Sea of Glory

Suddenly, the cloud’s appearance began to change as the wisps dissolved into a harmless mist. Instead of a squall, they found themselves in the middle of a snowstorm. Soon they were back at work, trying to move the ship through the ice.
    By one A.M. Hudson realized that they all needed some rest. They had been working nonstop for more than seventeen hours. While one watch remained on deck, the rest went below for some sleep. Reynolds, who was due back on deck in just three hours, fell into his cot. Almost immediately he was in the grip of a terrifying nightmare. “[A]ll the feelings I had mastered during the day,” he wrote, “haunted me in dreams. I died a hundred deaths. I was buried under the Ice; & the whole terrible catastrophe of a wreck from the first moment of the Ice striking the deck to the last drowning gasp, occurred with a vividness that I shall never forget!” With every jar of the ship against the ice, he awoke, convinced that he had just breathed his last. “[T]hose 3 hours in my cot,” he remembered, “were worse than all the others on deck, with real danger to look upon!”
    It was little wonder Reynolds had had such a troubled sleep. While he tossed and turned in his cot, Hudson had decided that he had no choice but to drive the ship through the ice. Setting all available sail and with the wind behind, he repeatedly rammed the Peacock ’s bow into the obstacles ahead. Soon the foremost piece of the keel, known as the gripe, had been battered to pieces, but Hudson continued on. By the time Reynolds came on deck, the ship had punched her way into a clear channel and was making good progress to the north.
    By ten that morning, the carpenters had completed their repair of the rudder. Even though his watch had ended and he was completely exhausted, Reynolds insisted on remaining on deck to witness the re-shipping of the rudder. Using a tackle hooked at a point above the rudderpost and secured to the tiller hole, the rudder was lifted high enough so that its upper pintle (a large metal hook) could be lowered into the gudgeon, a metal loop secured to the sternpost. Once this upper pintle was in place, the rudder was held tightly against the sternpost by the rudder chains as it was carefully lowered until the other pintles had been engaged. In the case of the Peacock ’s jury-rigged rudder, there were just two of the usual five pintles remaining.
    By 11:30 A.M., the Peacock was on her way again, following a narrow sliver of water that might close in at any moment. By midnight, they had sailed more than thirty miles and were in the open ocean at last. It was Sunday, and after religious service, Hudson called a meeting of the commissioned officers in his cabin. Given the condition of the ship and especially the rudder, it was generally agreed that they had no alternative but to return to Sydney for repairs.
    “And so ended our attempt South!” Reynolds wrote. “So vanished our bright hopes, and all that was left for us, was to wish the others better fortunes! True we had seen the Land afar off, & had touched the bottom with our lead, but this was a Lame tale to tell. . . . True we had done all we could, and had nearly become martyrs to our zeal; but disasters never tell much, when productive of defeat, & we were mortified to the very hearts core.”
    And yet, they had one thing to be thankful for. They were all still alive. If the Vincennes had run into similar trouble, Reynolds was sure that Wilkes would have been powerless to save the ship and her crew. “The hero of Pago Pago,” he wrote, “was not the man for such terrible occasions as that.”

CHAPTER 8
    A New Continent
    WHILE THE OFFICERS and men of the Peacock had been fighting their way out of the ice and the Porpoise pursued her own course along the edge of the icy barrier, Wilkes, in typical fashion, fell into a squabble with one of his lieutenants. On January 23, a day after passing the opening that would almost claim the Peacock, the Vincennes reached a bay in the ice that was about twenty-five miles wide. By midnight they had ventured almost fifteen miles into the opening when they encountered a closely packed group of icebergs. Wilkes determined that it was impossible to go any farther and ordered that they tack away and continue west. On his chart he called it Disappointment Bay.
    But not all of his officers agreed with him, especially Lieutenant Joseph Underwood. Over the last few days, Underwood was becoming increasingly