Sea of Glory

for a section of smooth water that he took to be the channel.
    The Peacock forged ahead against the ebbing tide. After five minutes, they were almost abreast of Cape Disappointment, approximately two miles to the north. Some of the men had even begun to believe that they just might make it, when the Peacock ’s keel struck bottom as the bow burrowed into the sand. The helm was immediately put a-lee in an effort to turn the ship back out to sea. The yards and sails were also brought into play, but there was no longer any way to control the Peacock; she was stuck fast on the bar as waves burst against the ship’s sides. All the sails were quickly furled, and Lieutenant Emmons was dispatched in the cutter to see if there was any hope of pushing the ship through to deeper water. The building seas nearly capsized Emmons’s boat, but he did manage to cast the lead. The Peacock, he regretted to inform Hudson, was aground for good.
    As the waves continued to build, the ship began to bounce up and down on the hard sand of the bar. Part hobbyhorse, part jackhammer, the Peacock was pounding so severely that Hudson feared the ship might soon begin to break apart. Behind them, they could see the Flying Fish hovering just beyond the breakers, “like a child watching the agonies of its parent without being able to afford any relief.” “We saw the sea of wild foam she was among,” Reynolds wrote, “& we gave her up for lost, from that moment. ” Knox ordered the helmsman to steer for the disabled ship, but Hudson would have none of it and raised the signal flag indicating danger. “With very sad & heavy hearts we stood to seaward & hove to,” Reynolds wrote.
    Back aboard the Peacock, conditions were worsening. The bucking of the hull was whipping the masts back and forth, and to ease the strain, the royal and topgallant yards were lowered to the deck. By now the waves were too wild to permit them to take to the boats. Until the seas moderated, they were trapped aboard the Peacock. Hudson was tempted to cut away the masts to ease the motion of the hull, but since the yards were used to lower the boats, this would have left them with no way to escape from the wreck—assuming that the waves would eventually begin to diminish. The hold had begun to fill with water, and Hudson organized two gangs to keep the pumps working around the clock.
    The ship was now broadside to the waves, which crashed against the topsides and drenched the men on deck. In hopes of relieving the strain on the hull, Hudson used the port fore yardarm to lower an anchor over the side. With the anchor in place, the sea pushed the Peacock ’s stern around, and she was soon bow-first to the waves. By now the tide was approaching dead low and there was only nine feet of water under the main chains. The shoaling sand began to raise havoc with the rudder, wrenching it back and forth so severely that the iron tiller broke off seven inches from the rudder head. Soon the rudder had gnawed a gaping hole through the bottom of the hull.
    At 8:45 P.M. the anchor cable broke. The ship swung sideways to the seas and was soon being blasted by the waves. This time the starboard anchor was let go, and once again, the Peacock swung gradually into the swell. This provided some temporary relief, but by midnight the ship was being tossed about so violently that the timbers and planking had begun to pull apart. They could see sand in the hold of the ship, and Hudson determined that it was useless to keep the pumps going. At two A.M. a huge wave broke over the port bow, stoving in the port bulwarks at the waist of the ship and flooding the spar deck. In an attempt to drain the water, they chopped a hole in the starboard bulwarks.
    What the officers and crew of the Peacock didn’t know was that they had a special advocate among the small crowd of onlookers gathered at the bluff on Cape Disappointment. Although the Vincennes ’s purser Robert Waldron had long since left Astoria, his black servant John Dean had remained to keep an eye out for the ship and schooner. As dawn approached, Dean organized a rescue party of Chinook Indians that included one of the river’s two native pilots. At daybreak they headed out in a canoe, and by six A.M. they were alongside the Peacock. Perhaps miffed that a boatload of Indians led by a young African American had been able to venture across seas that he had considered impassable, Hudson did not choose to mention Dean’s rescue party in his