I remember-what American does not!-the first rumor of it. I remember the startling sensation. I remember at first the universal incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for successive days by anxious thousands; how collections of citizens rode out for miles on the highway, accosting the mail to catch something by antic.i.p.ation. At last, when the certainty was known, I remember the public gloom; funeral orations and badges of mourning bespoke it. "Don't give up the ship"-the dying words of Lawrence-were on every tongue.

It was learned that the Chesapeake had followed the Shannon until five o'clock, when the latter luffed and showed her readiness to begin fighting. Lawrence was given the choice of position, with a westerly breeze, but he threw away this advantage, preferring to trust to his guns with a green crew rather than the complex and delicate business of maneuvering his ship under sail. He came bowling straight down at the Shannon, luffed in his turn, and engaged her at a distance of fifty yards. The breeze was strong and the nimble American frigate forged ahead more rapidly than Lawrence expected, so that presently her broadside guns had ceased to bear.

While Lawrence was trying to slacken headway and regain the desired position, the enemy's shot disabled his headsails, and the Chesapeake came up into the wind with canvas all a-flutter. It was a mishap which a crew of trained seamen might have quickly mended, but the frigate was taken aback-that is, the breeze drove her stern foremost toward the Shannon and exposed her to a deadly cannonade which the American gunners were unable to return. The hope of salvation lay in getting the ship under way again or in boarding the Shannon. It was in this moment that the battle was won and lost, for every gun of the British broadside was sweeping the American deck diagonally from stern to bow, while the marines in the tops of the Shannon picked off the officers and seamen of the Chesapeake, riddling them with musket b.a.l.l.s. It was like the swift blast of a hurricane. Lawrence fell, mortally wounded. Ludlow, his first lieutenant, was carried below. The second lieutenant was stationed between decks, and the third forsook his post to a.s.sist those who were carrying Lawrence below to the gun deck. Not an officer remained on the spar deck and not a living man was left on the quarter deck when the Chesapeake drifted against the Shannon after four minutes of this infernal destruction. As the ships collided, Captain Broke dashed forward and shouted for boarders, leading them across to the American deck. No more than fifty men followed him and three hundred Yankee sailors should have been able to wipe the party out, but most of the Chesapeake crew were below, and, demoralized by lack of discipline and leadership, they refused to come up and stand the gaff. Brave resistance was made by the few who remained on deck and a dozen more followed the second lieutenant, George Budd, as he rushed up to rally a forlorn hope.

It was a desperate encounter while it lasted, and Captain Broke was slashed by a saber as he led a charge to clear the forecastle. Yet two minutes sufficed to clear the decks of the Chesapeake, and the few visible survivors were thrown down the hatchways. The guns ceased firing, and the crew below sent up a message of surrender. The frigates had drifted apart, leaving Broke and his seamen to fight without reinforcement, but before they came together again the day was won. This was the most humiliating phase of the episode, that a handful of British sailors and marines should have carried an American frigate by boarding.

It must not be inferred that the Chesapeake inflicted no damage during the fifteen minutes of this famous engagement. Thirty-seven of the British boarding party were killed or wounded and the American marines-"leather-necks" then and "devil-dogs" now-fought in accordance with the spirit of a corps which had won its first laurels in the Revolution. Such broadsides as the Chesapeake was able to deliver were accurately placed and inflicted heavy losses. The victory cost the Shannon eighty-two men killed and wounded, while the American frigate lost one hundred and forty-seven of her crew, or more than one-third of her complement. Even in defeat the Chesapeake had punished the enemy far more severely than the Const.i.tution had been able to do.

Lawrence lay in the c.o.c.kpit, or hospital, when his men began to swarm down in confusion and leaderless panic. Still conscious, he was aware that disaster had overtaken them and he muttered again and again with his dying breath, "Don't give up the ship. Blow her up." Thus pa.s.sed to an honorable fame an American naval officer of great gallantry and personal charm. Although he brought upon his country a bitter humiliation, the fact that he died sword in hand, his last thought for his flag and his service, has atoned for his faults of rashness and overconfidence. The odds were against him, and ill-luck smashed his chance of overcoming them. He was no more disgraced than Dacres when he surrendered the Guerriere to a heavier ship, or than Lambert, dying on his own deck, when he saw the colors of the Java hauled down.

