The Shining Sea (10 page)

Porter blamed Secretary of the Navy Hamilton for the delay in getting supplies to the
Essex
. “The neglect of the Department is unpardonable,” he wrote to Hambleton. “There must be a change or we never can expect to do anything except on our own responsibility; there is no energy, nor will there be while a pint of whiskey can be purchased in the District of Columbia—it is shameful.”

Secretary Hamilton's drinking problem had been bandied about Washington for years. It was rumored that nothing got done in the Navy Department after lunch, although that was an exaggeration. President Madison was aware of the problem, but even after war had been declared

on June 18 Hamilton remained in charge of the department. Keeping Hamilton was a measure of how unimportant the navy was to the president at the time.

Porter's urge to be back at sea in search of glory was demonstrated again when a challenge to a sea duel came on September 18 while he was waiting impatiently for the
Essex
to be ready. The challenge was delivered in an unusual way. The
Democratic Press
, a Philadelphia newspaper, published what was purported to be a letter from Sir James Yeo, captain of the British frigate
Southampton
, stationed in the Bahamas. It read: “Sir James Yeo [presents] his compliments to Captain Porter of the American frigate
Essex
—would be glad to have a
tete a tete
anywhere between the Capes of the Delaware and Havana, where he would be pleased to break his own sword over his damned head and put him down forward in irons.”

Yeo, it seemed, wanted to goad Porter, whom the British had a special dislike for, into a one-on-one fight. Porter's handling of a well-publicized row in New York City at the start of the war had aroused the Admiralty's ire. And Whitehall remembered Porter from an old incident at Malta involving the lashing of a drunk and disorderly British tar.

The latest episode involved John Erving, a sail maker's mate aboard the
Essex.
On June 26, eight days after the United States had declared war, Porter called upon the crew of the
Essex
to take the oath of allegiance to the United States, but Erving refused. He protested that he was an Englishman and could not do so. Immediately, one of his shipmates contradicted him, swearing that Erving was an American from Barnstable, Massachusetts. Erving admitted that he had lived in the United States since 1800, but insisted that he was still a British subject, and if he were caught fighting against his country he would be hanged as a traitor. Porter wasn't pleased, but he refused to whip the man and kept his irate crew from beating him. That didn't end the matter, however. When some of the
Essex
men asked the captain's permission to tar and feather Ervin and put him out on the streets of New York with appropriate labels affixed to his body, Porter, in his usually impulsive way, said yes.

The treatment of Erving angered the British consul in New York, and he quickly became involved. He asked the New York police to safeguard Erving, declaring him to be a British subject. The police did intervene, protecting Erving while the consul arranged passage for him to Halifax.
Porter strongly objected to letting Erving go, pointing out that he could be a spy and might report to the enemy all he knew about the American navy. Porter's superiors did not support him, however. Secretary Hamilton found his actions deplorable, and sent him a blistering rebuke, telling him that “mobs should never be suffered to exist on board a man of war.” Needless to say, the secretary's scolding did not sit well with Porter, who continued to believe that releasing Erving was a mistake.

The wide publicity afforded this latest controversy added to the rancor the Admiralty felt toward Porter. Their Lordships promised to chastise him at the first opportunity. He was aware of their enmity, and he gloried in it.

Yeo's challenge, thus, came as no surprise. Porter assumed it was genuine and lost no time penning a reply: “Captain Porter of the U.S. frigate
Essex
, presents his complements to Sir James Yeo . . . and accepts with pleasure his polite invitation. If agreeable to Sir James, Captain Porter would prefer meeting near the Delaware, where Captain Porter pledges his honor to Sir James, that no American vessel shall interrupt their tete a tete. The
Essex
may be known by a flag bearing the motto, ‘
Free trade and sailors' rights
,' and when this is struck to the
Southampton
, Captain Porter will deserve the treatment promised by Sir James.”

Porter pleaded with Secretary Hamilton not to prohibit him from accepting Yeo's challenge. When Hamilton made no objection, Porter rushed down to the Delaware Capes during the last week of September and hovered off them briefly before sailing back to Chester. The loud-talking, but cautious Yeo never appeared. He may have had second thoughts about his chances against the
Essex
. The
Southampton
was the oldest frigate in the Royal Navy, having been built in 1757. She carried thirty-two guns, but she would have had a hard time against the American frigate. The
Southampton
's long guns might have been a factor in her favor. Despite being old, if she were skillfully handled, she might have given the
Essex
a real battle. As it was, for one reason or another, Captain Yeo did not appear.

CHAPTER

5

T
HE
E
SSEX

PAST AND PRESENT

I
N
O
CTOBER
1812, C
APTAIN
D
AVID
P
ORTER WAS ANXIOUS TO
get to sea, but he had serious reservations about the
Essex
. What he objected to most was her armament. She carried forty 32-pound carronades and six long 12-pounders, a total of forty-six guns. The mix of weaponry was the exact opposite of what he wanted. Carronades were most effective as supplements to a main battery of long guns; they were not intended to be a frigate's primary weapon. As far back as October 12, 1811, Porter had written to Navy Secretary Hamilton complaining that carronades remained “an experiment in modern warfare. . . . I do not conceive it proper to trust the honor of the flag entirely to them.” A little over a month later, after he had returned from a short cruise, Porter wrote to Sam Hambleton,
“I am much pleased with my ship, and I wish I could say as much for her armament—She is armed with carronades which in my opinion are very inferior to long guns.”

