t and the Pacific. To this famous frigate the young
midshipman was ordered before her departure, and he remained on her
through the eventful two years that followed, when she drove the
British commerce out of the Pacific. When on March 28, 1814, the
British frigate Phoebe, thirty-six guns, and sloop-of-war Cherub,
twenty-eight guns, without scruple attacked the Essex in the harbor of
Valparaiso, in violation of the rights of a neutral nation, there
ensued one of the fiercest naval battles on record. Though fighting
against hopeless odds, the two British vessels having twice the number
of guns and men of the Essex, Commodore Porter, with the reckless
daring which was so marked a trait of his character, refused to strike
his colors till his ship had been three or four times on fire, and was
in a sinking condition, with her rigging shot away, the flames
threatening her magazine, and 152, out of her crew of 255, killed,
wounded, or missing. The battle had lasted two and a half hours. On
his surrender, the Essex Junior, a whaling-ship which he had converted
into a sloop-of-war, but which had been unable to take any part in the
battle, was sent home with the prisoners on parole. The young
midshipman, then a boy under thirteen, was in the hottest of the
fight, and was slightly wounded during the action. Before the loss of
the Essex, he had served as acting-lieutenant on board the Atlantic,
an armed prize.

On his return to the United States, Commodore Porter placed him at
school at Chester, Pa., where he was taught, among other studies, the
elements of military and naval tactics; but in 1816 he was again
afloat and on board the flag-ship of the Mediterranean squadron, where
he had the good fortune to meet in the chaplain, Rev. Charles Folsom,
an instructor to whom he became ardently attached, and to whose
teachings he attributed much of his subsequent usefulness and success.

This pleasant period of instruction passed all too quickly, and the
boy, now grown to man's estate, after some further service in the
Mediterranean, was, on January 1, 1821, at the age of nineteen and a
half years, promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and ordered to duty on
the West India station. In 1824 he was assigned to duty at the Norfolk
navy-yard; and with the exception of a two years' cruise in the
Vandalia, on the Brazil station, remained at Norfolk till 1833. Here
he married a lady of highly respectable family, and during the long
years of suff