When, on February 17, 1824, Gilbert Smith sailed the Globe into the dark with his crew of five, he made some right moves, whether he knew they were right or not. The ship carried a compass but not a quadrant; how much Smith knew about navigation is unclear, but he knew enough to feel the want of an instrument that would give him the altitude of the sun. Unless spare sail had been found below decks, the ship was operating with no mainsail, no foresail, no mizzen topsail, no main topgallant, no mizzen topgallant, and only one royal. The fact that there was a good deal of empty space on the masts may have been all for the good, for there were only six men to take care of everything, and one of them, Thomas, was a slacker if what Smith reported was true. Did they stand watches of two? Or lengthen the watches to twelve hours?
Smith’s first move when the cable was cut and the Globe was ready to leave the atoll was to head to the east, retracing at first the course the ship had taken a few days before in coming to the atoll. There was a difference, though, for the Globe was now traveling at night past the Knox spur at the southeast corner of the atoll, a string of islands and reefs that is easy enough to see or infer in daylight but is daunting to deal with in the dark. Once away from Mili, the ship did not follow its old route through the Gilberts but headed south and crossed the equator. Whether by luck or by savvy Smith had chosen a course well suited to his purposes: the ship was carried past Samoa (known then as the Navigator Islands) and on to the east. Smith has left no record of landfalls between Samoa and South America, but his easterly route would have carried him into the vicinity of Tahiti if he moved a bit to the south and into the vicinity of the Marquesas if he moved to the north. These were natural places to stop for supplies; if the ship did not make any of these stops, it is evident that Payne and Oliver had left a good deal of food and water, enough to sustain six men for 112 days, on board the ship when they were overseeing the frantic off-loading on Mili.
The Globe in fact had food to give away. When, on June 5, 1824, it was at 34°19' S and had sighted the coast of Chile about thirty miles south of Valparaíso, it was spoken by a Chilean vessel, the captain of which described his ship as being in a state of starvation. This news led to an exchange that tells something about the state of fare on board the undermanned whaler: the Globe gave the Chilean ship twenty-one bags of bread and four pieces of beef, and the Chilean vessel gave the Globe a sheep and a peck of potatoes. The goodwill of the Chilean boat was also manifested in its sending some of its men on board the Globe to help it into port and in giving Smith a quadrant. These acts were more generous than effective, for, Smith states, “Some of them [the loaned seamen] couldn’t [help]” apparently because they were weak from starvation. And the quadrant, alas, “was of no use.” The Chilean coastline was visible off to starboard, and Valparaíso was almost in sight to the north—the need for instruments was past.
On June 7, 1824, almost half a year after the mutiny, the Globe came into Valparaíso with a distress signal flying. The American consul, Michael Hogan, was notified and went aboard in company with several people, one of whom was Peter Dillon, a captain who was on a celebrated mission to determine the fate of the long-missing La Perouse expedition. Dillon, in his book about the cruise, briefly describes the Globe’s arrival in Valparaíso.
The thread that had been Lay and Hussey’s lifeline had held. The news of the Globe mutiny was out. It was not up-to-date news, for Smith and crew reported what was the case the day they left: two of the mutineers and seven of the non-mutineers were alive on Mili Atoll.
Consul Hogan wasted no time in investigating what Gilbert Smith reported. Two days after the ship arrived, he took depositions from Stephen Kidder and George Comstock. A week later, on June 15, he questioned Peter Kidder and Gilbert Smith, and two weeks after that, on June 30, Anthony Hanson and Joseph Thomas. Smith’s deposition was twice as long as any of the others and was ampler in details, including a few on the escape voyage, but by and large all the men, even Joseph Thomas, told the same story. On August 11, Hogan forwarded copies of the depositions to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, to Commodore Isaac Hull (the head of the United States Pacific squadron) in Callao, and to the civil authorities on Nantucket “in order that Joseph Thomas who appears an accessary may be taken care of ’till such investigation takes place, as is necessary in the case.” Hogan also took charge of the Globe, prepared it for the voyage back to Nantucket, and appointed a Captain King as temporary master of the ship. The Globe sailed from Valparaíso on August 15, 1824.
