The Shining Sea (43 page)

Hillyar, as might be expected, heatedly denied Porter's accusation. He maintained that Porter had already violated the neutrality of the port several times when he “burnt a British ship in the bay [
Hector
]; had come out with his armed boats in the night for the avowed purpose of boarding one of our ships, while his own were enjoying the protection of the neutral flag; and besides these acts had actually fired two shots at the
Phoebe
when much nearer the port than where he was attacked.”

If some criticized Hillyar for his conduct before and during the battle, none faulted his treatment of the Americans afterward. It was exemplary—even Porter thought so.
“In justice to Commodore Hillyar,” he wrote,
“I must observe, that (although I can never be reconciled to the manner of his attack on the
Essex
, or to his conduct before the action,) he has, since our capture, shown the greatest humanity to my wounded, . . . and has endeavored as much as lay in his power, to alleviate the distresses of war, by the most generous and delicate deportment toward myself, my officers, and crew.” In keeping with this policy, Hillyar ordered the personal property of the Americans respected. The order was not enforced, however, and much was stolen. The same thing would not have happened to the British, Porter noted, had the battle gone the other way. He liked to point out that this was one of many differences between the two services.

In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Hillyar had the
Essex
and
Essex Junior
taken to the common anchorage in Valparaiso. There he placed Porter and his officers on parole so that they could go ashore unhampered to attend to their dead and wounded. Hillyar had allowed the
Essex
's wounded to go on shore on parole, with the understanding that the United States would bear all the costs of their hospitalization. The rest of the
Essex
men he placed under guard and confined them to a Spanish merchant ship he had hired for that purpose.

Porter did not expect to receive any comfort from the officials now in charge in Valparaiso, nor did they offer any. Their disinterest was more than made up for by the generosity of Valparaiso's women. The American wounded were housed in a comfortable building that Porter selected for a hospital. Once there, the compassionate women of the city provided for their necessities, and tried their best to alleviate their suffering. The women gave their services voluntarily, expecting no compensation. “Without their aid, I have no doubt, many would have died,” Porter wrote. “I shall never forget their gentle humanity.”

Farragut volunteered to assist the ship's surgeons in attending the wounded, and his offer was gratefully accepted. “I never earned Uncle Sam's money so faithfully as I did during that hospital service,” he recalled.

By April 4, 1814, Hillyar, after discussing the matter with Porter, decided to place the American prisoners on parole and send them home on
Essex Junior,
making her a cartel ship. It was understood that when they arrived in the United States they would be exchanged for an equal number of British prisoners. The
Essex Junior
was to be disarmed, and the United
States was to bear the full expense of the voyage. Hillyar provided Porter with a safe conduct pass, so that British warships blockading the American coast would not detain him.

Porter readily acceded to this generous plan. Not only would it grant his men their freedom, but it would also give them one of their prizes. Any wounded who could not make the trip were to be sent home later by the best conveyance available.
Porter suspected that Hillyar wanted to get rid of the prisoners for fear they might cause a problem on the
Phoebe
, which would be carrying a large amount of specie back to England.

Fourteen Americans were not part of this arrangement. Hillyar insisted on detaining Lieutenant Stephen Decatur McKnight, Mr. David Adams, Acting Midshipman James Lyman, and eleven seamen. Hillyar planned to send McKnight and Lyman (not the others) to England so that they could give affidavits in the judicial condemnation (disposition) of the
Essex
. There was little Porter could do but agree. McKnight and the others were put on parole, and forced to wait until May 31, when Hillyar left for Rio in the
Phoebe
, accompanied by the
Essex
. They reached Rio with no difficulty, but McKnight and Lyman then had to wait for a ship to take them to Britain. Adams and the eleven seamen eventually returned on parole to the United States directly from Rio. On August 22, 1814, McKnight and Lyman boarded the
Adonis
(Captain J. M. Molen), a Swedish merchantman bound for Falmouth, England.

Once their business was completed in England, they would be free to return home—still on parole. All was proceeding according to plan, when on October 9, six weeks out from Rio, their journey was unexpectedly interrupted. The
Adonis
was about 300 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands when a lookout spotted a warship that turned out to be the powerful 22-gun American sloop of war
Wasp
, under Master Commandant Johnston Blakeley, one of the navy's outstanding warriors. The
Wasp
stopped the
Adonis
and sent over a boarding party to examine her papers. The sight of their own countrymen coming aboard must have astonished and heartened McKnight and Lyman. They could now avoid going to England altogether.

Blakeley must have been surprised and delighted as well. He never expected to find two colleagues in the middle of the ocean on a Swedish ship. After being away from home since he put out from Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, on May 1, 1814, Blakeley could undoubtedly use the companionship. He allowed Lyman and McKnight to be transferred to the
Wasp
, and all seemed well. Tragically, the
Wasp
was never heard from again. She went down with all hands—lost without a trace—before she reached the United States, after one of the most successful cruises in the history of the navy. In the five months
Wasp
had been at sea, Blakeley had captured seventeen enemy merchantmen and defeated two warships. The reason for his demise has never been uncovered.

The mystery of what happened to McKnight and Lyman was not discovered until six years later. In 1820, McKnight's famous uncle, Stephen Decatur, launched an investigation that caused the
Adonis
's Captain Molen to come forward with his log. But for Decatur's persistence, nobody would have known that the
Wasp
had taken McKnight and Lyman aboard on October 9.

