The Shining Sea (41 page)

Porter quickly gave orders to wear ship and clear the wreckage. The mainsail and main topsail were cut from the wreckage to prevent them from acting against the ship as it worked back into the bay. Porter was trying desperately to return the
Essex
to her original anchorage, where she would be safe in neutral territory again. Despite a mighty effort from her crew, however, the disabled ship could not make it back. As an alternative, Porter ran to leeward (east) for about three miles into a small bay called Villa la Mar—about one and a half miles to leeward of the battery on old Fort jel Barron, guarding the east side of Valparaiso Bay. Once there, he let go his anchor in nine and a half fathoms within pistol shot of shore. It was 3:45 P.M. Porter intended to make repairs quickly in what he assumed were neutral waters.

Being in neutral territory did not put a check on Hillyar, however. He was already hot after the
Essex
with the
Cherub
close behind. When he saw Porter drop anchor, he must have been relieved. Hillyar knew he was facing disaster when Porter raced close-hauled for the Point of Angels. The
Phoebe
could never have caught him. Allowing the
Essex
to escape had been Hillyar's worst nightmare. The sudden squall that wrecked Porter's plans saved Hillyar. He did not want to answer to the Admiralty for failing to destroy the
Essex
when she was within his grasp.

Hillyar was saved again when Porter wore ship and ended up anchored on the east side of Valparaiso Bay to make repairs. The
Essex
might have continued eastward into the open sea, where, again, Hillyar might not have caught her, even though she was injured. When Porter dropped his hook, thinking he was safe in neutral territory, Hillyar pounced. Having already had a brush with disaster, he was not going to let this opportunity pass. He now had a chance to engage the
Essex
in an unequal battle with both of his ships. He did not hesitate.

As
Phoebe
and
Cherub
sped toward the
Essex
with motto pennants flying, they made furious preparations for battle. Porter cleared for action as well, but he did not think Hillyar would actually attack him. Nonetheless, he prepared for the worst. He knew that if there was a fight, the
Phoebe
's long 18-pounders would be critical. The
Cherub
was a different matter. Her principal armament was carronades, just like the
Essex
, which meant that to be effective she had to get close to the
Essex,
where Porter's heavier guns could decimate her. So the
Phoebe
, with her battery of long guns, would carry the brunt of the attack.

Despite the significant advantage he now had, Hillyar remained cautious. He approached deliberately, giving Porter time to run three 12-pounders out of stern ports and rig springs on the
Essex
's cable, so that she could turn without using her sails. Poinsett, meanwhile, had remained on the scene, and he tried to help. He urged the governor of Valparaiso to use the small battery nearby to defend the neutrality of the port, but he refused. The governor did offer to send an officer to Hillyar and request that he cease firing, should Porter succeed in reaching the common anchorage—an unlikely event, which the governor was well aware of. The political complexion of Chile had changed completely at this point and the authorities were clearly pro-British.

The men from all the ships were ready for a fight. They had been anticipating one for weeks. The ships bristled with hostility. Still, with the decisive battle now at hand, tension gripped every stomach, especially on the
Essex
, where the crew could see the obvious superiority of the enemy. “I well remember the feelings of awe produced in me by the approach of the hostile ships,” Farragut recalled. “Even to my young mind it was perceptible in the faces of those around me, as clearly as possible, that our case was hopeless. It was equally apparent that all were ready to die at their guns rather than surrender.” In their heart of hearts, however, the brave crew of the
Essex
must have hoped that Hillyar would not violate a neutral port—certainly Captain Porter did.

