172 



PORTER'S JOURNAL, 



board, which he refused to do until he knew who we were. I 

 now perceived by his hghts that he was prepared for action, 

 and fired one shot between his masts to intimidate him, 

 threatening him with a broadside if he did not repair on 

 board immediately. This had the desired effect, as he soon 

 came on board, prepared to meet in us an enemy. This 

 vessel proved to be the British letter of marque ship Green- 

 wich, of ten guns, a prime sailer, employed in the whale- 

 fishery. Her captain had taken in a good stock of Dutch 

 courage, and, from the preparations that were made on 

 board his vessel, there could be no doubt of his intentions 

 to have fired into us, had he not been intimidated by the 

 shot we gave him between his masts. He expressed great 

 regret that the Atlantic and his ship had not joined one 

 another before their capture, as he believed they would 

 then have been more than a match for us. Indeed, consi- 

 dering the then weakened state of the crew, and the ab- 

 sence of every officer, (except the chaplain, the clerk, and 

 the boatswain, from whom 1 received every assistance in 

 their power,) it seems not unlikely, as they were in every 

 respect well prepared for action, that they would have 

 given us some trouble, and rendered the capture of one of 

 them at least doubtful. 



I must here observe, that the captain of the Atlantic, (an 

 American from Nantucket, where he has a wife and fami- 

 ly,) on his first coming on board the Essex, expressed his 

 extreme pleasure on finding (as he supposed we were) an 

 English frigate in those seas. He informed me that he had 

 sailed from England under convoy of the Java frigate, and 

 had put into port Praya a few days after the Essex, an 

 American frigate, had left there ; that the Java had sailed 

 immediately in pursuit of her, and that it was the general 

 belief the Essex had gone around the Cape of Good Hope. 

 He parted with the Java after crossing the line, and on his 

 arrival at Conception, heard she had been sunk off Bahia 

 by the American frigate Constitution. On enquiry respect- 

 ing the American vessels in the South Seas, he informed 

 me that about Conception was the best place to cruise for 

 them, for he had left at that place nine of them in an un- 

 protected and defenceless state, and entirely at a loss what 

 to do with themselves ; that they were almost daily arriving 

 there, and that he had no doubt, by going off there, we . 



