Mad for Glory

by Robert Booth

  “All things being in readiness, the cable of the Sir Andrew Hammond was cut, and with a fine breeze from the land, she stood out of the bay. The night was dark, and the course of the ship was guided chiefly by the flames of the Greenwich.”

  From the beaches, the Enana watched. Some of the moon men had been killed and others had sailed off in their ships, but now all of them were gone, and Gattanewa could rest. He had endured a difficult siege, which he had not thought he would survive, and now he suffered the pains and anxiety of a curse laid on him by one of the Hapa’a. His solution was to place himself and his tribe under the protection of the warrior Mouina.

  Gattanewa, wrinkled and tattoo-blackened scion of the first-comer Teiki’nui’ahaku and of five hundred patriarchs since, whose names he sang in his cracked falsetto, had commissioned the making of a beautiful canoe in which to join them in the life to come. This much he had learned from Opotee, that death was not far away, and he welcomed it, as the surf through which he would be launched on his voyage to paradise.

  The United States and its champion, José Miguel Carrera, had lost, and Great Britain, friend of rebel and royalist alike, had won. It was easy for Hillyar to complete his mission. Everyone involved was now a monarchist, looking to bow to a king and a king’s representative. As Johnston had noted, Hillyar moved around quickly after his victory, shuttling between the dictator Lastra at Santiago and General Gainza at Talca. Gainza had been facing defeat when Hillyar came riding into camp with the astounding news that the war was over, the rebels had given up, and Fernando had been restored to the throne of Spain. It hardly seemed possible, but Hillyar assured Gainza that it was true, thanks to the British armies under Wellington, and that, even as they spoke, 2,000 battle-hardened Spanish soldiers were on their way to Callao to serve Viceroy Abascal. The war, said Hillyar, was truly ended in Chile just as it was in Spain. After twenty years of fighting, the English had prevailed, and the world would now follow the lead of Great Britain. In Chile, an armistice would be proclaimed, and the people would cheer. General Gainza would call for a peace conference at Lircay, just outside Talca, and Generals O’Higgins and Mackenna would be pleased to meet him there.

  Gainza and Hillyar proceeded to the banks of the Rio Lircay, and there O’Higgins, on behalf of Supreme Director Lastra and his junto, handed over the independence of Chile. The treaty had a preamble and sixteen articles, amounting to a restoration of government and society as it had been before the uprising in 1810. The preamble identified the independence movement as having been an attempt to destroy “the kingdom of Chile,” to delude its people and desecrate its traditions. In the provision for exchanging prisoners of war, O’Higgins specified a secret side agreement in which Luis and José Miguel Carrera, captive at Chillan, were to be sent to Rio de Janeiro to be imprisoned. All traces of the republic were to be erased: nothing would remain of the constitution or the congress, of free public schools, civil rights for Indians, and freedom for the enslaved. Thousands of lives had been sacrificed for nothing. Only one innovation survived the treaty’s brutal retrogression: Chile’s ports, opened proudly to the world in 1811, would remain open to foreign trade, limited exclusively to vessels flying the flag of Great Britain.

  Gainza was to withdraw rapidly from Talca to Concepcion and embark his troops for Callao. The viceroy of Peru was to recognize a royalist government at Santiago. And Chile was to send a couple of delegates to the legislature of Spain. All parties at Lircay pledged their loyalty to Fernando VII, Rey de Espana, and with the signatures of O’Higgins and Gainza, on May 3, 1814, the fate of Chile was sealed.

  Hillyar had closed out London’s business in the Pacific. Two more British frigates arrived, and the Racoon returned from the Northwest coast to report that the Americans there had already departed. In the Santiago parade celebrating the restoration of law and order, Hillyar marched in the robes of a friar, smiling and waving, blue eyes merry, as crowds cheered the mediador who had brought peace to Chile. Once the treaty was sent to Abascal for ratification, Hillyar was free to go.

