om the nearest American port, but he reckoned that he
could capture provisions enough to feed his crew and supplies to refit
the ship. As a raid there was nothing to match this cruise until the
_Alabama_ ran amuck among the Yankee clippers and whaling barks half a
century later. It was the wrong time of year to brave the foul weather
of Cape Horn, however, and the _Essex_ was battered and swept by one
furious gale after another. But at last she won through, stout ship that
she was, and her weary sailors found brief respite in the harbor of
Valparaiso on March 14, 1813. Thence Porter headed up the coast,
disguising the trim frigate so that she looked like a lubberly,
high-pooped Spanish merchantman.

The luck of the navy was with the American captain for, as he went
poking about the Galapagos Islands, he surprised three fine, large
British whaling ships, all carrying guns and too useful to destroy. To
one of them, the _Georgiana_, he shifted more guns, put a crew of forty
men aboard under Lieutenant John Downes, ran up the American flag, and
commissioned his prize as a cruiser. The other two he also manned--and
now behold him, if you please, sailing the Pacific with a squadron of
four good ships! Soon he ran down and captured two British
letter-of-marque vessels, well armed and in fighting trim, and in a
trice he had not a squadron but a fleet under his command, seven ships
in all, mounting eighty guns and carrying three hundred and forty men
and eighty prisoners. Two of these prizes he discovered to be crammed
to the hatches with cordage, paint, tar, canvas, and fresh provisions.
The list could not have been more acceptable if Captain David Porter
himself had signed the requisition in the New York Navy Yard.

Lieutenant Downes was now sent off cruising by himself, and so well did
he profit by his captain's example and precepts that in a little while
he had bagged a squadron of his own, three ships with twenty-seven guns
and seventy-five men. When he rejoined the flagship in a harbor of the
mainland, Porter rewarded him by calling his cruiser the _Essex,
Junior_, promoting him to the rank of commander, and increasing his
armament. They then resumed cruising in two squadrons, finding more
British ships and sending them into the neutral harbor of Valparaiso or
home to the United States with precious cargoes of whale oil and bone.
Within a few months he swept the Southern Pacific almost clean of
British merchantmen, whaler