Sea of Glory

official report. Dean would take the artist Alfred Agate and his portfolio of drawings and paintings; the purser William Speiden, who clutched the ship’s accounts and moneybox; and the dismissed surgeon Charles Guillou. By seven A.M. the waves had quieted to the point that Hudson judged it safe to begin launching the ship’s boats.
    Hudson insisted that the officers and men take only the clothes on their backs. The scientifics were the one exception, and with their journals in their arms, Dana, Peale, Hale, and Rich climbed into one of the boats. The charts and surveying equipment were loaded into another while the marines and some of the sailors were crowded into the third and fourth boats, and they were off. The more than sixty officers and sailors left aboard the ship watched the boats’ progress across the turbulent river with the knowledge that their own lives depended on the boats’ safe—and speedy—return.
    Later that morning Emmons was able to get another load of people ashore, but by noon, when he returned to pick up the remaining officers and sailors, the seas had built back up again. The Peacock ’s side-to-side motion had become so severe that she was in danger of capsizing. Hudson ordered that the masts be cut away with an ax. Beginning with the foremast, the spars fell, one after the other. On the stump of the mizzen, Hudson raised the American flag union down—a sign of distress.
    “This led me to believe that the ship was going to pieces,” Emmons wrote, “and I redoubled my efforts to get through the surf to her.” One of the boats reared so high on a wave that it toppled end over end, tossing the crew headlong into the boiling sea. One sailor broke a hip, several others were also injured, but all were rescued by the boat led by Lieutenant DeHaven. Realizing that there was no hope of reaching the Peacock in these conditions, Hudson had his men switch the flag to union up. Emmons understood immediately that he and the others were to return to shore. “Seeing how useless my efforts were,” he wrote, “and that by continuing to persevere, I was not only risking the means but jeopardizing the lives that were looked to for success, I turned back. And with feelings that I will not attempt to describe nor shall I soon forget.”
    Even without her masts, the Peacock continued to beat against the bar. Hudson could only wonder how much longer the ship would last, but this did not prevent him from ordering his men to eat their dinner on the wave-washed deck. Ever so gradually, the waves began to diminish until Emmons was able to reach the ship in the early evening. Only after all the remaining officers and sailors had been transferred into the boats did Hudson leave the ship. It was dark by the time they reached the sanctuary of Bakers Bay, tucked inside Cape Disappointment. In the glow of several shoreside fires, the Peacock ’s officers and crew gathered together and gave their captain three heartfelt cheers.
    The next morning Emmons ventured out to see what was left of the ship. The hull and deck had been pulled apart, scattering hundreds of specimens and artifacts to the wind and waves. Only the ship’s bowsprit could be seen above the water, pointing pathetically into the sky. For Emmons, who as a midshipman had been assigned to the Peacock back in 1828 when she had been first launched in New York, it was a particularly moving sight. “Thus have I witnessed the beginning and end of the Peacock . . . ,” he wrote. “[T]here is some consolation in knowing that after the many narrow risks she has run this cruise that her fate has finally been prolonged until reaching her native shore.”
     
    For the last two days, the officers and men of the Flying Fish had been left to flit nervously back and forth along the outskirts of the bar, helpless witnesses to the destruction of the Peacock. The immense height of the seas had made it impossible for them to determine how many, if any, had escaped from the wreck alive. But when they saw Emmons’s boat rowing toward them on July 20, they knew, for the first time, that at least someone had survived. “I was too impatient to wait, ” Reynolds wrote, “& jumping on the taffrail, screamed at the top of my voice, to know if all were saved? There was one moment of silence & suspense, ere the answer came back. The very sea seemed stilled. All hands safe on shore & well! Hurrah! Hurrah! There was no controlling it. The feeling would burst out, and