Porter remained so disgruntled that he asked Secretary Hamilton on October 14 to give him another ship, preferably the twenty-eight-gun
Adams
, sitting in the Washington Navy Yard. Porter told Hamilton that
because of her inadequate armament and “bad sailing” the
Essex
was the “worst frigate in the service.”
Porter's hyperbole did not move Hamilton. The secretary did not take the complaint about her poor sailing seriously, but faulting her battery of carronades had validity, which Hamilton was aware of. Nonetheless he turned down Porter's request for another ship. The
Adams
was not ready to go, and even if she were, there wasn't enough time to make a switch before Porter had to leave and join Bainbridge.

The carronade was a relatively new weapon. The Carron Iron Company had developed it during the American Revolution in their massive iron works (the largest in the world) on the Carron River near Falkirk, Scotland. Made of cast iron, carronades were short and smoothbore with one-third the weight of a conventional long gun, but with explosive power. They were placed on a sliding rather than a wheeled carriage, and a turn screw achieved their elevation rather than quoins (wooden wedges). The screw was mounted on a lug underneath the barrel. Carronades required a smaller crew to operate, were easier to aim, and fired faster. At short range (less than 500 yards) they could be devastating. The British gave them the name “smasher” because of their ability to create clusters of deadly splinters when employed against an enemy's wooden works, and their ability, at very close range, to drive through the hull of a ship as large as a frigate.

Without a doubt, carronades had real advantages, but at long distances they were ineffective, and this was what bothered Porter. Until the
Essex
got close to an enemy, she was at risk. An alert British commander could cripple her with long guns (the main battery on all British frigates) before she got near enough to employ her carronades. An adverse wind, or anything else (such as enemy fire) that affected her ability to sail, could make the
Essex
a sitting duck. “Was the ship to be disabled in her rigging in the early part of an engagement,” Porter complained to Secretary Hamilton “a ship much inferior to her in sailing and in force, armed with long guns, could take a position beyond the reach of our carronades, and cut us to pieces without our being able to do her any injury.”

Porter knew that if the
Essex
tangled with an enemy frigate, he would be forced to run in close to her, blast away with his carronades as he went, and hope their devastating firepower would force a surrender. If not, he would have to board and fight it out hand to hand. His only hope would
be to overwhelm the enemy with numbers, which is why he had an unusually large crew for the size of his ship—319 officers and men, including thirty-one marines.

The
Essex
had not been designed to carry primarily carronades. At her commissioning in December 1799, her battery was well balanced with twenty-six long twelve-pounders and ten six-pounders, and her crew numbered 260.
Her first skipper, thirty-eight-year-old Captain Edward Preble of Portland, Maine, received permission to substitute nine-pounders for the original six, giving her more firepower but added weight. After the change, Preble was well satisfied with her armament. By the time David Porter took command in August 1811, however, that had all changed.

The
Essex
's vulnerability gnawed at Porter, but he could not convince Hamilton to exchange the carronades for long guns or to give him a different ship. So Porter was forced to work with what he had. He never considered resigning; his sense of duty and desire for fame and prize money were too strong for that.

In spite of his grumbling and penchant for hyperbole, Porter undoubtedly knew at some level that the
Essex,
apart from her carronades, was a fine ship. It was one of the subscription warships built during the Quasi-War, just as the
Philadelphia
had been. In the spring and summer of 1798 President John Adams had persuaded a Federalist-dominated Congress—against the strong opposition of Republican leaders Jefferson, Madison, and Albert Gallatin—to approve a new navy department and a substantial fleet to cope with French aggression on the high seas. In a remarkably short time Adams dramatically expanded the navy that George Washington had started in 1794.

Adams also sought help from private citizens, and they responded. Patriotic fervor and the need to protect merchant vessels from French privateers led wealthy citizens in nine seaports along the Atlantic coast—Newburyport, Salem, Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, and Richmond—to build substantial warships and loan them to the federal government. Adams and the Congress helped the effort by requiring the Treasury to issue interest-bearing stock at six percent to the contributors.

The leading merchants of Essex County, Massachusetts raised half the money for their new frigate. Major contributions came from the fabulously
wealthy merchant Elias Hasket Derby and from William (Billy) Gray, Jr., chairman of the Salem Frigate Committee. Each donated $10,000. The overall subscription raised $74,700. The total cost of the
Essex
, including her guns and stores, was $154,687. The government made up the difference.

William Hackett, the well-known naval architect, designed the
Essex.
He also designed and built the
Merrimack
, the first subscription warship, in 1798, on the Merrimack River in nearby Newburyport, Massachusetts. Hackett was famous as the architect of the celebrated Revolutionary War frigate
Alliance
. Built in Salisbury on the Merrimack across from Newburyport, she was generally considered the finest warship in the Continental Navy. The
Alliance
and
Essex
were strikingly similar, although the
Alliance
was a bit larger. Both ships were fast.

Enos Briggs of Salem took charge of building the frigate. He sought help from the citizens of Essex County in the
Salem Gazette:

Take Notice! Ye sons of freedom! Step forth and give your assistance in building the frigate to oppose French insolence and piracy! Let every man in possession of a White Oak Tree feel ambitious to be foremost in hurrying down the timber to Salem, . . . where the noble structure is to be fabricated to maintain your rights upon the seas and make the name of America respected among the nations of the world. Your largest and longest trees are wanted, and the arms of them for knees and rising timber. Four trees are wanted for the keel, which altogether will measure 146 feet in length, and hew 16 inches square. Please call on the subscriber, who . . . will pay the ready cash.