“My fine fellow, I’ll stop your making faces,” he said, and leaned over to put his match to the gun’s priming. The lieutenant in charge saw the move and knocked the youth to the deck. Had he fired the gun a fight would have followed and the Phœbe would have been taken. As it was she passed free, although some of her yards overlapped those of the Essex, and a little later she came to anchor half a mile away.
“We thus lost an opportunity of taking her, though we had observed the strict neutrality of the port under very aggravating circumstances.” So wrote Farragut, but no American at this day regrets the action of Captain Porter. It was, indeed, “over-forbearance, under great provocation,” but it showed the high sense of honor of a typical American officer, and every American reads the story of the Essex with unalloyed pleasure. Such exhibitions as this of the American spirit have done more than cannon-shot to promote and to preserve peace between the nations. Captain Hillyar was so much impressed by it that he promised Porter that he, too, would respect the neutrality of the port, and he would have done so, very likely, only that he was handicapped by his orders from the Admiralty, which compelled him to “capture the Essex with the least possible risk to his vessel and crew.” Hillyar was a cool and calculating man of fifty years. As he said to his first lieutenant, Mr. William Ingram, he had gained his reputation in single-ship encounters and he only expected to “retain it by an explicit obedience to orders.”
That he was going to take “the least possible risk” appeared a few days later when Porter asked him to send the Cherub to the lee side of the harbor and meet the Essex with the Phœbe alone. The Phœbe and the Cherub had by that time replenished their stores and taken a station outside. Hillyar at first agreed to do so, and made preparations for the fight. Among other things he had a huge flag painted with a motto in answer to Porter’s burgee containing “Free Trade and Sailor’s Rights.” The British motto read: “God and Country; British Sailors’ Best Rights; Traitors Offend Both.” It was a day when such displays were fashionable among sailors, and Porter at once painted another which he hoisted to the mizzen, where it read: “God, our Country and Liberty; Tyrants Offend them.”
Such things seem rather silly now, but they were inspiring to Jack in those days. With his banners flaunting before the Yankee eyes Captain Hillyar hove his main-yard aback off the weather-side of the harbor, having previously sent the Cherub a fair distance to leeward. Then he fired a gun to invite the Essex out. Captain Porter accepted the invitation and stood out of the harbor. He found he could outsail the Phœbe, and he got near enough to fire several shots from his long twelves that almost reached her, but she squared away for the Cherub, and Porter had to let her go.
Meantime Porter “had received certain information” that the frigate Tagus and two others were coming after him, while the sloop-of-war Raccoon, that had gone to the northwest coast of North America to destroy the fur-gathering establishment of John Jacob Astor, was to be expected at Valparaiso at any time. So Porter determined to sail out of the harbor, trusting to the speed of the Essex to carry him clear of the superior force. Should he succeed in drawing the enemy clear of the harbor the Essex Junior was at once to make sail also.
But the day after arriving at this determination a heavy squall came on from the south, the port cable of the Essex broke, and she began dragging the starboard one right out to sea. Without delay Porter made sail, setting his top-gallant sails over reefed top-sails, and stood out of the harbor. As he opened up the sea he saw that he had a chance for sailing between the southwest point of the harbor and the enemy—passing to windward of them, in fact, and so getting clear without trouble. The top-gallant sails were at once clewed up and the yards braced to sail close hauled. The Essex was making a course that was just what Porter wanted, and he was just clearing the point when a sudden squall from around the corner of the land struck the ship, knocking the maintopmast over the lee rail into the sea, and the men who were still aloft furling the top-gallant sail were lost.
At once both of the enemy’s ships gave chase, and Porter, after clearing the wreckage, turned to beat back to his old anchorage. But because he was crippled, and because of a sudden shift of wind, he could not make it, and so he “ran close into a small bay about three-quarters of a mile to leeward of the battery on the east side of the harbor,” and there let go his anchor “within pistol-shot of the shore.”
Here he was as much in neutral waters as he would have been at the usual anchorage, but the enemy, with mottoes and banners in abundance flying, came down to attack the cripple. The Cherub came cautiously to the wind off the bow of the Essex, the Phœbe, with equal caution, off her stern, and at 3.54 P.M., on March 28, 1814, in the presence of the whole population of Valparaiso, who thronged to the bluffs, the battle, that was to end the career of the Essex as an American frigate, began. To fully appreciate the fight that followed, the reader should recall the fact that in spite of the protests of Captain Porter the Essex had been compelled to sail with a battery of forty short thirty-twos in place of the long twelves that he wanted. In addition to these she carried six long twelves, three of which, when this fight began, were arranged to fight at the bow and three at the stern. Her crew numbered two hundred and fifty-five when she dragged her anchor, but of these at least four were lost from the top-gallant yard. The exact number is not given.
On the other hand the Phœbe, under the circumstances, was alone in weight of metal superior to the Essex. On her main deck were thirty long eighteens, to which were added sixteen short thirty-twos, one howitzer, and in the tops six three-pounders. In all she carried fifty-three guns. She carried more guns than ships of her class usually did, because she had been fitted out especially to catch the Essex with as little risk as possible. Her crew numbered three hundred and twenty, the usual number having been added to, when she was taking in supplies, by gathering sailors from the British ships in port. The Cherub mounted eighteen short thirty-twos, eight short twenty-fours, and two long nines. Her crew, with the additions received in port, numbered one hundred and eighty men.
But this was a battle fought at long range. Captain Hillyar obeyed his instructions to take as little risk as possible, and he held his ships beyond the range of Porter’s short thirty-twos. It was therefore a fight in which five hundred men were pitted against two hundred and fifty-one, and the fifteen long guns in the broadside of the Phœbe and both of the long guns of the Cherub—in short, seventeen long guns, throwing two hundred and eighty-eight pounds of metal, were pitted against six long guns, throwing by actual weight only sixty-six pounds of metal. That was the actual preponderance when the battle began, but even that did not satisfy the ideas of the British captains in their desire to obey their orders to take as little risk as possible, for the Cherub, finding her position off the bow of the Essex too hot, wore around and took a station near the Phœbe, where Porter could bring only three guns, throwing together but thirty-three pounds of metal, to bear on the two of them with their seventeen long guns throwing two hundred and eighty-eight pounds of metal. Rarely in the history of the world has a fight been maintained against such odds as these. The Englishmen did, indeed, draw in closer at one time of the battle, but it was for only a brief time. The short guns of the Essex soon made them withdraw to a safer distance.