The Essex Junior was disarmed and the American prisoners were put into her, and she was sent as a cartel to New York. Off the east coast of Long Island, on July 5, 1814, she was detained by British cruisers so long that the Americans were lawfully released from their parole, when Porter and a boat’s crew escaped ashore aided by a fog, and that was the only occasion during that cruise of this Yankee captain, that weather did aid him. He landed in Long Island, where he had to show his commission before the people would believe his story. He was then carried to New York by enthusiastic admirers, and was there received with every mark of honor. Meantime, the Essex Junior was allowed to come in also.
A few words will tell the fate of Lieutenant Gamble and the men left at Nukahiva with the captured whalers Seringapatam, Greenwich, and Sir Andrew Hammond. Immediately after Porter sailed away the natives began to rob the Americans of everything they could carry away, and Gamble had “to land and overpower them.” On February 28, 1814, one man was drowned accidentally. A week later four men deserted in a whale-boat to join their native sweethearts. On April 12th Gamble rigged the Seringapatam and the Hammond for sea, intending to burn the Greenwich, but the men became mutinous. So Gamble removed all the arms, as he supposed, to the Greenwich; but when he boarded the Seringapatam on May 7th, the men there attacked him, shot him in the foot with a pistol, set him adrift in a native canoe, and then sailed away with the Seringapatam, leaving Gamble with but eight men.
Two days later the natives came off to assault the ship. They were repulsed, but Midshipman William W. Feltus was killed, and three men wounded. The fight occurred on the Hammond. The following night the survivors went to sea. They eventually reached the Sandwich Islands, where they were captured by the Cherub, and were detained on her seven months. They finally reached New York in August, 1815.
A Marquesan “Chief Warrior.”
From an engraving by Strickland of a drawing by Captain Porter.
The voyage of the Essex ended in disasters all around, due solely to the misfortune of losing a top-mast in a squall off the Point of Angels at Valparaiso. But she had captured twelve British ships, aggregating 3,369 tons, armed with one hundred and seven guns and carrying three hundred and two men. She had maintained herself for more than a year entirely from supplies captured from the enemy—she did not cost the national treasury a cent after her first outfit. A great fleet of British ships were sent at large expense to search for her. On the whole her cruise damaged the enemy millions of dollars—Porter estimated the damage at $6,000,000—and her crew, from master to boy, had “afforded an example of courage in adversity that it would be difficult to match elsewhere.”
Porter was, indeed, defeated, but the victory of the enemy was like those obtained at Bunker Hill and on Lake Champlain during the war of the Revolution. It was a British victory but it strengthened the power of the young republic, and gave renown to the defeated leaders.
When Grecian bands lent Persia’s legions aid,
On Asia’s shores their banners wide displayed,