The Shannon took her prize to Halifax, and when the news came back that the captain of the Chesapeake lay dead in a British port, the bronzed sea-dogs of the Salem Marine Society resolved to fetch his body home in a manner befitting his end. Captain George Crowninshield obtained permission from the Government to sail with a flag of truce for Halifax, and he equipped the brig Henry for the sad and solemn mission. Her crew was picked from among the shipmasters of Salem, some of them privateering skippers, every man of them a proven deep-water commander. It was such a crew as never before or since took a vessel out of an American port. When they returned to Salem with the remains of Captain Lawrence and Lieutenant Ludlow, the storied old seaport saw their funeral column pa.s.s through the quiet and crowded streets. The pall-bearers bore names to thrill American hearts today-Hull, Stewart, Bainbridge, Blakely, Creighton, and Parker, all captains of the navy. A Salem newspaper described the ceremonies simply and with an unconscious pathos:

The day was unclouded, as if no incident should be wanting to crown the mind with melancholy and woe-the wind from the same direction and the sea presented the same unruffled surface as was exhibited to our anxious view when on that memorable first day of July we saw the immortal Lawrence proudly conducting his ship to action... . The brig Henry containing the precious relics lay at anchor in the harbor. They were placed in barges and, preceded by a long procession of boats filled with seamen uniformed in blue jackets and trousers, with a blue ribbon on their hats bearing the motto of "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights," were rowed by minute strokes to the end of India Wharf, where the bearers were ready to receive the honored dead. From the time the boats left the brig until the bodies were landed, the United States brig Rattlesnake and the brig Henry alternately fired minute guns ... On arriving at the meeting-house the coffins were placed in the centre of the church by the seamen who rowed them ash.o.r.e and who stood during the ceremony leaning upon them in an att.i.tude of mourning. The church was decorated with cypress and evergreen, and the names of Lawrence and Ludlow appeared in gilded letters on the front of the pulpit.

It was wholly reasonable that the exploit of the Shannon should arouse fervid enthusiasm in the breast of every Briton. The wounds inflicted by Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge still rankled, but they were now forgotten and the loud British boastings equaled all the tales of Yankee brag. A member of Parliament declared that the "action which Broke fought with the Chesapeake was in every respect unexampled. It was not-and he knew it was a bold a.s.sertion which he made-to be surpa.s.sed by any other engagement which graced the naval annals of Great Britain." Admiral Warren was still in a peevish humor at the hard knocks inflicted on the Royal Navy when he wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: "At this critical moment you could not have restored to the British naval service the preeminence it has always preserved, or contradicted in a more forcible manner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a conceited, boasting enemy than by the brilliant act you have performed. The relation of such an event restores the history of ancient times and will do more good to the service than it is possible to conceive."

Captain Broke was made a baronet and received other honors and awards which he handsomely deserved, but the wound he had suffered at the head of his boarding party disabled him for further sea duty. If the influence of the Const.i.tution and the United States was far-reaching in improving the efficiency of the American navy, it can be said also that the victory of the Shannon taught the British service the value of rigorous attention to gunnery and a highly trained and disciplined personnel.

American chagrin was somewhat softened a few weeks later when two very small ships, the Enterprise and the Boxer, met in a spirited combat off the harbor of Portland, Maine, like two bantam c.o.c.ks, and the Britisher was beaten in short order on September 5, 1813. The Enterprise had been a Yankee schooner in the war with Tripoli but had been subsequently altered to a square rig and had received more guns and men to worry the enemy's privateers. The brig-of-war was a kind of vessel heartily disliked by seamen and now vanished from blue water. The immortal Boatswain Chucks of Marryat proclaimed that "they would certainly d.a.m.n their inventor to all eternity" and that "their common, low names, 'Pincher,' 'Thrasher,' 'Boxer,' 'Badger,' and all that sort, are quite good enough for them."

