The wind did not allow of a return to port, and the “Essex” was run into a small bay three miles from Valparaiso, and anchored within pistol-shot of the shore. There Hillyar had her wholly at his mercy. At first he attacked somewhat timidly. Although Porter could bring only three long twelve-pounders to bear, he damaged the “Phœbe’s” rigging until Hillyar, in half an hour, hauled off to repair the injury,—or, according to Hillyar’s account, the “Phœbe” was prevented by the freshness of the wind from holding a position.[289] Finally the “Phœbe” anchored, and began firing her broadsides of long eighteen-pounders into the “Essex’s” quarter. The “Cherub” kept under way, using only her bow guns. Reply was impossible. The crew of the “Essex” fired what guns would bear, and got the ship under way; but the “Phœbe” kept her distance, throwing thirteen eighteen-pound shot into the “Essex” every five or ten minutes, until the “Essex” was cut to pieces and her decks were shambles.
The last attack continued, according to Captain Hillyar, from 5.35 till 6.20 P. M., when the “Essex” struck. The entire battle lasted from four o’clock until the surrender. The carnage was frightful and useless. Porter declared that fifty-eight of his crew were killed. Hillyar claimed one hundred and nineteen unwounded prisoners, while Porter declared the number of unwounded prisoners to be seventy-five. The British ships, with five hundred men, lost only fifteen killed and wounded.
The loss of the “Essex,” like the loss of the “Chesapeake” and “Argus,” was unnecessary. Porter need not have gone to Valparaiso, or might have tried to run out at night, or might have fought, even after the loss of his maintopmast, under less disadvantage. The disaster completed the unfortunate record of the frigates for the year. They made some sixteen prizes and busied many British cruisers, but won no victories and suffered one bloody defeat.
The sloops told a different story. Early in 1814 three of the new sloops-of-war were ready for sea,—the “Frolic,” the “Peacock,” and the “Wasp.” They were heavy vessels of their class, about one hundred and twenty feet long on the main-deck, and thirty-two feet in extreme breadth; carrying crews of about one hundred and sixty men, with an armament of twenty thirty-two-pound carronades and two long eighteen-pounders. Although only one third the tonnage of the forty-four-gun frigates, and carrying only one third the crew, the new sloops-of-war threw nearly half the weight of metal,—for the broadside of the “Constitution” commonly exceeded but little the weight of seven hundred pounds, while the sloops threw three hundred and thirty-eight. The difference was due not to the weight, but to the range. The frigates carried thirty long twenty-four-pounders; the sloops carried only two long eighteen-pounders. The sloops were rigged as ships, and built with the usual solidity of war-vessels, costing about seventy-five thousand dollars each.
The first to sail was the “Frolic,” from Boston, in February. She captured only two prizes before she was herself taken, April 20, off Matanzas, after a chase by the thirty-six-gun British frigate “Orpheus,” assisted by a twelve-gun schooner.
The second sloop-of-war, the “Peacock,” commanded by Lewis Warrington, sailed from New York in March. Warrington was a Virginian, thirty-two years old and fourteen years in the service, with the rank of master-commandant in 1813. Cruising down the coast, the “Peacock” first ran in to St. Mary’s on the Florida frontier; and then continuing southward, on the morning of April 29, off the Indian River Inlet, she discovered a small convoy on its way from Havana to Bermuda, under charge of the British eighteen-gun brig “Epervier.” The British brig was no match for the American ship. She was smaller, and carried only sixteen thirty-two and two eighteen-pound carronades, with a crew of one hundred and three men and fifteen boys.[290] The inferiority was something like four to three; but Captain Wales of the “Epervier” gallantly brought his vessel into action at the usual close-range of these murderous combats.
Captain Wales told the result in an official report, dated May 8, to Vice-Admiral Cochrane.[291] The report was not published, the British Admiralty having become sensitive to the popular outcry against their naval management.
“At eight A. M.,” reported Captain Wales, “the wind being about east-south-east, I saw a strange sail in the southwest apparently in chase of us; at nine, perceiving her to near very fast and to be a square-rigged vessel-of-war, I shortened sail and hauled to the wind on the larboard tack to be between her and the convoy, being rather ahead of them. The wind at this time veering round to the southward enabled the stranger to lay up for us.... At 9.50 A. M. we weathered her and exchanged broadsides; having passed her beam, we tacked, shortened sail, and continued in close action until eleven A. M., when—five of our larboard guns being disabled by the breeching-bolts giving way, and three others by shot, and unable to manœuvre so as to get the starboard guns to bear in consequence of the rigging and sails being cut to pieces in the early part of the action by star-shot, the main boom shot away, the foremast wounded in several places, and several shot between wind and water, with four-and-a-half feet of water in the hold, and the enemy seemingly in a state to continue the action—I deemed it prudent to surrender.”
The giving way of the breeching-bolts did not wholly disable the guns, for Captain Wales specially commended “Mr. Lawrence Kennedy the Purser, who rendered much service in his exertions at the after-guns by getting them in a fighting state again when unshipped by the fighting-bolts coming out of their places.”
At the close of the battle the “Peacock’s” hull had not been touched; aloft, her foreyard was disabled and a few upper stays were cut away; of her crew, two men were slightly wounded,—but this was all the injury sustained in running for three quarters of an hour under the close fire of nine heavy guns.[292] The “Epervier” was reported by Captain Warrington as showing forty-five shot-holes in her hull; masts and rigging much cut up, and twenty-three men killed or wounded in a crew of one hundred and twenty-eight. The difference between the force of the two vessels amply accounted for the capture; but the Admiralty might well show unwillingness to admit the bad condition of the vessels-of-war to which it intrusted the duty of convoying British mercantile shipping.[293] So complete was the “Epervier’s” disaster that no excuse was offered for it, except the plea that she was in almost every respect inferior to the standard that British vessels of her class were supposed to maintain.