Messages from the Pacific station to the United States took four months—a grave inconvenience at times to the navy command, which had to wait eight months for approval of requests, even lesser requests like appointment of subordinate officers and permission to send personnel home for court martial. All ships, commercial as well as naval, carrying news from the Pacific took roughly as long; the reports carried back on these ships appeared promptly in hometown newspapers and usually consisted of barrels of oil returned, ships met at sea or in port and the take in oil of those ships up to that date, and extraordinary events such as ships suffering severe storm damage. The news of the Globe adventure took the normal four months to reach Nantucket, but this was one report of a ship’s return that did not contain any of the usual figures for oil on board (although it could have, for the Globe did in fact have 372 barrels of sperm oil below decks). On October 25, 1824, the Nantucket Inquirer, with inaccuracies (but probably fewer than might be expected), broke the shocking news:
The Belle brought information that ship Globe of Nantucket, had ar. at Valparaiso, about middle of June, in charge of Smith, a boat-steerer, the crew having mutinied and killed the Captain, Thomas Worth and Wm. Beatle, and John Lombard mates. They took the vessel to the Mulgrave Islands, with the intention of remaining and took on shore such things as they might want—here they quarrelled among themselves, as to who should be capt.; shot the head mutineer, one Comstock, of N. York, a boat steerer, and afterwards hung the steward, suspecting him not to be friendly to them. Whilst most of them were on shore, Smith and a few others including several boys, who had been left on board, (and who had apparently joined the mutineers through fear) took possession of the ship, cut her cables in the night, and left the Islands—falling in with another vessel, the mate came on board, and carried her to Valparaiso, and she was to proceed home, in a few days, in charge of Thos. Raymond. It was the intention of the mutineers to have burnt the ship—only 6 ar. in her at Valparaiso, and they were confined on board an English and a French vessel of war, there being no Am. national vessel in port. 11 were left on the island.
It would be twenty-two months, the same length of time that Lay and Hussey spent on Mili, before even an inkling that some had died on Mili and some survived made its way back to Nantucket. For nearly two years five families, those of Rowland Coffin, Columbus Worth, Rowland Jones, William Lay, and Cyrus Hussey, were in the dark about the fate of their young men. Someone with access to the Globe’s manifest had written in its right-hand margin next to their names, “On Mulgrave Islands.” So they were, the living and the dead.
On November 14, 1824, about three weeks after the article appeared in the Nantucket Inquirer, the Globe itself came into Edgartown. The story of what happened up to the time of the ship’s escape was available now, but that story did not make it intact into print. The Inquirer wrote the next day:
The only names of the survivors of the Mutiny, which we have been able to obtain, are, Smith (originally a steersman) and two sons of Capt. Kidder, of Edgartown. . . . It is further stated, that Capt. Worth was killed with an axe, while asleep in his birth, [sic] by Thain, a sailor shipped at the Sandwich Islands. . . . Comstock, the elder, was hung at Mulgraves’ Island. The younger brother was compelled to assist at this execution, and on his remonstrating afterwards, was beat to death with billets of wood.
A week later, on November 22, the Inquirer wrote, “Having seen so many erroneous statements of the mutiny on board ship Globe of this place, and having ourselves published an imperfect account we are the more anxious to place before our readers the following, the veracity of which is indisputable.” There followed a fuller and basically accurate account of the events.
In a separate article the paper reported that Joseph Thomas was brought before Nantucket Magistrate Josiah Hussey on November 18 on suspicion of murdering the officers. Thomas’s examination was postponed first to the twentieth and then the twenty-second to wait for witnesses who were still on board the Globe in Edgartown. Thomas had obviously been brought promptly to Nantucket before the Globe crossed over from Edgartown. George Comstock may have been allowed to come over to Nantucket early, but Gilbert Smith and the two Kidders would not have been anxious to leave their families on Martha’s Vineyard sooner than they had to; they may have been the only “witnesses” still needed for Joseph Thomas’s hearing. The hearing took one or two days and was closed November 23, with Thomas being ordered held for trial in Boston at the next term of the United States Circuit Court in May. Less than a week later, on November 29, Joseph Thomas was committed to the Boston Jail, the alleged cause on the record being “Murder on the high Seas on board Ship Globe.” A week later, on December 7, the list of Examinations on Criminal Complaints listed Thomas as charged with mutiny, not murder. In the end he was acquitted.