Commanding the Enterprise was Captain William Burrows, twenty-eight years old, who had seen only a month of active service in the war. Captain Samuel Blyth of the Boxer had worked his way up to this unimportant post after many years of arduous duty in the British navy. He might have declined a tussel with the Enterprise for his crew numbered only sixty-six men against a hundred and twenty, but he nailed his colors to the mainmast and remarked that they would never come down while there was any life in him.

The day was calm, the breeze fitful, and the little brigs drifted about each other until they lay within pistol shot. Then both loosed their broadsides, while the sailors shouted bravely, and both captains fell, Blyth killed instantly and Burrows mortally hurt but crying out that the flag must never be struck. There was no danger of this, for the Enterprise raked the British brig through and through until resistance was hopeless. Captain Blyth was as good as his word. He did not live to see his ensign torn down. Great hearts in little ships, these two captains were buried side by side in a churchyard which overlooks Cas...o...b..y, and there you may read their epitaphs today.

The grim force of circ.u.mstances was beginning to alter the naval policy of the United States. Notwithstanding the dramatic successes, her flag was almost banished from the high seas by the close of the year 1813. The frigates Constellation, United States, and Macedonian were hemmed in port by the British blockade; the Adams and the Const.i.tution were laid up for repairs; and the only formidable ships of war which roamed at large were the President, the Ess.e.x, and the Congress. The smaller vessels which had managed to slip seaward and which were of such immense value in destroying British commerce found that the system of convoying merchantmen in fleets of one hundred or two hundred sail had left the ocean almost bare of prizes. It was the habit of these convoys, however, to scatter as they neared their home ports, every skipper cracking on sail and the devil take the hindmost-a failing which has survived unto this day, and many a wrathful officer of an American cruiser or destroyer in the war against Germany could heartily echo the complaint of Nelson when he was a captain, "behaving as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill, and parting company every day."

This was the reason why American naval vessels and privateers left their own coasts and dared to rove in the English Channel, as Paul Jones had done in the Ranger a generation earlier. It was discovered that enemy merchantmen could be snapped up more easily within sight of their own sh.o.r.es than thousands of miles away. First to emphasize this fact in the War of 1812 was the naval brig Argus, Captain William H. Allen, which made a summer crossing and cruised for a month on end in the Irish Sea and in the chops of the Channel with a gorgeous recompense for her shameless audacity. England scolded herself red in the face while the saucy Argus captured twenty-seven ships and took her pick of their valuable cargoes. Her course could be traced by the blazing hulls that she left in her wake and this was how the British gun brig Pelican finally caught up with her.

Although the advantage of size and armament was with the Pelican, it was to be expected that the Argus would prove more than a match for her. The American commander, Captain Allen, had played a distinguished part in several of the most famous episodes of the navy. As third lieutenant of the Chesapeake, in 1807, he had picked up a live coal in the cook's galley, held it in his fingers, and so fired the only gun discharged against the Leopard in that inglorious surprise and surrender. As first officer of the frigate United States he received credit for the splendid gunnery which had overwhelmed the Macedonian, and he enjoyed the glory of bringing the prize to port. It was as a reward of merit that he was given command of the Argus. Alas, in this fight off the coast of Wales he lost both his ship and his life, and England had scored again. There was no ill-luck this time-nothing to plead in excuse. The American brig threw away a chance of victory because her shooting was amazingly bad, and instead of defending the deck with pistol, pike, and musket, when the boarders came over the bow the crew lowered the flag.