N
OW IT WAS TIME FOR
P
ORTER TO TAKE HIS LEAVE OF
H
ILLYAR
. The American thanked the Briton for his generosity but made it plain that he would never condone the manner in which Hillyar had attacked him. Suddenly, tears welled up in Hillyar's eyes, Porter recalled. “My dear Porter,” Hillyar said, “you know not the responsibility that hung over me, with respect to your ship. Perhaps my life depended on my taking her.” There was no doubt that the Admiralty had a special interest in ending Porter's career of destruction, and their Lordships could, if Hillyar had been thwarted by some political nicety like the questionable neutrality of Valparaiso, have severely punished him. He was not engaging in idle speculation when he spoke of what hung over him. Besides, he was convinced that Porter had violated Chilean neutrality long before he had.

When
Essex Junior
stood out from Valparaiso on April 27, there were 130 men from the
Essex
's original complement of 255 aboard.
Two of the wounded were left behind, and one of them died, but the other, William Call, miraculously recovered and eventually returned to the United States.

O
N
A
PRIL 27, THE SAME DAY THAT THE
E
SSEX
J
UNIOR
LEFT
Valparaiso, the
Essex,
was also ready to sail. In spite of the destructive battle, Hillyar had the
Essex
fully provisioned and ready just thirty days
after the fighting. Had Porter known, he would have been amazed. He was too busy tending to his dead and wounded in Valparaiso to keep abreast of what was happening to the
Phoebe
and the
Essex
.
As late as July 1814, when he was reporting to Secretary of the Navy Jones, he estimated that “both the
Essex
and the
Phoebe
were in a sinking state [after the battle], and it was with difficulty they could be kept afloat until they anchored in Valparaiso next morning: The battered state of the
Essex
will I believe prevent her ever reaching England.”

Hillyar, on the other hand, was always confident that, in spite of her injuries, the
Essex
would make the trip. “Although much injured in her upper works, masts and rigging,” he wrote to the Admiralty, “[the
Essex
] is not in such a state as to give the slightest cause of alarm respecting her being able to perform a voyage to Europe with perfect safety.”

Hillyar was not exaggerating about the seaworthiness of the
Essex
. She traveled with the
Phoebe
to Rio in late July with no trouble. Admiral Dixon had her carefully examined, and when he was satisfied that she was indeed as sound as Hillyar claimed, he purchased her into the Royal Navy—much to Hillyar's delight. Thomas Sumter Jr., American minister to the Portuguese court in Rio, was deeply saddened by the whole business, but there was nothing he could do except observe.

After organizing a new crew for the
Essex
, Hillyar traveled back to England in the
Phoebe
with his prize and 20,000 pounds in specie, arriving on November 13, 1814, after an uneventful voyage.
Since the great war with France was by then over and the war with America was soon terminated as well, the Royal Navy had little use for the
Essex
. Still, she survived until July 6, 1837, as a British warship doing menial tasks, such as holding prisoners, until the Admiralty sold her for scrap—a sad ending for one of the finest warships America produced during the Age of Sail.

S
OON AFTER HIS VICTORY OVER
P
ORTER
, H
ILLYAR PLUNGED INTO
diplomacy, seeking to restore peaceful relations between Peru and Chile by inducing Chile to become a Spanish colony again. This nearly impossible assignment was one of the reasons London had sent him to Latin America in the first place. Hillyar was supposed to convince Chile's republicans that their interests would be served best by accepting royalists
as the legitimate governors in Santiago and ending Chile's fratricidal civil war. His task, which otherwise would have been far beyond his capacity, was made easy by the royalist army, which in March and April of 1814 gained the upper hand. After a year of civil war, both sides were exhausted, but the royalists were for the moment victorious.

Hillyar moved deftly to take advantage of the military situation and the general war-weariness in Chile. He persuaded the viceroy of Peru and the politically malleable Supreme Director of the State of Chile, Don Francisco de la Lastra, to sign the Treaty of Lircay on May 3, 1814, whereby Lastra pledged allegiance to the King of Spain, Ferdinand VII, making Chile a Spanish colony again. Hillyar insisted that he was acting in the interests of the “respected ally of my nation respecting its colonies,” and indeed, he was.

Given the new political situation, the American consul general Joel Poinsett was compelled to leave Chile. He asked Hillyar for permission to sail with Porter on
Essex Junior
on April 27, but since Poinsett had been notorious in his support of Carrera, he was persona non grata to the Lastra regime, and Hillyar refused. Poinsett could not get away until the middle of June. He was forced to travel overland to Buenos Aires, and did not reach the United States until July 1815.

The peace that Hillyar arranged between Chile and Peru did not last long. Republicans and royalists were back at each others' throats soon enough. José Miguel Carrera overthrew Supreme Director Lastra, and the civil war resumed. By October 1814, after some intense fighting, the royalists won a decisive victory, restoring Spanish rule once more. The patriots, led by the Carreras and O'Higgins, retreated all the way to Mendoza on the eastern side of the Andes in present-day Argentina, where the governor of the province of Cuyo, José de San Martín, welcomed them.

José Miguel Carrera soon traveled to the United States to seek aid, while O'Higgins and San Martín (the Carreras' rivals) prepared to resume the fight for Chilean independence. The new Spanish viceroy in Santiago, General Mariano Osorio, aided them immeasurably. Following the policy of the restored King of Spain, Osorio instituted a brutally repressive regime that alienated the great majority of Chileans. Taking advantage of Spain's unpopularity, O'Higgins and San Martín in January 1817 led a republican
army across the Andes from Mendoza and on February 12 decisively defeated Osorio's royalist force at Chacabuco. General Osorio retreated south, regrouped, and marched on Santiago, but General San Martín met him at the River Maipu near Santiago and totally demolished the royalist army. Half of it was killed and the other half captured, effectively liberating Chile from Spain. A year later, on February 12, 1818, Chilean independence was formally proclaimed.

CHAPTER

21

T
HE
H
EROES
C
OME
H
OME