They hoped in vain. Hillyar was determined to smash the
Essex
right now. As he drew closer, the wind continued southerly but had let up some. He positioned the
Phoebe
under the
Essex
's stern and the
Cherub
off her starboard bow, commencing a hot fire from both ships at 3:54 P.M. Porter's
12-pounders fired back and were surprisingly effective. A splinter struck Captain Tucker on the
Cherub
, but he kept directing the fight, even though blood was pulsing from his wound. Fire from the
Essex
soon forced Tucker to change positions, but it still looked as if the American frigate stood no chance. During the next half hour, however, Porter's three long 12-pounders, firing out of stern ports, were handled with such skill that both enemy ships were forced to haul off for repairs. In addition to being much cut up in her rigging, and her topsail sheets flying away, the
Phoebe
had lost use of her mainsail, jib, and mainstay.

Hillyar could afford to pause; the
Essex
was trapped—too banged up to attempt an escape—and he needed to change his strategy.

The carnage aboard the
Essex
was indeed dreadful. With only three long guns to oppose two broadsides, Porter had attempted to bring his broadsides to bear with the springs he had hitched to the cables, but they were no sooner hooked up than Hillyar's gunners cut them. Many
Essex
men had been killed in the first minutes of the fight, before her three long twelves in the stern could be brought to bear. Nonetheless, spirits remained high; the men had no quit in them. The ensign flying at the gaff had been shot away, but “FREE TRADE AND SAILORS RIGHTS” continued flying at the foremast. Porter replaced the damaged ensign and put another in the mizzen rigging.

Farragut was stationed beside the captain during this time, along with another midshipman and the sailing master. Two quartermasters attended the wheel. The jobs of those next to Porter were to carry out his every wish amidst the smoke, confusion, and incessant cacophony of an ever-changing battle. “I performed the duties of the captain's aid, quarter gunner, powder boy, and in fact did everything that was required of me,” Farragut remembered. He could have added that he was exposed to enemy missiles the entire time, as well as the deadly splinters they unleashed. The first man he saw killed sickened him. “I shall never forget the horrid impression made upon me at the sight of the first man I had ever seen killed. He was a boatswain's mate, and was fearfully mutilated. It staggered and sickened me at first; but they soon began to fall around me so fast that it all appeared like a dream, and produced no effect on my nerves.”

When he wasn't employed otherwise, Farragut “assisted in working a gun,” often running to bring powder from the boys, and send them back for more “until the Captain wanted me to carry a message; and this continued to employ me during the action.”

Hillyar soon returned to the attack, positioning both his ships on
Essex
's starboard quarter, out of range of her carronades. Porter's deadly stern guns could not be brought to bear either. The punishing blows from
Phoebe
hit the
Essex
hard, while she remained unable to return fire—a sitting duck if ever there was one. Porter was in the exact situation he had most feared, where his short-range carronades could not reach an enemy employing long guns. His only hope was to get a sail up and bear down on the
Phoebe
. But the topsail sheets and halyards had been shot away, as well as the jib and fore topmast staysail halyards. The only ropes not cut were the flying jib halyards. After several frustrating attempts, the crew finally hoisted the flying jib, and Porter quickly cut the cable. With a favorable slant of wind, the
Essex
ran down toward the
Phoebe
with guns blazing, intending to board and fight it out hand to hand. “The firing on both sides was now tremendous”; Porter recalled: “I had let fall my fore topsail and foresail, but the want of tacks and sheets had rendered them almost useless to us—yet we were enabled for a short time to close with the enemy.”

The
Cherub
was forced to haul off and continue firing ineffectively from long distance, out of range of
Essex
's carronades. Hillyar also maneuvered away from the
Essex
as she came toward him. He had no intention of allowing her to crash into his ship and have the American crew swarm aboard. He pulled to a position where his long guns could pummel the
Essex
without fear of being hit in return.

The
Essex
was again helpless. Hillyar's continuous fire smashed many of her guns and created havoc on her decks. The killed and wounded were everywhere. Porter gave up trying to close with Hillyar and decided to run the
Essex
ashore, land the men who were alive, and destroy her. At the moment, the wind was favorable.