As promised, Consul Hogan sent one of the transcripts of the Valparaíso depositions of the six Globe escapees to the authorities in Nantucket; its presumed recipient was Magistrate Josiah Hussey. Whether the document was carried back on the Globe or another ship, it was in the magistrate’s hands around the time the ship arrived at Nantucket; one of the first things the magistrate did was to allow the owners of the Globe to read the depositions and Hogan’s cover letter. One of the owners, Gorham Coffin, was also the uncle of Rowland Coffin, the seaman left on Mili who had been suspected by Gilbert Smith, Peter Kidder, George Comstock, and probably others of being close with the mutineers before and after the massacre. Gorham Coffin was outraged at what he read in the depositions about his nephew, and the thought that the document had been sent to the State Department, Commodore Hull, and, he assumed, the Navy Department angered him more. On November 29, a week after the Globe had reached Nantucket, Coffin wrote to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams deploring the fact that “Mr. Hogan suffered some of the men to give their suspicions as evidence of the Guilt of an orphan of Sixteen years of age.” He was writing, Coffin said, “not wishing to extenuate his fault, if guilty, but to prevent if possible that aught may be set down in malice.”
Coffin’s anger against Gilbert Smith was going to endure and find expression in ad hominem attacks; it is easy to imagine what was said in meetings between the two. It is easy, as well, to construct the scenario of Coffin’s meetings with George Comstock. Coffin wanted something in writing that would exculpate his nephew; what he got from George Comstock has the air of a much-negotiated statement. George did not retract any of his suspicions but furnished Coffin with a statement that, at worst, imputed unworthy motives to Rowland Coffin’s accusers: “I George Comstock hereby certify that great jealousy was created against Rowland Coffin, from some of the Crew, in consequence of his being taken the most notice of by the Captain, previous to his death; & afterwards for being much noticed by Saml. B. Comstock.”
Two days later, on December 1, Coffin wrote to Secretary of the Navy Samuel L. Southard with much the same message in support of Rowland Coffin, but added a rather ornate plea: “While Justice is stern, may not her sister virtue, mercy, be awed into silence, but be ready to extend her shield over those who have been forced to yield to necessity, with a drawn sword over their heads.” Enclosed in this letter was one to Commodore Hull, which Coffin asked Southard to forward if he approved; the letter to Hull covered the same ground that the others did, but added a new detail: “. . . when their only expectation was that [the ship] would be burned, he [Rowland Coffin] was heard to say that those transactions were beyond his control, but that the stigma of them would be so great on their characters, should they ever return to their country again, that he had no desire to leave that island, except as a prisoner.” This Coffin describes as “the only elevated sentiment reported to have been expressed by any one of the crew.” It is easy enough to read the statement, however, not as an elevated sentiment but as an answer to feelers put out by others in the crew to the effect of “you carry some weight with the mutineers—do something about this.”
Gorham Coffin wrote to Daniel Webster on December 22 making the same arguments in defense of Rowland Coffin’s reputation as in the earlier letters, for example, that the crew were jealous of him because he worked hard and because he was “akin to the ship” (that is, he was related to the owners). But Coffin added a denunciation of the lack of courage shown by Gilbert Smith in not leading a capture of the mutineers and also introduced a request that a ship be sent to the Mulgrave Islands, where, he assumed, the remaining nine of the Globe’s company would be found. In a rather confused effort to weaken Smith’s charges against Rowland Coffin, the uncle gives examples of things alleged to prove that Rowland was reporting to the mutineers, for example, that Peter Kidder complained to Rowland that they were fools to live under the regime of the mutineers and then found himself summoned by Oliver, who quizzed him on whether he had said that—obviously his words could not have reached the mutineers except through Rowland. Coffin’s efforts to refute these charges are rather muddled, and he produces an effect opposite to what he clearly intended.
Reaction to the Globe news swept through the Nantucket community. A few weeks after the arrival of the ship in Nantucket, 142 “Merchants & others, engaged in the Whale fishery” sent a petition to President James Monroe reviewing the Globe events and requesting, first, an increased naval force in the Pacific in the light of the expanded operation of United States ships and, second, “that a vessel may immediately proceed to Mulgrave’s island in search of those men.” The signatories were a Who’s Who of Nantucket whaling.
