The first USS Essex of the United States Navy was a 36-gun or 32-gun sailing frigate that participated in the Quasi-War with France, the First Barbary War, and in the War of 1812. The British captured her in 1814 and she then served as HMS Essex until sold at public auction on 6 June 1837.
Brevet Lieutenant Colonel John Marshall Gamble was an officer in the United States Marine Corps during the early 19th century. He was the first, and remains the only known, U.S. Marine to command a U.S. Navy ship, commanding the prize ships Greenwich and Sir Andrew Hammond during naval actions in the Pacific during the War of 1812.
Te Iʻi is a traditional province of Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands. The province covers slightly more than the western two-thirds of the island. The western coast is characterized by steep slopes which plunge directly into the sea, indented occasionally by small bays leading to short deep valleys leading to the interior.
Commodore John Downes was an officer in the United States Navy, whose service covered the first half of the 19th century.
HMS Phoebe was a 36-gun fifth rate of the Royal Navy. She had a career of almost twenty years and fought in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Overall, her crews were awarded six clasps to the Naval General Service Medals, with two taking place in the French Revolutionary Wars, three during the Napoleonic Wars and the sixth in the War of 1812. Three of the clasps carried the name Phoebe. During her career, Phoebe sailed to the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, the Indian Ocean, South East Asia, North and South America.
The Battle of Valparaíso, also called the Capture of USS Essex, was a naval action fought during the War of 1812. It took place off Valparaíso, Chile on March 28, 1814, between the frigate USS Essex and the sloop USS Essex Junior of the United States Navy and the frigate HMS Phoebe and sloop HMS Cherub of the Royal Navy. The British ships won the battle, and the American vessels were captured.
John Minor Maury was an officer of the United States Navy whose life and career was ended by yellow fever. In 1888, fictionalized versions of his life story were published by his son, Dabney H. Maury, and his niece, Diana Fontaine Maury Corbin, and the sensational stories became Maury's de facto biography for more than 130 years.
HMS Cherub was an 18-gun Royal Navy Cormorant-class sloop built in Dover in 1806. She participated in two major campaigns in the West Indies during the Napoleonic Wars, and one major engagement in the Pacific during the War of 1812, all each of which earned her crews clasps to the Naval General Service Medal. The Navy sold her in 1820.
Tai Pī is a province of Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands, an administrative subdivision of French Polynesia. The settlement follows the line of the valley and the stream that passes from its mountainous island surroundings.
The West Indies Squadron, or the West Indies Station, was a United States Navy squadron that operated in the West Indies in the early nineteenth century. It was formed due to the need to suppress piracy in the Caribbean Sea, the Antilles and the Gulf of Mexico region of the Atlantic Ocean. This unit later engaged in the Second Seminole War until being combined with the Home Squadron in 1842. From 1822 to 1826 the squadron was based out of Saint Thomas Island until the Pensacola Naval Yard was constructed.
The action off James Island was a naval engagement of the War of 1812. In May 1813 an American frigate captured three British whalers off James Island in the South Pacific. Only one of the whalers resisted and the resultant single-ship action was one of the few fought in Pacific waters during the war. The British later recovered all the whalers involved.
The sloop Essex Junior was a French prize that the British whaling firm of Samuel Enderby and Sons purchased and used as a whaler under the name Atlantic. In 1813, on her second whaling voyage, the frigate USS Essex captured her off the Galapagos Islands. The Americans named her Essex Junior. The British recaptured her on 28 March 1814 when they captured Essex. They then sent Essex Junior to New York as a cartel. There the Americans seized her and sold her.
The action off Charles Island was a naval battle fought during the War of 1812 in the summer of 1813 off Charles Island in the Galapagos. An American squadron of three vessels attacked three British armed whalers, and captured them. The engagement was notable for being one of the few to occur in the Pacific Ocean during the war and involved United States Marine Lieutenant John M. Gamble, the first U.S. Marine to command an American warship.
Fort Madison, on Nuku Hiva at Taioha'e Bay, was the first naval base of the United States in the Pacific Ocean. It was built by Commodore David Porter in October and November 1813, during the Nuku Hiva Campaign of the Anglo-American War, for protecting the village of Madisonville from British and Marquesan attacks. The fortification was named after President James Madison and armed with four cannons. Fort Madison was attacked only once, by British mutineers, in May 1814, and abandoned soon after.
Nuku Hiva is the largest of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, an overseas country of France in the Pacific Ocean. It was formerly also known as Île Marchand and Madison Island.
Seringapatam was built in 1799, of teak, as a warship for Tippu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore. However, the British stormed his citadel at Seringapatam that year and he was killed in the action. The vessel was sailed to England in the hopes that the Admiralty would buy it. The Admiralty did not, and British merchants bought her to use as a whaler. She made six voyages to the Southern Atlantic and the Pacific until 1813, on her sixth voyage, when during the War of 1812, a US frigate captured her. She served briefly as a tender to the frigate before mutineers and British prisoners recaptured her and sailed to Australia. After her return to her owners, she returned to whaling until 1846, making another nine voyages. She then sailed between London and New South Wales until 1850. In the 1850s and 1860s she sailed to Aden and Hamburg, ending her years trading between Shields and Quebec. She is no longer listed in 1870.
HMS Briton was a 38-gun fifth-rate frigate of the British Royal Navy's Leda class. She was ordered on 28 September 1808 and her keel laid down at Chatham Dockyard in February 1810. Navy veteran Sir Thomas Staines was appointed her first captain on 7 May 1812 but did not join the ship until 17 June 1813 owing to his being at sea aboard HMS Hamadryad. After a period of cruising in the Bay of Biscay, the vessel set sail for South America where during the course of several missions she unexpectedly encountered the last member of the crew that had seized HMS Bounty from its captain Lieutenant William Bligh during the 1789 mutiny aboard the ship. With the coming of the Pax Britannica in 1815, Briton undertook various voyages before she was broken up in 1860.
Sir Andrew Hammond was launched at Bermuda in 1800. She spent almost a dozen years as a West Indiaman. From 1812 on she was a whaler. On her first whaling voyage she sailed to the Pacific where the United States Navy captured her. She then served briefly in the United States Navy before the British Royal Navy recaptured her. She returned to whaling and made a further eight whaling voyages. She was lost in 1841 on her tenth whaling voyage.
Greenwich was launched on the Thames in 1800. Between 1800 and 1813 Samuel Enderby & Sons employed her as a whaler in the British Southern Whale Fishery, and she made four whaling voyages for them. In 1813 the United States Navy captured her in the Pacific and for about a year she served there as USS Greenwich. Her captors scuttled her in 1814.
United States 
David Porter 