It was an early morning fight, on August 14, 1813, in which Captain Allen had his leg shot off within five minutes after the two brigs had engaged. He refused to be taken below, but loss of blood soon made him incapable of command, and presently his first lieutenant was stunned by a grapeshot which grazed his scalp. The ship was well sailed, however, and gained a position for raking the Pelican in deadly fashion, but the shot went wild and scarcely any harm was done. The British captain chose his own range and methodically made a wreck of the Argus in twenty minutes of smashing fire, working around her at will while not a gun returned his broadsides. Then he sheered close and was prepared to finish it on the deck of the Argus when she surrendered with twenty-three of her crew out of action. The Pelican was so little punished that only two men were killed. The officer left in command of the Argus laid this unhappy conclusion to "the superior size and metal of our opponent, and the fatigue which the crew underwent from a very rapid succession of prizes." There were those on board who blamed it to the casks of Oporto wine which had been taken out of the latest prize and which the sailors had secretly tapped. Honesty is the best policy, even in dealing with an enemy. The affair of the Argus and the Pelican was not calculated to inflate Yankee pride.

To balance this, however, came two brilliant actions by small ships. The new Peac.o.c.k, named for the captured British brig, under Captain Lewis Warrington, stole past the blockade of New York. Off the Florida coast on the 29th of April she sighted a convoy and attacked the escort brig of eighteen guns, the Epervier. In this instance the behavior of the American vessel and her crew was supremely excellent and not a flaw could be found. They hulled the British brig forty-five times and made a shambles of her deck and did it with the loss of one man.

Even more sensational was the last cruise of the Wasp, Captain Johnston Blakely, which sailed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in May and roamed the English Channel to the dismay of all honest British merchantmen. The brig-of-war Reindeer endeavored to put an end to her career but nineteen minutes sufficed to finish an action in which the Wasp slaughtered half the British crew and thrice repelled boarders. This was no light task, for as Michael Scott, the British author of Tom Cringle's Log, candidly expressed it:

In the field, or grappling in mortal combat on the blood-slippery deck of an enemy's vessel, a British soldier or sailor is the bravest of the brave. No soldier or sailor of any other country, saving and excepting those d.a.m.ned Yankees, can stand against them ... I don't like Americans. I never did and never shall like them. I have no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal with or consort with them in any way; but let me tell the whole truth,-nor fight with them, were it not for the laurel to be acquired by overcoming an enemy so brave, determined, and alert, and every way so worthy of one's steel as they have always proved.

Refitting in a French port, the dashing Blakely took the Wasp to sea again and encountered a convoy in charge of a huge, lumbering ship of the line. Nothing daunted, the Wasp flitted in among the timid merchant ships and s.n.a.t.c.hed a valuable prize laden with guns and military stores. Attempting to bag another, she was chased away by the indignant seventy-four and winged it in search of other quarry until she sighted four strange sails. Three of them were British war brigs in hot pursuit of a Yankee privateer, and Johnston Blakely was delighted to play a hand in the game. He selected his opponent, which happened to be the Avon, and overtook her in the darkness of evening. Before a strong wind they foamed side by side, while the guns flashed crimson beneath the shadowy gleam of tall canvas. Thus they ran for an hour and a half, and then the Avon signaled that she was beaten, with five guns dismounted, forty-two men dead or wounded, seven feet of water in the hold, the magazine flooded, and the spars and rigging almost destroyed.

Blakely was about to send a crew aboard when another hostile brig, forsaking the agile Yankee privateer, came up to help the Avon. The Wasp was perfectly willing to take on this second adversary, but just then a third British ship loomed through the obscurity, and the ocean seemed a trifle overpopulated for safety. Blakely ran off before the wind, compelled to abandon his prize. The Avon, however, was so badly battered that she went to the bottom before the wounded seamen could be removed from her. Thence the Wasp went to Madeira and was later reported as spoken near the Cape Verde Islands, but after that she vanished from blue water, erased by some tragic fate whose mystery was never solved. To the port of missing ships she carried brave Blakely and his men after a meteoric career which had swept her from one victory to another.