The petition and comparable appeals were not without effect. The mutiny had had a great impact. By the summer of 1825 the Department of the Navy had ordered Commodore Hull to send a vessel to the western Pacific to find the Globe remnant, whatever it was. Two years before, when the United States was on the eve of sailing for the Pacific, Secretary Southard had given Hull orders to cover not only the South American coast but also Hawaii and to return by the Cape of Good Hope, an impossible agenda for Hull’s flagship in light of the turbulent revolutionary scene in South America that preoccupied the American command. However, the new orders to go to Mili (and Hawaii for other business) were feasible for one of the smaller ships in the squadron. Commodore Hull selected the schooner Dolphin, described in the biography of Charles Henry Davis, who would serve on the cruise, as a “top-sail schooner, of 180 tons burden and 12 guns, which vessel was tender to the flagship, . . . She was a mere cock-boat alongside of the frigate, and her guns were nothing but six-pounders.” On August 14, 1825, writing from the United States at Chorrillos, Peru, Hull gave Lieutenant Commandant John Percival his orders:
Sir: Having received instructions from the Hon. Secretary of the Navy, to send one of the small vessels to the Mulgrave range, or group of islands, in search of the mutineers of the American whale ship Globe, (when the services of one of the vessels under my command can be disposed with on this coast without injury to our commercial interests, and as there is not at this time, any immediate call for the services of the Dolphin under your command,) I have to direct that you lose no time in fitting her for sea, and in receiving on board provisions and stores of every kind that she may require for six months, the crew to consist of not more than seventy, including every person on board.
The crew of the Dolphin at this time, consists of more men than she can stow provisions for to last six months; and, it being doubtful whether she can return short of that time, you will cause the crew to be reduced to not exceeding seventy, by transferring all over that number to this ship, . . . As soon as you have received on board your provisions and stores as directed, you will proceed with as little delay as is practicable, with the Dolphin under your command to the Mulgrave range, or group of islands, and use all the means in your power to ascertain whether the mutineers of the Globe are still at the islands and should it appear that they are, you will use such measures as to you may appear best calculated to get them on board your vessel, and to secure them, preferring a mild and friendly course as regards the natives of the islands, to that of using force, to obtain them. If, however, they will not be given up, and you can get into your possession some of the chiefs of the natives and detain them, there cannot be a doubt that their friends will deliver those men to you, on your giving to them a pledge that the chiefs detained by you shall be given up. In that, as well as in all matters relating to the cruise, much must be left to your discretion and good judgment. . . .
You will observe that the men left at the islands had with them two good boats and a quantity of provisions. It is therefore possible that they may have left the island where they first landed, and have gone to some other. In that case, it will be necessary for you to endeavor to ascertain what course they took, and where they probably may be found, and go in search of them, should it appear that your provisions and situation will admit of your doing so.
Should you be so fortunate as to find those men, you will return with them to this station, touching at the Sandwich islands on your way, provided your provisions will allow you to do so. . . .
Should you, during your absence, discover islands or shoals or dangers of any sort, you are to be very particular in ascertaining their precise situation, and of islands whether inhabited or not, and whether they produce wood or any other articles that would offer commercial or any other advantage to our enterprising citizens, should they think proper to visit them.
When word of the mission circulated through the squadron, a number of officers volunteered. Andrew Hull Foote, a midshipman on the United States and a cousin of Commodore Hull, wrote to a friend on August 12, “The Dolphin received orders yesterday to prepare herself immediately to proceed to the Mulgrave Islands in order to seize several mutineers of the American Ship Globe. The cruise will be a most delightful one, we are all anxious to join her but the officers still attached to her deserve & will have the preference.”
The Dolphin was under excellent command. John “Mad Jack” Percival (also known as “Roaring Jack”) was a favorite of Commodore Hull’s. Percival, born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, in 1779, was at sea by the age of fourteen and had risen to second mate in the merchant service by 1797. While in Portugal that year he was impressed into the Royal Navy and served on the HMS Victory and other ships for two months before escaping. In the course of his very brief service in the British navy, Percival became a good friend of Captain Sir Isaac Coffin, the Bostonian with Nantucket roots who chose the loyalist side during the American Revolution and rose to become admiral in the British navy but who never lost his fondness for Nantucket, devoting his fortune to the establishment of the Coffin School, now no longer a school but still a Nantucket landmark. After service on the USS Delaware and the gaining of a midshipman’s warrant, Percival left the navy in 1801 for the merchant service. Back in the navy in 1809, he served as a sailing master stationed at the Norfolk Navy Yard. He was active in the War of 1812, during which he was credited with several notable successes, one being the capture of a British tender off New York: Percival filled a borrowed fishing boat with produce and livestock, concealed thirty-two men below deck, and surprised and quickly overcame the British ship and towed it into the Battery. He was assigned in 1814 to the USS Peacock, part of the Pacific squadron, and later the same year was commissioned a lieutenant. Other assignments including command of the Porpoise against West Indian pirates followed, and in 1823 he was appointed first lieutenant on Commodore Hull’s flagship, the United States.
