The Shining Sea (12 page)

Bosun's pipes squealed, as the captain in his working uniform passed through the entry port. A side party of marines and ship's boys came smartly to attention. First Lieutenant John Downes rendered a formal salute, which Porter returned, before striding toward the quarterdeck, anxious to be underway. He did not waste time inspecting the ship and the crew; he knew Downes would have them well prepared.

As the tide began to ebb, Porter weighed anchor and stood down the Delaware. They were heading for his rendezvous with Bainbridge and Lawrence, who had departed Boston two days earlier. It appeared that
Porter would have no trouble meeting them. A favorable wind and tide carried the
Essex
swiftly past Wilmington and Newcastle. River traffic was increasing, and on every boat curious eyes were undoubtedly glued to telescopes examining the intriguing frigate.

The river soon widened into Delaware Bay. As the
Essex
sped toward Cape Henlopen and the sea, Porter summoned the pilot, who had guided them down the river and bay, and was about to return to Philadelphia. As soon as the door of the captain's cabin closed, Porter, without explanation, ordered the man to hand over any last-minute letters crew members had entrusted to him. After the surprised pilot produced the letters, Porter dismissed him and then examined each letter carefully, looking for usable intelligence about the
Essex
's mission, particularly her destination. As it turned out, all the letters were innocuous notes to loved ones, except for one that gave the ship's first place of rendezvous as “the coast of Africa.” Porter confiscated that letter and all the others without informing the writers. He would not allow anything to compromise his mission. That these were letters to loved ones from men who might not see them again seemed to matter little to him. His duty, as he saw it, was always paramount. Besides, the crew would never know that he had destroyed the letters.

By nightfall, the
Essex
had moved beyond the Delaware Capes and was plowing into rising swells in the Atlantic. A sizable storm was getting up, intensifying with every turn of the glass. During the night the wind hauled around from north to west, and the weather thickened. Porter had to fight hard to avoid running onto the dangerous shoals at Chincoteague. On the morning of October 29, with the wind increasing to a gale, he put the ship under snug sail, and secured the masts by tightening the rigging, which, being new, had stretched considerably. The heavily laden frigate labored in the swollen seas. Her rolling opened waterways that flooded the berth deck, soaking bedding and stores. Water filled the coalhole, and an additional leak appeared between cut-water and stem. The rest of the
Essex
remained tight, however, and by pumping only a few minutes every two hours, Porter kept the ship reasonably dry.

The storm continued into the next day, and then let up, but the weather remained unsettled for another forty-eight hours. As soon as he could, Porter put the ship back in order, replacing oakum (fibers from old cordage
treated with tar) in the waterways, drying clothing, airing out bedding, and salvaging stores. He even found time on October 31 to exercise the men at the guns.

Despite the crew's best efforts, so many provisions were lost that Porter was forced to ration what was left, except for water and rum. He hoped to maintain his supply of water by catching every bit he could in the rain awning. But he was forced to cut the bread allowance in half and reduce other provisions by a third. He never considered returning to port. The
Essex
was still in good shape, despite the hammering she had taken from the storm.

T
HE
C
APE
V
ERDE
I
SLANDS ARE
3,500
MILES FROM THE
D
ELAWARE
Capes.
Porter estimated it would take the
Essex
a month to make the voyage to Porto Praia, the capital of the archipelago and the first point of rendezvous with Bainbridge. Of course, Porter hoped that enemy merchantmen or, even better, a warship would delay him. Once the weather eased on November 2, he shaped a course to strike latitude 36° 7' north and longitude 58° 54' west (northeast of the Bermudas), which would take the
Essex
across the track of enemy vessels bound to Europe from the West Indies.

Since Parliament passed the Convoy Act in 1798, all British merchantmen were required to sail together in convoys protected by the Royal Navy. If Porter was lucky enough to run into a convoy, the escorting warships would undoubtedly be too much for the
Essex
, but that would not preclude him from picking off a straggler or two. Because merchantmen sailed at varying speeds, keeping them bunched together was impossible. If a convoy was big enough, a skilled raider like Porter with a fast ship could claim a prize or two with relative ease, despite the presence of bigger escorts.