Of the frigates, only three saw action during the last two years of the war, and of these the President and the Ess.e.x were compelled to strike to superior forces of the enemy. The Const.i.tution was lucky enough to gain the open sea in December, 1814, and fought her farewell battle with the frigate Cyane and the sloop-of-war Levant on the 20th of February. In this fight Captain Charles Stewart showed himself a gallant successor to Hull and Bainbridge. Together the two British ships were stronger than the Const.i.tution, but Stewart cleverly hammered the one and then the other and captured both. Honor was also due the plucky little Levant, which, instead of taking to her heels, stood by to a.s.sist her larger comrade like a terrier at the throat of a wolf. It is interesting to note that the captains, English and American, had received word that peace had been declared, but without official confirmation they preferred to ignore it. The spirit which lent to naval warfare the spirit of the duel was too strong to let the opportunity pa.s.s.

The President was a victim of a continually increased naval strength by means of which Great Britain was able to strangle the seafaring trade and commerce of the United States as the war drew toward its close. Captain Decatur, who had taken command of this frigate, remarked "the great apprehension and danger" which New York felt, in common with the entire seaboard, and the anxiety of the city government that the crew of the ship should remain for defense of the port. Coastwise navigation was almost wholly suspended, and thousands of sloops and schooners feared to undertake voyages to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Charleston. Instead of these, canvas-covered wagons struggled over the poor highways in continuous streams between New England and the Southern coast towns. This awkward result of the blockade moved the sense of humor of the Yankee rhymsters who placarded the wagons with such mottoes as "Free Trade and Oxen's Rights" and parodied Ye Mariners of England with the lines:

Ye wagoners of Freedom Whose chargers chew the cud, Whose wheels have braved a dozen years The gravel and the mud; Your glorious hawbucks yoke again To take another jag, And scud through the mud Where the heavy wheels do drag, Where the wagon creak is long and low And the jaded oxen lag.

Columbia needs no wooden walls, No ships where billows swell; Her march is like a terrapin's, Her home is in her sh.e.l.l.

To guard her trade and sailor's rights, In woods she spreads her flag.

Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers. It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur finally sailed out of New York harbor in the hope of taking the President past the blockading division which had been driven offsh.o.r.e by a heavy northeast gale. The British ships were struggling back to their stations when they spied the Yankee frigate off the southern coast of Long Island. It was a stern chase, Decatur with a hostile squadron at his heels and unable to turn and fight because the odds were hopeless. The frigate Endymion was faster than her consorts and, as she came up alone, the President delayed to exchange broadsides before fleeing again with every sail set. Her speed had been impaired by stranding as she came out past Sandy Hook, else she might have out-footed the enemy. But soon the Pomone and the Tenedos, frigates of the cla.s.s of the Shannon and the Guerriere, were in the hunt. Decatur was cornered, but his guns were served until a fifth of the crew were disabled, the ship was crippled, and a force fourfold greater than his own was closing in to annihilate him at its leisure. "I deemed it my duty to surrender," said he, and a n.o.ble American frigate, more formidable than the Const.i.tution, was added to the list of the Royal Navy.

A FRIGATE OF 1812 UNDER SAIL

The Constellation, of which this is a photograph, is somewhat smaller than the Const.i.tution, being rated at 38 guns as against 44 for the latter. In general appearance, however, and particularly in rig, the two types are very similar. Although the Constellation did not herself see action in the War of 1812, she is a good example of the heavily armed American frigate of that day-and the only one of them still to be seen at sea under sail within recent years. At the present time the Constellation lies moored at the pier of the Naval Training Station, Newport, R.I.

Photograph by E. Muller, Jr., Inc., New York.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LAST CRUISE OF THE ESs.e.x

The last cruise of the Ess.e.x frigate, although an ill-fated one, makes a story far less mournful than that of the President. She was the first man-of-war to display the American flag in the wide waters of the Pacific. Her long and venturesome voyage is still regarded as one of the finest achievements of the navy, and it made secure the fame of Captain David Porter. The Ess.e.x has a peculiar right to be held in affectionate memory, apart from the very gallant manner of her ending, because into her very timbers were builded the faith and patriotism of the people of the New England seaport which had framed and launched her as a loan to the nation in an earlier time of stress.

