With Porter in the Essex

The Essex went into the Pacific in 1813 and made war on the British whaling fleet single handed. Otis tells Porter's cruise as an adventure with the facts still underneath it: the rounding of the Horn, the prizes taken, the months at the Marquesas, and the final fight at Valparaiso against two ships at once. The strangest cruise of the war of 1812, and very nearly the most successful.