This naval action, fought in the vicinity of Valparaiso, during our last war with Great Britain, is so remarkable for the circumstances attending it, and for the pertinacity of the American defence against superior force, that, although not a decisive battle, we have thought it right to insert it here.
Few Englishmen would now attempt to uphold the breach of neutrality committed by the two English ships upon the Essex, with her anchor down upon Chilian soil, and with the Spanish flag flying upon forts and batteries within sight. But, as it was not the first, so it is not the last time that England has infringed such laws, where she has been able to do so with impunity.
The United States frigate Essex, 32, sailed from the Capes of the Delaware October, 6th, 1812, upon a cruise, the object and destination of which were kept profoundly secret. Her destination was the Pacific—still called the “South Seas”—the navigation of which was still comparatively unknown; new islands being constantly discovered, the inhabitants of which had never seen any other men than their fellow islanders.
The object of the cruise was to destroy the “South-sea-men,” or whalers, of Great Britain; as well as the traders of the same nation, and thus inflict a heavy blow upon a sensitive part of an Englishman—his pocket.
The story of the cruise, by Captain Porter, the Commander of the Essex; with his passage to the Cape Verde Islands, the Coast of Brazil, around Cape Horn into the Pacific, and his operations there; together with the incidents of his stay at the Gallapagos and Washington groups, and his numerous captures, read like a romance of the sea. Yet it is all true; and the account is written in a circumstantial manner, with day and date, by a genuine and successful sailor.
This cruise is memorable for another reason—that Farragut, afterwards the greatest naval commander of his day, made his first cruise then, and witnessed his first naval action, while still a child, deporting himself with the coolness and gallantry which ever afterwards distinguished him.
David Porter, the Commander of the Essex, was born in Boston, in 1780, and was at this time thirty-three years of age—that glorious period of life which combines the fire and ability of youth with the experience and self-control derived from contact with the world. He entered the navy in 1798, and was a midshipman in the Constellation, in her action with the French frigate Insurgente, in February, 1799. He afterwards served on the West India station, as a Lieutenant, and had many conflicts, in the schooner Experiment, with the pirates and privateers which, at that time, and long after, infested those waters. In 1801 he was in the schooner Enterprize, and, off Malta, he captured, after an engagement of three hours, a Tripolitan cruiser of fourteen guns.
Soon after, in a boat expedition, at Tripoli, he was wounded for the second time; and in October, 1803, he was captured in the frigate Philadelphia, and remained a prisoner until the war closed.
He was made a captain in 1812, and appointed to the Essex.