At the end of the eighteenth century France had been the maritime enemy more hotly detested than England, and unofficial war existed with the "Terrible Republic." This situation was foreshadowed as early as 1798 by James McHenry, Secretary of War, when he indignantly announced to Congress: "To forbear under such circ.u.mstances from taking naval and military measures to secure our trade, defend our territories in case of invasion, and to prevent or suppress domestic insurrection would be to offer up the United States a certain prey to France and exhibit to the world a sad spectacle of national degradation and imbecility."

Congress thereupon resolved to build two dozen ships which should teach France to mend her manners on the high seas, but the Treasury was too poor to pay the million dollars which this modest navy was to cost. Subscription lists were therefore opened in several shipping towns, and private capital advanced the funds to put the needed frigates afloat. The Ess.e.x was promptly contributed by Salem, and the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the master builder is brave and resonant reading:

To Sons of Freedom! All true lovers of Liberty of your Country! Step forth and give your a.s.sistance in building the frigate to oppose French insolence and piracy. Let every man in possession of a white oak tree be ambitious to be foremost in hurrying down the timber to Salem where the n.o.ble structure is to be fabricated to maintain your rights upon the seas and make the name of America respected among the nations of the world. Your largest and longest trees are wanted, and the arms of them for knees and rising timber. Four trees are wanted for the keel which altogether will measure 146 feet in length and hew sixteen inches square.

The story of the building of the Ess.e.x is that of an aroused and reliant people. The great timbers were cut in the wood lots of the towns near by and were hauled through the snowy streets of Salem on ox-sleds while the people cheered them as they pa.s.sed. The Ess.e.x was a Salem ship from keel to truck. Her cordage was made in three ropewalks. Captain Jonathan Haraden, the most famous Salem privateersman of the Revolution, made the rigging for the mainmast in his loft. The sails were cut from duck woven for the purpose in the mill on Broad Street and the ironwork was forged by Salem shipsmiths. When the huge hempen cables were ready to be conveyed to the frigate, the workmen hoisted them upon their shoulders and in procession marched to the music of fife and drum. In 1799, six months after the oak timbers had been standing trees, the Ess.e.x slid from the stocks into the harbor of old Salem. She was the handsomest and fastest American frigate of her day and when turned over to the Government, she cost what seemed at that day the very considerable amount of seventy-five thousand dollars.

Peace was patched up with France, however, and the Ess.e.x was compelled to pursue more humdrum paths, now in the Indian Ocean and again with the Mediterranean squadron, until war with England began in 1812. It was intended that Captain Porter should rendezvous with the Const.i.tution and the Hornet in South American waters for a well-planned cruise against British commerce, but other engagements detained Bainbridge, notably his encounter with the Java, and so they missed each other by a thousand miles or so. Since he had no means of communication, it was characteristic of Porter to conclude to strike out for himself instead of wandering about in an uncertain search for his friends.

Porter conceived the bold plan of rounding the Horn and playing havoc with the British whaling fleet. This adventure would take him ten thousand miles from the nearest American port, but he reckoned that he could capture provisions enough to feed his crew and supplies to refit the ship. As a raid there was nothing to match this cruise until the Alabama ran amuck among the Yankee clippers and whaling barks half a century later. It was the wrong time of year to brave the foul weather of Cape Horn, however, and the Ess.e.x was battered and swept by one furious gale after another. But at last she won through, stout ship that she was, and her weary sailors found brief respite in the harbor of Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Porter headed up the coast, disguising the trim frigate so that she looked like a lubberly, high-p.o.o.ped Spanish merchantman.

The luck of the navy was with the American captain for, as he went poking about the Galapagos Islands, he surprised three fine, large British whaling ships, all carrying guns and too useful to destroy. To one of them, the Georgiana, he shifted more guns, put a crew of forty men aboard under Lieutenant John Downes, ran up the American flag, and commissioned his prize as a cruiser. The other two he also manned-and now behold him, if you please, sailing the Pacific with a squadron of four good ships! Soon he ran down and captured two British letter-of-marque vessels, well armed and in fighting trim, and in a trice he had not a squadron but a fleet under his command, seven ships in all, mounting eighty guns and carrying three hundred and forty men and eighty prisoners. Two of these prizes he discovered to be crammed to the hatches with cordage, paint, tar, canvas, and fresh provisions. The list could not have been more acceptable if Captain David Porter himself had signed the requisition in the New York Navy Yard.