Lookouts aboard the
Essex
kept a sharp eye out, but they spotted few foreign vessels, and those they saw invariably turned out to be Portuguese. Porter chased every ship that remotely resembled a British man-of-war or merchant vessel, but he was consistently disappointed.

While waiting for his opportunity, Porter honed the crew's fighting skills. He tried to compensate for the shortcomings of the frigate's carronades by obsessively drilling the men in small arms. He was determined
to make his hands the most accomplished boarders afloat. The crew had already melded into a successful fighting unit during the first cruise of the war, but the
Essex
men had never faced an enemy frigate. Porter wanted them ready for that supreme test. As the ship plowed toward the Cape Verdes, the drills were incessant.
David Farragut wrote that “I have never since been in a ship where the crew of the old
Essex
was represented, but that I found them to be the best swordsmen aboard. They had been so thoroughly trained as boarders that every man was prepared for such an emergency, with his cutlass as sharp as a razor, a dirk made from a file by the ship's armorer, and a pistol.”

Despite the hard work (and to some extent because of it), morale was high. The
Essex
men, young and old, hungered for glory and prize money, and they were confident their young skipper would secure them both. He had already shown how adept he was at turning patriotic zeal into gold. The money they had coming from the
Essex
's first cruise was significant, and money from signing bonuses was still in their pockets. And this was just the beginning; they expected Porter to produce far more on this lengthy voyage. The officers, too, had cash from three months' pay the navy had advanced them, and they were eager for more, as was the captain.
“My next cruise I hope will be more profitable,” he wrote to Hambleton on October 4, 1812, “if they give me any discretion I shall expect to make my fortune.”

On November 23, the
Essex
crossed the Tropic of Cancer at 25° 27' north latitude, and 28° 39' west longitude. To relieve the boredom of the trip, Porter permitted a time-honored ceremony to take place. David Farragut and the other neophytes who had never crossed the line before were initiated at the clown court of King Neptune. On November 23 a lookout at the main masthead cried, “Sail Ho.” The officer of the deck shouted back, “Where away?” followed by “What does she look like?”

“A small boat on the lee bow,” came the reply.

The officer then hailed the stranger and asked what boat she was. The answer was that she was Neptune's, god of the sea, and he wished permission to come aboard with his train, which was speedily granted.

A bosun's mate and his cronies were waiting in the fore-chains. They sprang over the bow and mounted an unsteady carriage made of boards lashed together. Two chairs were tied together in the center of the awkward
conveyance to provide a throne for Neptune and his wife, Amphitrite. Four men drew the carriage while others trailed behind with their shirts off and their bodies painted. Others walked along the side with their trousers cut above the knees and their legs and faces painted. Barbers with razors made of iron hoop accompanied them, along with constables and musicians playing band music. They marched onto the quarterdeck, where Neptune dismounted and asked Captain Porter's permission to shave all aboard who had not crossed the line before—provided the king and his entourage were paid with rum. Permission was granted, and the initiation went on all afternoon.

Popular bosun's mate William Kingsbury played the part of Neptune. Under his bleary-eyed direction, the novices were lathered with tar, crude soap, and other disagreeable ointments, after which, one by one, they were forced to sit on a rough spar spread across a huge tub of water. Fixed in this position, each man was shaved in turn with dull razors made of rough wood. The victim was then plunged into the icy water and cleansed. When he arose, dripping wet, he would participate in tormenting the rest of the uninitiated.

As the ceremony progressed, “Neptune . . . and most of his suite, paid their devotions so frequently to Bacchus,” Porter recalled, “that before the christening was half gone through, their godships were unable to stand; the business was therefore entrusted to the subordinate agents, who performed both the shaving and washing with as little regard to tenderness as his majesty would have done. On the whole, however, they got through the business with less disorder and more good humor than I expected; and although some were unmercifully scraped, the only satisfaction sought was that of shaving others in their turn with new invented tortures.”

The crossing of the line ceremony was a tradition borrowed, as so many were, from the Royal Navy. Not every British officer approved of the tomfoolery, of course. Some thought it, at best, a waste of time; Captain William Bligh had been one of these. Porter, on the other hand, found it harmless fun.

A
S THE
E
SSEX
CONTINUED ON TOWARD
P
ORTO
P
RAIA
, P
ORTER
paid special attention to the crew's health. The fighting quality of the
frigate depended as much on the men's physical condition as it did on their weapons. The
Essex
could not make an extended voyage or win the battles Porter was so assiduously preparing for if the men were incapacitated by ship-borne diseases like typhus (ship's fever), dysentery, malaria, and especially scurvy. Porter might be impulsive at times, quick to anger, even choleric, but he was also smart, thoughtful, and studious. He had spent a good deal of time studying the conditions that maximize the well-being of ordinary sailors. A happy, healthy crew, in his view, was far more effective in a fight than a disgruntled one. Porter's concern for the welfare of his men came from personal experience and outstanding teachers like his father and Thomas Truxtun.

As part of his health regimen, Porter put the crew on three watches instead of two, which allowed the men to get a good night's sleep. Britain's famed explorer Captain James Cook had done the same thing forty-four years earlier—as had other skippers—with excellent results. Under the commonly used two-watch system seamen never had more than four hours' rest. Since their watches changed every four hours, half the crew was always on duty. Organized in three watches, the men could have eight hours of down time. Porter gave strict orders that they not be disturbed unnecessarily. In severe weather or other emergencies, of course, this regulation had to be dispensed with. On these occasions nobody got any rest. But when conditions permitted, which was much of the time, a three-watch system was used. Porter could do this because his crew was experienced enough to compensate for the smaller number of men on each watch under the three-watch system.

Captain William Bligh, whom Porter had studied, used the three-watch system in the ill-fated HMS
Bounty
for the same reason that his mentor Cook had. Bligh had served as master on Cook's third voyage, and he had seen the good effects of organizing daily life around three watches instead of two. The extreme length of the
Bounty
's voyage from England to Tahiti meant that her crew would inevitably be subject to the ravages of ship-borne diseases, so if Bligh wanted a crew at all, he had to look after the men's health.
“I have ever considered this [three watch system] among seamen as conducive to health,” he noted in his log, “and not being jaded by keeping on deck every other four hours, it adds much to their content and cheerfulness.”

Bligh's concern for the crew's health was heightened by overcrowding on the tiny
Bounty
. Porter had the same problem. A small warship with an unusually large crew made keeping the men in good physical condition exceptionally difficult. On a long voyage a crowded man-of-war was a naturally unhealthy place.
“What can be more dreadful,” Porter explained in his journal, “than for 300 men to be confined with their hammocks, being only eighteen inches apart, on the berth deck of a small frigate, a space of 70 feet long, 35 feet wide, and 5 feet high, in a hot climate, where the only aperture by which they can receive air are two hatchways about 6 feet square? The situation must be little superior to the wretches who perished in the black hole of Calcutta.”

To protect his men against a naturally unhealthy environment, Porter allowed them to sleep on the gun deck with the ports open. As he wrote in his journal,

The regulation of permitting the crew to sleep on the gun deck with the ports open, where they have free circulation of air contributes not a little . . . to the preservation of their health. Most commanders are opposed to this indulgence, in consequence of their supposing their hammocks in the way of the guns . . . but so far from finding a disadvantage in it, I find a great advantage in always having the men near their quarters, when on the slightest alarm they may be ready for action. . . . It must be understood that none are permitted to sleep on the gun deck, but those who are quartered at the guns there; and they are compelled to sling the hammocks opposite their [own] guns.