Sea of Glory

avoid any heavy thumps.”
    At noon the next day, they lost sight of the Porpoise. The following day, January 28, was, in the words of James Alden, “as clear as a bell.” Alden was the officer of the watch. He was reefing a topsail when he saw what he considered to be his first undeniable glimpse of land. This time Wilkes was willing to listen when Alden reported the sighting. Wilkes climbed up into the rigging with him and, according to Alden, “looked at it for some time and said, ‘There is no mistake about it.’” As far as Wilkes’s officers were concerned, this was the day, January 28, when they first became convinced that land did indeed exist to the south.
    They were in the middle of a vast field of tabular icebergs. At one point they had at least one hundred of them in sight, and by eleven A.M.
    they had run more than forty miles through the bergs, with land still in sight to the south. Soon the weather began to thicken; by two P.M. the barometer started to fall; by five, it was blowing a gale. There were huge icebergs in every direction. The last time they’d seen open water was more than forty miles back, and with his chart in hand, Wilkes resolved to retrace their way through the bergs.
    By eight P.M., it was, in Wilkes’s words, “blowing very hard.” It was also snowing, reducing visibility to just a few hundred feet. Even if the surrounding icebergs had been stationary (which, of course, they weren’t), it would have been impossible to navigate by chart in these conditions. It was now simply a matter of survival as the lookouts strained to see ahead. Icebergs seemed to be just about everywhere. There “were many narrow escapes,” Wilkes wrote; “the excitement became intense; it required a constant change of helm to avoid those close aboard.” It was necessary to keep the ship moving at what seemed like an insanely fast speed given the hazards ahead of them, but it was the only way to maintain sufficient steerage. The Vincennes was like a tractor-trailer truck with its accelerator stuck to the floor, weaving its way down a crowded highway. A collision seemed almost inevitable. “I felt that no prudence nor foresight could avail in protecting the ship and crew,” Wilkes wrote.

    At midnight, all hands were called on deck. The ship was covered with ice, and almost as soon as his feet touched the deck, Gunner Williamson, the man with whom Wilkes had talked about seeing land ten days earlier, slipped and broke several ribs. “The gale at this moment was awful,” Wilkes wrote, “large masses of drift-ice and ice-islands became more numerous.” In these terrifying conditions, Wilkes’s behavior hardly inspired confidence. Alden would later tell Reynolds of the commander’s “incoherent and improper orders, his running in frightened anxiety about the decks, his readiness to take suggestion from anyone (no etiquette or isolation then ) and the utter want of reliance in him that was felt, not only by the officers but by the crew.”
    As the crew struggled to reef the sails, which were coated in a thick layer of ice, a seaman by the name of Brooks became trapped on the lee yardarm. The sail had blown over the yard and prevented him from returning to the deck along with the others. Only belatedly did someone see him, still clinging to the yard. Wilkes and First Lieutenant Carr stared blankly aloft, apparently unable to figure out how to get Brooks down. Alden and Passed Midshipman Simon Blunt leapt into the rigging. By tying a bowline around the sailor’s body, they were able to drag him up into the top, then pass him down to the deck and to safety. The surgeons reported he had been within minutes of freezing to death. In addition to Brooks, some of the best sailors on the ship were sent below, overcome with physical and nervous exhaustion as well as the debilitating effects of the cold.
    Suddenly a huge berg loomed in front of them. “Ice ahead!” was the cry, followed by “On the weather bow!” and then, “On the lee bow and abeam!” “All hope of escape seemed in a moment to vanish,” Wilkes wrote; “return we could not, as large ice-islands had just been passed to leeward: so we dashed on, expecting every moment the crash.” Up until now, they had attempted to stay to windward of the bigger bergs, but this time they had no choice but to go below it. As they passed into the lee of the berg, the ship’s sails went slack as the hull, formerly heeled so far over that the lee