Lieutenant Downes was now sent off cruising by himself, and so well did he profit by his captain's example and precepts that in a little while he had bagged a squadron of his own, three ships with twenty-seven guns and seventy-five men. When he rejoined the flagship in a harbor of the mainland, Porter rewarded him by calling his cruiser the Ess.e.x, Junior, promoting him to the rank of commander, and increasing his armament. They then resumed cruising in two squadrons, finding more British ships and sending them into the neutral harbor of Valparaiso or home to the United States with precious cargoes of whale oil and bone. Within a few months he swept the Southern Pacific almost clean of British merchantmen, whalers, and privateers. Winter coming on, Porter then sailed to the pleasant Marquesas Islands and laid the Ess.e.x up for a thorough overhauling. The enemy had furnished all needful supplies and even the money to pay the wages of the officers and crew.

Fit for sea again, the Ess.e.x and the Ess.e.x, Junior, betook themselves to Valparaiso where they received information that the thirty-six-gun frigate Phoebe of the British navy was earnestly looking for them. She had been sent out from England to proceed to the northwest American coast and destroy the fur station at the mouth of the Columbia River. At Rio de Janeiro Captain Hillyar had heard reports of the ravages of the Ess.e.x and he considered it his business to hunt down this defiant Yankee. To make sure of success, he took the sloop-of-war Cherub along with him and, doubling the Horn, they made straight for Valparaiso. David Porter got wind of the pursuit but a.s.sumed that the Phoebe was alone. He made no attempt to avoid a meeting but on the contrary rather courted a fight with his old friend Hillyar, whom he had known socially on the Mediterranean station. For an officer of Porter's temper and training the capture of British whalers was a useful but by no means glorious employment. He believed the real vocation of a frigate of the American navy was to engage the enemy.

The Phoebe and the Cherub sailed into the Chilean roadstead in February, 1814, and found the Ess.e.x there. As Captain Hillyar was pa.s.sing in to seek an anchorage, the mate of a British merchantman climbed aboard to tell him that the Ess.e.x was unprepared for attack and could be taken with ease. Her officers had given a ball the night before in honor of the Spanish dignitaries of Valparaiso, and the decks were still covered with awnings and gay with bunting and flags. Reluctant to forego such a tempting opportunity, Captain Hillyar ran in and luffed his frigate within a few yards of the Ess.e.x. To his disappointed surprise, the American fighting ship was ready for action on the instant. Though the punctilious restraints of a neutral port should have compelled them to delay battle, Porter was vigilant and took no chances. The liberty parties had been recalled from sh.o.r.e, the decks had been cleared, the gunners were sent to quarters with matches lighted, and the boarders were standing by the hammock nettings with cutla.s.ses gripped. Making the best of this unexpected turn of events, the English captain shouted a greeting to David Porter and politely conveyed his compliments, adding that his own ship was also ready for action. So close were the two frigates at this moment that the jib-boom of the Phoebe hung over the bulwarks of the Ess.e.x, and Porter called out sharply that if so much as a rope was touched he would reply with a broadside. The urbane Captain Hillyar, perceiving his disadvantage, exclaimed, "I had no intention of coming so near you. I am very sorry indeed." With that he moved his ship to a respectful distance. Later he had a chat with Captain Porter ash.o.r.e and, when asked if he intended to maintain the neutrality of the port, made haste to protest, "Sir, you have been so careful to observe the rules that I feel myself bound in honor to do the same."

