Sea of Glory

it caught the man at the yard around his neck and yanked him off his feet. “[O]ne awful cry came from his lips,” Reynolds recounted. With the rope wrapped around his neck, the sailor, George Porter, swung from the yard, his body “showing terribly distinct against the clear sky.”
    It was now up to Reynolds to get Porter down. But how? “[D]id we haul on the rope, it would be to choke him instantly,” he wrote, “did we slack it, he would be dashed on deck. There he hung! ” The rigging of the ship was now alive with sailors, making their way toward their helpless shipmate. The first thing to do was to take in the sail. Once the flapping canvas had been tamed, one of the men was able to catch Porter’s body, only to have it pulled from his grasp when the ship rolled to leeward. A second attempt proved successful and the rope was immediately cleared from Porter’s neck. His face was completely black. “He is dead!” the men shouted down from aloft. But by the time Porter had been brought down to the deck, he was showing signs of life. The rope had wrapped around his jaw and the back of his head, making it impossible for him to breathe but not breaking his neck. The men knew he was going to survive when Porter opened his eyes and worriedly asked the surgeon if this meant he might miss his daily ration of grog. Laughing, one of the sailors claimed that Porter “was not born to be hung, or he would not have missed so good a chance.”
     
    By September 16, the Vincennes was anchored at Funchal on the south shore of Madeira. For a squadron attempting a quick passage to Rio de Janeiro and then on to Cape Horn, a stop at the already well-known island might seem ill advised, especially since there were not the facilities required to begin repairing the Peacock. But Wilkes felt the opportunity to provision and recruit the men would do the squadron good, and Madeira, a lush, volcanic outcropping of stunning beauty a few hundred miles west of Casablanca, was renowned for not only its fresh vegetables and fruits but also its wine.
    Perhaps most important, as far as Wilkes was concerned, this 305-square-mile island, much of it devoted to jagged peaks that reached as high as a mile above the surrounding sea, had long been associated with the more than four-hundred-year-long tradition of European exploration. Madeira was first colonized by Portugal in 1434 by one of the knights of Henry the Navigator, the prince traditionally credited with spearheading his country’s pioneering voyages down the west coast of Africa and, ultimately, to the East Indies. Several decades later, Christopher Columbus lived for a time at Madeira and the neighboring island of Porto Santo. He married a member of the local lesser nobility, and his conversations with the many sailors who touched at this famous island may have led him to first consider a voyage west. Even the island’s eponymous wine was associated with voyages to distant lands. When a trading vessel returned to Madeira from the East Indies with an unopened cask in her hold, the wine was found to have a uniquely sweet, fortified flavor—a consequence of its having been repeatedly baked in the equatorial heat. Thus was born the wine that quickly became a favorite in Elizabethan England and in colonial America. In 1768, James Cook, on his way to his first voyage of discovery, stopped at Madeira, where he took on more than three thousand gallons of wine.
    For the next nine days, the officers and scientists fanned out across the island. In emulation of his renowned predecessor, Wilkes secured several casks of choice Madeira, which he and, on occasion, his officers would enjoy throughout the duration of the voyage. The stop was, Wilkes claimed, “of infinite benefit to the officers and crews.”
    After touching at Porto Praya in the Cape Verde Islands (also visited by Cook), the squadron headed west across the Atlantic. During the long passage to Rio de Janeiro, Reynolds ran into unexpected trouble with the Vincennes ’s first lieutenant Thomas Craven. Reynolds had served with Craven before and had found him to be a capable and friendly officer. But for no apparent reason during the passage to Rio, Craven accused Reynolds of neglect of duty and gave him a thorough dressing down. “If any one on shore had spoken to me in that way,” Reynolds wrote in his journal, “I should have struck him & certainly I felt very much inclined to do to Mr. Craven.”
    What Reynolds didn’t