Every one imagined them Venuses, and amply indulged themselves in fancied bliss

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 273.

At the end of September 1813, Downes returned in the Essex Junior with the news that there was no market for the captured ships in Valparaíso, and he had had them laid up. He also brought a letter for Porter from the American consul in Buenos Aires. It reported that on July 5 the British squadron had sailed from that port in pursuit of him.

The Essex had now been at sea a year. The rats had multiplied to the point that they were eating not just provisions but clothes, flags, sails, and gun cartridges, even endangering the planking of the hull with their gnawing. When the crew finally reached a sheltered port where they could completely empty the ship and smoke it with charcoal to fumigate the interior, they counted 1,500 dead rats in the basketfuls carried up and thrown overboard when the operation was complete.28 But the copper sheathing was coming loose too, and the bottom was fouled with barnacles and sea grass, and the rigging was in need of complete replacement; and so on October 2, a few days after Downes’s return, the Essex, the Essex Junior, and the three other remaining prizes set sail for the Marquesas Islands, a remote well-watered spot 3,500 miles to the west that had been frequented by American whalers from time to time since Captain Cook visited there in 1774.
“We are bound to the Western islands with two objects in view,” Porter informed the crew in a written notice. “First, that we may put the ship in suitable condition to enable us to take advantage of the most favourable season for our return home: Secondly, I am desirous that you should have some relaxation and amusement after being so long at sea, as from your late good conduct you deserve it.”

For the remainder of their passage, Porter said, the men “could talk and think of nothing but the beauties of the islands,” and he was not talking about the scenery. “Every one imagined them Venuses, and amply indulged themselves in fancied bliss.”