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.