singing songs and cheering the frequent displays of their pennant with the motto “Free Trade & Sailors’ Rights.” At first it was just annoying, but soon it became galling. Hillyar worried about his crew; many had been forced into service, and some might be tempted to defect. He authorized retaliation, and one day the Phoebe displayed its own pennant, emblazoned “God & Country, British Sailors’ Best Rights, Traitors Offend Both.” It was not as snappy as the Americans’ motto, but the British sailors soon established themselves as the better singers, largely thanks to their band, which would strike up God Save the King several times a day accompanied by a full-throated glee club rendition, then swing to another tune about a “sweet little cherub,” with three rousing cheers preceding and following.

  The Americans, led by Porter, repeatedly belted out the national song, Yankee Doodle, complete with new stanzas and choice lyrics for their audience, and they raised a second pennant, inscribed “God, Our Country, and Liberty—Tyrants Offend Them.” Both sides exchanged snide poems and bawdy chants, of which the Englishmen’s were better performed but the Americans’ were funnier. The competition was intense, and many skirmishes erupted. Longboats rammed each other in the harbor, and brutal blue-eyed brawls broke out along the wharves and byways of old Valparaiso. Quite disturbed about the level of ferocity, Hillyar, in closing a report to his superiors, wrote: “I expect an awful combat if the two ships meet, but humbly wish to repose my trust in God’s goodness for a favorable result.” Porter had no such concerns and no such trust.

  Although the crews had worked up an intense loathing, none of this achieved Porter’s intended effect, which was to goad Hillyar into a one-on-one battle. Ever mindful of the Admiralty’s admonitions, prohibitions, and expectations, Hillyar celebrated in his cabin when his provisioned vessels finally sailed out of the harbor to take up a blocking position just offshore. For a day or two, Porter watched them with the restless intensity of a tiger, snorting at their inferior sailing qualities and wanting desperately to do something terrible to provoke them. One evening he towed one of his English prizes to a central spot in the harbor and set her on fire, purely as an insult, and for several hours the Hector lit up all of Valparaiso and its neutral waters with her magnificent burning. Next day the dead body of the hull was dragged away, charred and wallowing. Later, Porter, the battle-happy Achilles, further insulted British pride by setting fire to his prize the Catharine, but this too failed to rile Hillyar to action.

  Of course Hillyar was angry, and his anger was shared by the small but influential British merchant group at Valparaiso, who demanded that Lastra afford better treatment of their own vessels, moored not far from Porter’s shocking bonfires. Their outrage flared higher when it was learned that Porter kept English prisoners in the hold of his frigate, which he admitted was true. It was also true that the prisoners were held in chains as punishment for their perfidy on a faraway island, and so they would remain until Porter saw fit to set them at liberty, perhaps when Lastra was removed and Carrera restored to power. Some felt that Porter deserved a come-uppance, an attempt at which was exactly what he wanted.

  At times Porter and the Essex made a feint at escape, but the two British captains sailed together with vigilant lookouts, and the moment never came. Once, when the Cherub got far to leeward, Porter came out toward the Phoebe, which fired a shot and had a shot returned before she jibed away toward the Cherub, chased by two cannonballs from Porter’s long twelves as he returned the Essex to her mooring. Cheated of his epochal battle, Porter seethed and smarted and denounced Hillyar as a coward in remarks that were repeated in the streets and taverns of Valparaiso and finally reported to Hillyar and his officers. A boat with a flag of truce approached the Essex from the sea; it was Lieutenant William Ingram, Hillyar’s chief officer, a handsome fellow and a notable hothead. Much like Porter himself, he was earnest, romantic in his conception of war, and full of the cant of chivalry and honor. Ingram, wishing to deliver a letter from Hillyar, was welcomed aboard and invited to the officers’ quarters to parley.

  “I understand,” said Ingram, “that you have called Captain Hillyar a coward for running away from the Essex, and I beg to know if
this is the case.”

  Porter looked Ingram in the eye and said that he considered Captain Hillyar to have issued a challenge by charging upwind and firing his cannon. With his own salute, he had accepted, but instead of a fight he had got a look at his opponent’s receding stern. Given the conduct of the Phoebe in bearing up and running away, he affirmed that “anything he might have said about that occasion was justifiable.”

  “I assure you, sir, that no challenge was intended,” responded Ingram. “The firing of our cannon was an unfortunate accident.”

  “Accident or not,” said Porter, “I supposed it to be a challenge, and made it plain that I accepted it. And let me say that it cannot be expected that I would take upon myself the responsibility of challenging a 36-gun frigate with a frigate of 32 guns, as my country would censure me should I prove unsuccessful.” To make his position unmistakable, he added, “The difference of force will not prevent my accepting a challenge given by Captain Hillyar.”

  Ingram thanked Porter for his generous candor and asked to be given leave to return to his pinnace. Instead, Porter invited him on a tour. Stem to stern, deck by deck, Porter proudly showed off his beloved frigate and introduced the Englishman to members of the crew wherever encountered. Ingram was well received. Porter’s young aide, Midshipman Farragut, wrote that Ingram’s “manly, frank, and chivalrous bearing quite won the hearts of all on board. Whilst admiring her, he said it would be the happiest moment of his life to take Essex to England if we could take her in a fair fight; to which Captain Porter replied that, if such an event had to occur, he knew of no British officer to whom he would more readily yield his honor—and in this sentiment all our officers and crew sincerely coincided.” The impressive Lieutenant Ingram shook hands all around and was helped over the side to his little boat, with his new friends wishing him well as he pushed away from the side of the noble Essex and began the trip back to report to his stolid and vigilant commander.