As the stricken
Essex
strained toward shore, her decks were strewn with bloody, mangled bodies. She had been on fire several times and was in desperate condition. For a brief moment it looked as if she might make it to the beach. But when she was a hundred feet from it, the wind suddenly, according to Porter's journal, “shifted from the land (as is very
common in this port in the latter part of the day)” taking the ship flat aback and paying her head offshore, pointing it directly at the
Phoebe
, where she was “once again exposed to a dreadful raking fire.”

At this moment, Lieutenant Downes appeared looking for orders.
Essex Junior
, being too weak to participate, had been spared. Downes was convinced that the
Essex
, in her wretched state, would shortly be taken, and he wanted direction. Porter ordered him back to defend
Essex Junior
, but if that proved impossible, to destroy her if it looked as if she were in danger of being captured. Downes went back, taking with him several of the wounded and leaving three of his healthy men.

All the while, the
Phoebe
kept up a deadly barrage, raking the
Essex
. Porter could not return fire. And the
Cherub
, without having to fear any response from the
Essex
, lobbed in her shots as well. The carnage on the Americans' decks was frightful. Lifeless bodies lay strewn about, their mortal wounds horribly evident—heads cut off, chests shot out, arms sliced in half. Blasphemous oaths from the wounded filled the air, as they writhed in pain from jagged splinters stuck in their bodies every which way, mangled arms, gouged-out eyes, sliced ears. Blood ran everywhere. “The slaughter on board my ship [was] horrible,” Porter lamented.

But he was still not ready to give up. He ordered a hawser bent on the sheet anchor, and the anchor cut from the bows to bring her head round. This miraculously succeeded, and the
Essex
's broadside was brought to bear again. But the hawser soon snapped, and the
Essex
started drifting out of control while the
Phoebe
's guns kept hammering her.

All the while, fires continued to threaten the
Essex
. Flames were shooting up from the hatchways. Tars rushed up from below, many with their clothes on fire. Their shipmates tore the burning rags off them as best they could. Porter told those having trouble getting their clothes off to jump overboard and douse the flames. On hearing this, many thought the magazine was about to blow up, and they went overboard too. Several of them made it to shore, but others drowned.

Presently, Midshipman Isaacs came up to Porter and reported that quarter-gunner Adam Roach had deserted his post. Porter turned to Farragut and said, “Do your duty.” Farragut grabbed a pistol and went searching for the deserter but could not find him. He discovered later that, upon seeing the ship on fire, Roach and six others had taken the only undamaged
boat left and rowed to shore. This was not the only time during the battle that Roach appeared to be derelict in his duty. His behavior outraged his comrades. One of them was William Call, whose leg had been hit, and while it hung by the skin with blood spilling from it, he saw Roach on the berth deck, wandering around suspiciously. Furious, Call “dragged his shattered stump all around . . . , pistol in hand, trying to get a shot at him.”

Roach's conduct puzzled Farragut. Before the battle, Roach had been a respected man on the ship—the first to grab a cutlass and board an enemy ship. When the
Phoebe
first entered Valparaiso Bay on February 8 and looked as if she might attack the
Essex
, Porter had called for a boarding party, and Farragut saw Roach in the lead “standing in an exposed position on the cathead with sleeves rolled up and cutlass in hand, ready to board, his countenance expressing eagerness for a fight.” Farragut concluded that Roach was “brave with a prospect of success, but a coward in adversity.” It could have been that Roach and the others were simply avoiding the fires, or they might have objected to Porter's continued resistance in the face of certain defeat, and were unwilling to sacrifice themselves in a mindless slaughter, or, as Farragut suspected, they might have been just plain scared.

The
Essex
had now drifted to a point a half mile from the beach. Most of the men had stuck with Porter, and they continued to fight. But only a hundred remained active. Some of these were wounded and died later. The most pressing problem of the survivors was the fires that threatened to reach the magazine and blow up the ship. There had already been an explosion from gunpowder strewn about below deck. The men turned their attention “wholly to extinguish the flames, and when we had succeeded,” Porter wrote, “went again to the guns.”