After a few days the Phoebe and the Cherub left the harbor and watchfully waited outside, enforcing a strict blockade and determined to render the Ess.e.x harmless unless she should choose to sally out and fight. David Porter was an intrepid but not a reckless sailor. He had the faster frigate but he had unluckily changed her battery from the long guns to the more numerous but shorter range carronades. He was not afraid to risk a duel with the Phoebe even with this handicap in armament, but the sloop-of-war Cherub was a formidable vessel for her size and the Ess.e.x, Junior, which was only a converted merchantman, was of small account in a hammer-and-tongs action between naval ships.

For his part, Captain Hillyar had no intention of letting the Yankee frigate escape him. "He was an old disciple of Nelson," observes Mahan, "fully imbued with the teaching that the achievement of success and not personal glory must dictate action. Having a well established reputation for courage and conduct, he intended to leave nothing to the chances of fortune which might decide a combat between equals. He therefore would accept no provocation to fight without the Cherub. His duty was to destroy the Ess.e.x with the least possible loss."

Porter endured this vexatious situation for six weeks and then, learning that other British frigates were on his trail, determined to escape to the open sea. This decision involved waiting for the most favorable moment of wind and weather, but Porter found his hand forced on the 28th of March by a violent southerly gale which swept over the exposed bay of Valparaiso and dragged the Ess.e.x from her anchorage. One of her cables parted while the crew struggled to get sail on her. As she drifted seaward, Porter decided to seize the emergency and take the long chance of running out to windward of the Phoebe and the Cherub. He therefore cut the other cable, and the Ess.e.x plunged into the wind under single-reefed topsails to claw past the headland. Just as she was about to clear it, a whistling squall carried away the maintopmast. This accident was a grave disaster, for the disabled frigate was now unable either to regain a refuge in the bay or to win her way past the British ship.

As a last resort Captain Porter turned and ran along the coast, within pistol shot of it, far inside the three-mile limit of neutral water, and came to an anchor about three miles north of the city. Captain Hillyar had no legal right to molest him, but in his opinion the end justified the means and he resolved to attack. Deliberately the Phoebe and Cherub selected their stations and, late in this stormy afternoon, bombarded the crippled Ess.e.x without mercy. Porter with his carronades was unable to repay the damage inflicted by the broadsides of the longer guns, nor could he handle his ship to close in and retrieve the day in the desperate game of boarding. He tried this ultimate venture, nevertheless, and let go his cables. But the ship refused to move ahead. Her sheets, tacks, and halliards had been shot away. The canvas was hanging loose.

Porter's guns were by no means silent, however, even in this hopeless situation, and few crews have died harder or fought more grimly than these seamen of the Ess.e.x. Among them was a little midshipman, wounded but still at his post, a mere child of thirteen years whose name was David Farragut. His fortune it was to link those early days of the American navy with a period half a century later when he won his renown as the greatest of American admirals.

In many a New England seaport were told the tales of this last fight of the Ess.e.x until they became almost legendary-of Seaman John Ripley, who cried, after losing his leg, "Farewell, boys, I can be of no more use to you," and thereupon flung himself overboard out of a bow port; of James Anderson, who died encouraging his comrades to fight bravely in defense of liberty; of Benjamin Hazen, who dressed himself in a clean shirt and jerkin, told his messmates that he could never submit to being taken prisoner by the English and forthwith leaped into the sea and was drowned. Such incidents help us to descry, amid the smoke and slaughter of that desperate encounter, the spirit of the gallant David Porter. Never was the saying, "It's not the ships but the men in them," better exemplified. To Porter was granted greatness in defeat, a lot that comes to few.

For two hours he and his men endured such dreadful punishment as not many ships have suffered. Again he attempted to work his way nearer the enemy, until he had not enough men left unhurt to serve the guns or to haul at the pitifully splintered spars. In the last extremity, Porter made an effort to destroy his vessel and to save her people from captivity by letting the Ess.e.x drive ash.o.r.e. A kedge anchor was let go, and a dozen sailors tramped around the capstan while the chantey man piped up a tune, but again fortune seemed against him for the hawser snapped, and the wind began to blow the frigate into deeper water. What happened then is best recalled in the simple words of Captain David Porter himself: