The Shining Sea (19 page)

As Porter steered for Santa Maria, navigating proved difficult. Thick fog often enveloped the ship, and the gale, which was now battering them, made the going slow. He had only a single, largely inaccurate, chart to guide him, along with a few crew members who had been in these waters before. Their memories were vague, however. He hoped to obtain more serviceable charts from his first capture. Until then he'd have to be careful.

At five o'clock that afternoon, during a brief respite from the storm, a lookout caught a glimpse of Santa Maria. Porter judged that they were only ten miles from the island's southwestern extremity, but high winds and haze made running in for an anchorage dangerous. He'd first have to send in a boat, but the violence of the wind made that impossible. Reluctantly, he decided to pass Santa Maria, and with the ship pitching deeply, he stood north. The gale was intensifying when he arrived off Concepción. He felt that he could not bring her to safely, so he ran past the city. By the morning of March 8 the wind had calmed down, but by then the
Essex
was in latitude 35° 40' south—considerably north of Concepción.

Porter was not unhappy with his new location. He assumed that enemy vessels would be plying the waters between Concepción and Valparaiso, and that he could capture at least one, which would allow him to keep the sea for a while and not be forced into Valparaiso for supplies.

The
Essex
's new position continued to frustrate Porter, however. The weather was abysmal. Thick fog often cut visibility down to a mile or less, requiring him to keep well offshore—too far to have a realistic shot at intercepting coastal traffic. He did see large schools of whales, and he hoped that British hunters would be pursuing them, but he saw none. From March 8 to 11 heavy fog continued to plague the
Essex,
hiding whatever vessels may have been in the area. Porter's irritation mounted. The
Essex
had traveled all this distance, and he had seen no other ships. He would
have been happy to find a boat of any kind—a Spaniard, even—that might give him intelligence of British vessels, but none appeared.

The unexpectedly dreary landscape—whenever he got a glimpse of it—also disappointed him. In fact, since they had left Mocha Island, the desolate appearance of the countryside was a surprise. He was anticipating something far better—handsome villages, well-cultivated hills, fertile valleys, but what he saw was quite different and depressing. On March 12 a favorable wind moved the fog to leeward, and they could see the ironbound coast with the majestic, snow-capped Andes in the distance. The grandeur of the lofty peaks did little to cheer Porter, however; he felt nothing but gloomy solitude.

The following afternoon, the
Essex
was twelve miles southwest of Valparaiso, and at 8 P.M. Porter hove to, hoping to intercept a ship bound there. But none appeared, and at daybreak on March 14 he gave up and decided to look into Valparaiso Bay, which was concaved, more of a recess in the coast than an enclosed port. The Point of Angels marked its southwestern extremity. From there it ran eastward for three miles before turning north. Since the prevailing winds blew from the south during the entire year, the bay provided excellent protection for ships, except when the winds came out of the north, as they did from time to time during the winter months (May to October). These could be gale-force, accompanied by heavy seas that rolled in with tremendous power, tearing ships loose from their moorings and driving them onshore. Old, and some not so old, wrecks were strewn on the rocks as stark reminders of what could happen.

Until the
Essex
rounded the Point of Angels, the city and harbor remained hidden, tucked into the southern part of the bay. During the morning of the 14th a stiff breeze was blowing from the southward, allowing the
Essex
to sail around the Point of Angels with ease, and when she did, Porter turned east. Soon, the harbor and city came into view, three miles off the starboard bow. Picturesque hills cut by deep ravines dominated the landscape in back of a long, half-moon shaped white sandy beach. Rising twelve to fifteen hundred feet, the hills were dotted with old, Spanish-styled homes. In front of them, the beautiful old city of Valparaiso stretched along the wide beach.

As Porter glided into the harbor flying British colors (one flag at the gaff and another at the fore), he took note of several large Spanish ships anchored with their sails bent, preparing to leave. Near them, a British
whaler was repairing damage she probably had received doubling the Horn. Not far from her was an 18-gun, deeply laden American brig, the privateer
Colt
(Captain Edward Barnewell). She was a reminder that, although the
Essex
was the first ship of the United States Navy to double the Horn, she was by no means the first American vessel, nor, of course, the first ship from Europe. Spain had dominated the eastern Pacific since the sixteenth century. The northern two-thirds of present-day Chile, that is, the land north of the Bío Bío River, had been a Spanish colony since 1541.

The Spanish ships in the harbor concerned Porter. When they sortied, their destination would undoubtedly be Lima, the center of Spanish power in South America for centuries. He did not want them reporting that an American frigate was loose in the eastern Pacific. He began to have second thoughts about dropping anchor. Since the
Essex
was flying British colors, and the Spaniards would not have identified her, he decided to pull out of the harbor and not drop his hook until they left. It also occurred to him that by waiting offshore a few days, he might intercept the British whaler and obtain supplies and intelligence from her.

So instead of setting his anchor, Porter surprised the crew and made all sail. They ran with a strong breeze to the north for four hours, whereupon the wind died. By that time the
Essex
was thirty miles from Valparaiso, and the men were perplexed. Since leaving St. Catherine's, they had been at sea for eight difficult weeks; they desperately needed shore leave. And, of course, the
Essex
needed repairs and replenishment. Porter understood the situation and calmed everyone down by mustering the ship's company and telling them, in his usual animated style, the advantages of waiting a bit before putting into Valparaiso.
Young Farragut, who knew how much the lower deck longed for leave, could not believe the response—the men cheered. It was a measure of Porter's charisma.

For some reason, perhaps the obviously deteriorating mental and physical state of the crew, Porter soon changed his mind, and the following day he put back into Valparaiso. Still leery of the reception Spanish authorities were going to give an American warship, he dispatched Lieutenant Downes to confer with the governor of the port and test the waters. Downes was to inform the governor that the
Essex
was an American frigate urgently in need of supplies, because her supply ship had been lost going around the Horn. Porter feared the Chileans would prevent him from
obtaining supplies unless he claimed that this was an emergency. And even then, he thought they would be reluctant to sell him water and provisions, unless he softened them with gold from the
Nocton.

As things turned out, he did not have to worry. Even before he let go his anchor, the governor's barge pulled alongside with Lieutenant Downes, accompanied by the captain of the port and another officer. They were bubbling over with enthusiasm, offering the Americans whatever assistance and accommodations Valparaiso had to offer. Porter was bowled over by the reception. The port captain could not wait to tell him that Chileans were now independent of Spain and that their ports were open to all nations. What's more, he reported, Chileans looked to the United States for inspiration and protection. They needed help, but so did every American vessel in the area. Peruvian warships (sent by the Viceroy of Peru, who was still loyal to Spain) were off shore capturing American vessels bound for Valparaiso. Only a few days before, five American whalers had disappeared close to the port. They were undoubtedly captured, the captain said, and taken to Lima.

Porter was surprised that Chile had a new, pro-American, revolutionary government, and he intended to take full advantage. He had not bothered to inform himself about the breathtaking changes on the Iberian Peninsula during the last five years that had profoundly altered South American politics. In November 1807 Napoleon had invaded Portugal, throwing the Portuguese empire into turmoil. French General Jean-Andoche Junot led an army of 20,000 across Spain (with the permission of the government), crossed the border, and marched on Lisbon against scant resistance. The royal family narrowly escaped, fleeing the capital on November 27, twenty-four hours before the French army arrived. With British warships, under the command of Rear Admiral William Sidney Smith, and the entire Portuguese navy escorting him, the Prince Regent, Joao VI, his nine-year-old son, Pedro de Braganza, and a huge entourage sailed in forty ships for Brazil, where the Portuguese court was reestablished at Rio de Janeiro under British protection. Portugal was Britain's oldest Continental ally, dating back to the Treaty of Methuen in 1703.

In March 1808, Napoleon invaded Spain. Marshall Murat led a French army of 120,000 and occupied Madrid, under the pretext of saving the feuding royal family—King Charles IV, Queen Maria Luisa, and their son, the prospective king Ferdinand VII—from itself. Manuel de Godoy,
the queen's lover, had been the de facto ruler of Spain since the middle of the 1790s and advised the frightened royals to flee to South America, as the Portuguese royal family had. They were in the process of leaving—traveling to the port of Cádiz—when hostile crowds at Aranjuez (thirty miles south of Madrid) stopped them and forced them back to the capital. Napoleon was then able to convince Charles, Maria Luisa, Ferdinand, and Godoy—to journey to Bayonne in France to sort things out. Once there, in May 1808, Bonaparte made them all prisoners, holding them in luxurious captivity for several years.

With the royal family captive and a French army in Madrid, the way appeared open for Napoleon to consummate his grand scheme for Spain and her colonies. In June 1808 he installed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. In his megalomania, Napoleon assumed the Spanish people, and all the diverse populations of Spain's American empire, would accept this new arrangement. His audacity was mind-boggling. If successful, he would become ruler of, not only the mother country, but her vast domains in America, which included nearly all of South America, almost all of Central America, much of the Caribbean, and important parts of North America, including the present states of Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California.

As part of his grandiose plan, Napoleon had dispatched agents to Spain's American colonies with orders to inspire and frighten them into accepting his brother as king. The agents met with universal resistance, however. Having a French heretic on the Spanish throne infuriated the church, the aristocracy, and just about every other group in Spain and her colonies. Setting aside their endless squabbling, angry Spaniards rose in rebellion. So did all of Latin America. Unfortunately, the opposition was everywhere rallied in the name of the dimwitted reactionary Ferdinand VII.

Napoleon's belief that he could acquire Spain's vast empire on the cheap was a pipedream, given the existence of the British navy. It had been supreme on the oceans since Admiral Horatio Nelson's dramatic victory over the combined Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. (At the time, Spain was still allied with France.)

When Chileans received reports of the Napoleonic conquest in 1808, they were slow to react. The ultra-conservative Governor Luis Guzmán died soon after the news arrived, and he was replaced by General Francisco Antonio Carrasco, an elderly monarchist with no political experience and
no common sense. He attempted to carry on as if the Bourbons were still in power, forcibly crushing any resistance to Spanish rule. Opposition soon became widespread, however. To many of Chile's elites, unquestioned loyalty to the hapless Bourbons seemed absurd. Their gross incompetence over a twenty-year period prior to Napoleon's invasion had already undermined Spain's authority in Chile, and, indeed, all of Latin America. The ineffectual Charles IV, who had been nominal ruler since 1788, had found himself two decades later in a suicidal struggle for power with his hapless son, the future Ferdinand VII, and Queen Maria Luisa's lover, Godoy. At one point both Charles and his son—oblivious to Napoleon's designs on their country—had mindlessly appealed to the French dictator for help against the other. Opposition to Spanish authority in Chile was difficult to organize, however, since no meetings were allowed in 1808, and there were no newspapers—or even printing presses—in the entire country. The first newspaper in Chile's history,
La aurora de Chile
(
The Dawn of Chile
) did not appear until February 13, 1812.

In the months that followed the cataclysmic events of 1808 in Spain, Chilean political opinion generally divided into two camps—monarchists and republicans. The monarchists were united, and their program had the virtue of simplicity. It called for continued submission to the Bourbons and absolutism. These reactionaries were labeled
peninsulares
because most of them were white Spaniards who had left the mother country to administer her empire, both temporal and spiritual. Their ties to the imprisoned Bourbons, in addition to those of sentiment, were of self-interested officials whose positions and profits depended on continued Spanish rule.

Republicans, on the other hand, were split into violent, irreconcilable, almost feudal factions. While quarreling with each other over who should lead, they advocated independence and a government responsible to the people. Inspired by the revolutions in the United States and France, they supported a complete break with Spain. For the most part, republicans were creoles—well-to-do people of Spanish blood born in America. For decades they had been restive under Bourbon rule.
Alexander von Humbolt, the Prussian explorer, geographer, and biological scientist, who knew South America firsthand, wrote that, “since the year 1789, they are frequently heard to declare with pride, ‘I am a not a Spaniard, I am an American,' words which reveal the symptoms of a long resentment.”