  At Valparaiso, Hillyar conferred with his colleague, Captain Thomas Tudor Tucker of the Cherub. Tucker, healed from his wounds, would stay on in the Pacific. He soon sailed for the Galápagos to recover three British whalers that Porter was alleged to have concealed at the Encantadas or perhaps the Sandwich Islands. Hillyar also conferred with David Porter. Porter would be allowed to command the Essex Junior; stripped of her guns and sailing as a cartel, she was to carry the 130 American survivors to New York, where they would be exchanged for an equal number of British captives. Two officers, Lieutenant S. Decatur McKnight and acting Midshipman James R. Lyman,* were to board the Phoebe to go to British naval headquarters at Rio and submit affidavits about the capture of the Essex. Out of courtesy, Hillyar had agreed that Porter and his other officers were not prisoners but gentlemen on parole, bound by their word of honor to fulfill the repatriation agreement. On May 30, 1814, Captain James Hillyar stood on the quarterdeck looking out at the harbor of Valparaiso and saw English merchant vessels riding at anchor, but no Americans—and so it would be, he thought, for a long time. The Phoebe received the salutes of the three forts as she moved through the peaceful waters, past the house of the governor and then past the Point of Angels, bound homeward for England.

  At Chillan, General Gainza had no intention of honoring the treaty, just as he assumed that O’Higgins had no intention of allowing Chile to revert to its colonial status. Gainza proceeded to free 300 patriot prisoners, retaining only the Carreras. José Miguel, still being tried for treason, had won the respect of all in the military tribunal for his dignified bearing and his insistence that his actions as head of state and general of the armies were “right and necessary to sustain freedom in Chile.” It seemed odd to Gainza that O’Higgins had made no effort in their diplomacy to ransom the Carreras, heroes of the republic; it made him think about those who were expendable, and why—the kind of thing that occurs to a general whose luck has been bad.

  On May 11, the Carreras were set at liberty with the warning that they should beware of the junto, and especially of Mackenna, “your worst enemy.” Carrera thanked his hosts for his nine-week stay, assuring them, somewhat ungraciously, that “wherever we find vassals of Fernando and the defenders of Spain, we will raise our swords—our hatred is eternal.” With money and pistols, they set off that night through the rain with three soldiers and a guide, headed for a safe house. Gainza had smiled and told them to stay away from their liberty-loving amigo O’Higgins at Talca, but he did not mention that he had already sent a message to O’Higgins announcing the distressing escape of the wily Carrera brothers.

  The Essex Junior had a rapid, uneventful voyage out of the Pacific. Porter drove her hard around the Horn and through the South Atlantic. He obsessed about arriving home in time to get command of a new warship and take her across the ocean to engage the Phoebe and the Essex in the English Channel.

  That sort of job was already being done by Secretary Jones’s new sloops of war. The navy’s five remaining frigates—only Porter and the late James Lawrence had lost theirs—were bottled up in port. Their place was taken by hundreds of privateers, useless at fighting the Royal Navy but superb at preying on British merchant shipping throughout the Atlantic and the Caribbean. The frigates were too large to be used effectively for that purpose, and too few to threaten the British ships stationed on blockade duty. And the frigate duels of the early part of the war, which had won such renown for American captains and crews, were now forbidden by order of the British Admiralty.

  The new sloops of war had proved perfect for their roles as destroyers of commerce. Unlike the privateers, they were in the business of sending vessels and their cargoes to the bottom, which meant that they could stay out on long cruises with full crews, unreduced by having to man prizes. The three sloops of war built at Baltimore and Washington were trapped by the British blockade, but the other three, Frolic, Peacock, and Wasp, were able to carry the fight into
the Atlantic.

  Frolic, launched at Boston in February 1814, went hunting in the Caribbean and sank two British merchantmen and a Spanish privateer before being captured by a British frigate. The proud Peacock cleared New York in March 1814. Six weeks later, off the Bahamas under Commander Lewis Warrington, she defeated the Royal Navy brig of war Epervier and sent her into Savannah with $128,000 in specie. From Savannah the Peacock went to the coast of Ireland and sank fourteen merchant vessels before heading home via Spain and the West Indies. On her final cruise, Warrington entered the Indian Ocean and took three valuable prizes and a naval vessel before learning of the war’s end.

