In Pursuit of the Essex by Hughes Ben;

Author:Hughes, Ben; [Hughes, Ben;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 4512774
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2016-03-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Tragedy at Tumbez: HMS Phoebe, 3 October 1813 – 10 December 1813

At daylight on 3 October 1813 the lookouts on HMS Phoebe and Cherub sighted land. Cape Blanco, a sheer sandstone cliff with ‘a bold shore’ rising out of the azure blue of the Pacific, put a homesick Gardiner in mind of Cornwall’s Lizard Point. At 8 a.m., with the ships running northwest along a low, sandy coast, backed by the distant Andes, a stranger was spotted in shore. Two shots from the Phoebe’s bow chasers brought her to and a boat was sent across to board her. She proved to be a Spanish brig from Panama bound for Paita. At 10 a.m. the flotilla made all sail and Hillyar mustered his men for divine service. Seven hours later, noting the colour of the water had changed, the Phoebe’s deck officer sounded in five fathoms with a muddy bottom. Hauling off shore, the ships ran out to sea, before dropping anchor at 6 p.m. in ten fathoms. That evening Hillyar held divine service for the second time. The Cherubs, once again, were left to their own devices.1

At 6 a.m. the next day the signal to weigh was raised at the Phoebe’s masthead. Intending to run up to the Island of the Dead for supplies, Hillyar sailed north sounding in 11 to 16 fathoms. At 10 a.m. a boat tested the current which was found to set three-quarters of a knot to the south and that afternoon, with the ships still a few leagues from their destination, a boat was observed off the weather bow. Firing a gun to signal for a pilot, Hillyar tacked and at 4 p.m. hove to as a local fisherman was brought on board. ‘We were informed that [the Island of the Dead] was not inhabited’, Gardiner recalled, ‘and that from that station it would be difficult to bear out of the bay with the sea breeze.’ Advised that ‘the best anchorage … was off the River Tumbez’, Hillyar spent the next two hours beating up towards the river. At 6 p.m., a league from the bar where the sea broke ‘with great violence’, the ships moored in seven fathoms, the Phoebe with an open hawse to the westward holding her against the surge of fresh water rushing out to sea. That evening the pursers checked their biscuit stores. The Phoebe had sixty-nine days’ supply remaining while the Cherub had forty-eight, prompting Hillyar to put both ships on half rations.2

The next morning, with the equatorial light streaming in through the stern windows, Hillyar wrote to Brigadier Juan Vasco y Pascual, the governor of Guayaquil. The letter asked about the Englishmen ‘Porter had made prisoner, biscuit & news’. The ships’ boats were lowered and sent in shore to gather fresh water. Approaching at low tide between two exposed shoals, the men sounded the river mouth before rowing two miles upstream where Gardiner found a spot with ‘clear and excellent’ water. When they returned to the bay that afternoon, the tide had come in and the shoals were covered with violent breakers.

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