  The twenty-gun Wasp proved a superb performer upon sailing from the Merrimack River in May 1814. In many ways Commander Johnston Blakeley, thirty-three, achieved what David Porter had only hoped for. Twice, in equal combat, he and the men of the Wasp defeated British naval vessels, and he terrorized the English Channel and inflicted great damage on British merchant shipping, sinking four vessels, including a large ship, and sending in a fifth as a cartel with thirty-eight prisoners. Once at sea, Blakeley had no intention of interrupting his rampage by returning to the United States. He dealt with the blockade by staying away and taking food and ammunition from his prizes.

  On June 28, off the west coast of France, the men of the Wasp encountered the Royal Navy sloop of war Reindeer under Captain William Manners. With eighteen fixed guns and a shifting twelve-pound carronade, Reindeer was manned by a 118-man crew “said to be the pride of Plymouth.” At a quarter past one, Blakeley began a two-hour tacking match that ended with the two ships sixty yards apart. The Reindeer opened fire with grapeshot from her shifting gun and fired four more times before the Wasp could get in position to respond, mainly with muskets and pistols. After Captain Manners was killed, the Reindeeer’s lieutenant ran her up against the Wasp for boarding, but his men “were repulsed in every attempt.” Then the Yankee crew charged over the rail, “and at 3:45 the enemy hauled down his flag.” Twenty-five brave Englishmen had fallen dead, and forty-two were wounded. Of the American crew, five died that day, four more the next.

  According to Blakeley, the Wasp had taken a pounding. “Six round shot struck our hull, and many grape; the foremast received a 24-pound shot which passed through its centre, and the rigging and sails were cut up.” However, “the Reindeer was literally cut to pieces in a line with her ports, and her upper works, boats, and spare spars were one complete wreck.” After the lengthy process of removing the wounded and their baggage, the Reindeer was “set on fire, and in a few hours blew up”—fireworks for an early Fourth of July.

  Blakeley put in at Lorient in France, hospitalized his wounded, freed the British seamen, and sailed away. He left a report that caused a sensation in America. Thrilled at his victory by boarding, Congress bestowed “suitable honors and rewards on those gallant men whose noble achievements” had won the day. Secretary Jones, noting that “all that skill and valor could do was done quickly,” promoted Commander Blakeley to the position of captain, but America’s new hero had a war to fight, and he remained at large in the Atlantic, a terror to British shipping.

  Porter’s vanquished crew missed the Fourth of July, but on July 5 they arrived off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and were intercepted by the British frigate Saturn. Having read Hillyar’s written pledge to respect these men as “on parole,” Captain Nash permitted the Essex Junior “to pass freely to the United States without any impediment.” He sent them into New York along with a gift of oranges and fresh newspapers for Captain Porter. But then there was a problem. Two hours later the Saturn forced Essex Junior to heave to, and a boat’s crew came over with a boarding officer. Captain Nash, he said, had some concerns, and would need to detain the Essex Junior in order to review passports. Porter flew into a rage, insisting “that even the smallest detention would be a violation of the contract” and surrendering his sword, by God. The British officer declined the sword and promised to confer with Captain Nash. Upon his return, the officer advised that the Essex Junior would spend the night “under the lee of the Saturn.” Porter histrionically declared, “I am your prisoner; I do not consider myself any longer bound by my contract with Captain Hillyar. Tell your Captain Nash that if British officers have no respect for the honor of each other, I shall have none for them.” As they pulled away in their boat, Porter called out, “If detained all night, I will consider myself at liberty to effect my escape!”

  His officers and midshipmen stood by in amazement as their hot-headed captain worked himself into a blind fury. More than any outrage he felt toward the British, Porter had cracked under the pressure of guilt and dread he felt in coming home to face the consequences of his actions in the Pacific. Since first making the decision to round Cape Horn, he had been wrestling with his conscience and worrying about the reaction of his superiors. He knew he had acted beyond his orders, and he had never stopped telling himself, in his journal, that only a resounding success would justify his long stay in the Pacific. By any measure, Porter had not been successful. He had done much that was questionable and perhaps unforgiveable, and he had, of course, lost the navy’s frigate and led dozens of men to their deaths. He knew that he must face a formal inquiry or a court martial, the outcome of which might well see him cashiered from the navy or even hanged from the yardarm. His men looked on as he stormed around, spitting with rage, cursing the demon British. Subsiding at last, he went into a funk. His best hope, he decided, lay in New York and a hero’s welcome. A big parade might affect the navy’s decision-making. Already his friends, naval and journalistic, had begun campaigning, claiming that defeat by a superior force was as noble as victory over an equal. He was the avatar of American valor, fighting to the last against great odds and a ruthless and dishonorable opponent. Giving an envelope to John Downes, Porter instructed him to hand it to Captain Nash in the morning, and not to worry about Porter’s whereabouts.

  Shortly after dawn, a launch settled into the water alongside the Essex Junior, and Porter and a few sailors started northward toward Long Island, forty miles away in a fogbank. He had a fast boat, a hard-rowing crew, plenty of arms and ammunition, and a suicidal attitude. He “was determined to make a desperate fight if pursued.” They were “nearly a gunshot” away before the lookouts raised a cry. “At that instant,” wrote Porter, “a fresh breeze sprang up, and the Saturn made all sail after us. Fortunately, however, a thick fog came on, upon which I changed my course and entirely eluded further pursuit. During the fog, I heard a firing; and on its clearing up saw the Saturn in chase of the Essex Junior.” Downes had made a break for it, Porter-style.

  Downes had the unarmed Essex Junior bowling along toward Sandy Hook for three hours before being overtaken. A senior officer came on board, with the request that Downes muster his crew. The officer tallied the sailors against the passport list, looking for a rumored English deserter. No such man existed. The officer regretted the inconvenience, and sent them in to New York. On the way they passed a permanently moored store ship, perhaps invisible in the fog; it was the Alert, captured almost two years before, the first and only naval victory of Porter’s war.

  The Essex Junior encountered another British warship, the frigate Narcissus, whose captain waved them onward to the Hook by about eight o’clock on this “dark and squally” evening. “We could not procure a pilot,” wrote Gatty Farragut, “so the captain took her in by his chart. When we got opposite the small battery in the Horse Shoe, we hoisted our colors with a lantern, clewed up our sails, and sent a boat ashore with a light in it. By accident the light was extinguished, and the fort immediately commenced firing on us.” In the last hour of her long passage, the Essex Junior was going to be sunk by American gunners in the outer harbor of New York City. “But the ship was not struck by a single shot,” noted Farragut, “which convinced me it was not as awful a thing as supposed to lie under a battery.”*

  Rowing and sailing, Porter and his boat’s crew went on for sixty miles until finally landin
g in heavy surf on Long Island, where the people of Babylon took him into custody as a British officer of the sort that he so liked to impersonate. The militia gathered and Porter “was closely interrogated; and, [his] story appearing rather extraordinary, was not credited.” At last he produced his certificate as a navy captain, and the people raised three cheers and fired off a twenty-one-round salute from a swivel gun. They gave him a feast, and next day they gave him a horse to ride to New York and a cart and pair of oxen to carry his boat.

  When Porter arrived in Brooklyn, he reported to the commanding officer there, and then rode a hack into Manhattan, where crowds turned out in the streets. “There,” reported Farragut, “the mob took the horses from the carriage” and pulled it by manpower “all over the city, thereby showing that his countrymen had esteemed his defeat not less than he had.”

  Porter acted out the final scene of his long drama to the applause of the New Yorkers. In the middle of a patriotic holiday, the derring-do of his whaleboat escapade thrilled the public and persuaded the editors. Porter did not even have to rouse his author friends James Paulding and Washington Irving, for this was a great story that would sell newspapers.

  The Essex had been defeated with the sacrifice of many lives, and the enemy had played dirty. The world now knew that, under the right sort of commander, Americans, with “determined, unconquerable courage,” would sacrifice their lives by the scores even without hope of victory.

  Porter’s return “created in the hearts of his fellow citizens a kind of melancholy joy scarcely ever equaled on any similar occasion. We are rejoiced once more to clasp the hand of a hero whose bravery stands pre-eminent in the naval records of our country; but . . . we dare not ask him how fares the brave little Essex and her gallant crew. Alas! She is no more.” In fact, the Essex was accompanying her twin, the Phoebe, across the Atlantic at that moment to take up her new career as a forty-two-gun frigate in the Royal Navy.