Some of the legend that built up around Percival is fanciful: for example, he crossed the ocean in a ship manned only by himself and an older seaman and a boy; the two men became sick, and the boy was washed overboard, with the result that no one took the helm, and the ship was abandoned to the sea—only to arrive safely in port as if miraculously navigated.
This kind of story probably added to the appeal Percival had for a writer like Henry A. Wise (“Harry Gringo”), who modeled a figure in his Tales for the Marines on Percival.
Percival was a vivid enough figure without myths. He was irascible and blunt but disciplined, responsible, and fair. He was in his late fifties when Nathaniel Hawthorne met him at the Charlestown Navy Yard and left a sketch of him that, projected backward, catches the spirit of the man who, twenty-three years before, had been sent out in search of mutineers in the mid-Pacific. Hawthorne was being dined on board the revenue cutter Hamilton, when the captain was informed that Captain Percival was on the deck of a harbor tender tied up beside the cutter, smoking a cigar.
Captain sends him a glass of champagne, and enquires of the waiter what Percival says to it. “He said, Sir, ‘What does he send me this damned stuff for?’—but drinks nevertheless.” The captain characterizes Percival as the roughest old devil that ever was in his manners, but a kind, good hearted man at bottom. By and bye comes in the steward—“Captain Percival is coming aboard of you, Sir;” “Well; ask him to walk down into the cabin”; and shortly down comes old Captain Percival; a white-haired, thin-visaged, weather-worn old gentleman, in a blue, quaker-cut-coat, with tarnished lace and brass buttons; a pair of drab pantaloons, and brown waistcoat. There was an eccentric expression in his face, which seemed partly wilful, partly natural. . . . He seems to have moulded and shaped himself to his own whims; till a sort of rough affectation has become thoroughly imbued throughout a kindly nature. . . . He is conscious of his peculiarities; for when I asked him whether it would be well to make a naval officer Secretary of the Navy, he said—“God forbid!” for that an old sailor was always full of prejudices and stubborn whim-whams &c—instancing himself—whereto I agreed.
Percival’s senior lieutenant on the Dolphin was the son of John Paulding, the captor of Major André, the go-between of Benedict Arnold and Sir Henry Clinton. Hiram Paulding, when selected by Hull as senior lieutenant on the Globe survivors’ rescue voyage, was in his late twenties and a veteran of naval service from his teenage years onward. Made a midshipman in 1811, he was active in the War of 1812, most notably on the Ticonderoga in the battle of Lake Champlain. He served on the Constellation and the Macedonian before becoming one of Commodore Hull’s officers on the United States.
In 1824, about a month after the United States anchored in Callao, Paulding, who had a “partial” (his term) command of Spanish, was chosen by Hull to carry out a mission to Simon Bolívar in his mountain camp; the main purpose of the mission was to gain Bolívar’s support in resolving some tensions that had arisen between the patriot Admiral Guise and the American squadron. On June 4, Paulding sailed north along the coast and two days later landed in the little town of Huacho, from which he was to proceed on horseback to Bolívar’s headquarters. (That was the day before the Globe arrived in Valparaíso.) Paulding’s grueling trip took him over mountain trails on donkeys and often enfeebled horses, through a succession of meetings with local governors in their more often than not squalid houses, and into some colorful encounters, all of which he does justice to in his engaging book, A Sketch of Bolivar in his Camp, published ten years later. He describes his welcome by the governor of Supe:
The Governor . . . introduced me to a party of his young friends who had just assembled for dinner. The Ollapodrida and a broiled quarter of lamb were already smoking on the table, and highly to our satisfaction, we were cordially invited to partake. It was a large, roughly made oak table, without cloth or cover, on which our dinner was placed, benches were arranged beside for seats, and with three spoons and as many knives and forks, ten of us dined abundantly without any other inconvenience than that of occasionally conferring and receiving the favor of an exchange of a knife for a spoon, spoon for fork, etc. I know not whether it should be spoken of as an inconvenience, as it seemed at the time to promote the sociability and good understanding of the company. It was particularly pleasing when one of the young ladies proffered the use of her fork or spoon and perhaps requested one’s knife in return.
His cordial reception by the Liberator in the town of Huaras was the high point of his three-hundred-mile trek. Impressed by the grace, intelligence, and political vision of his host, and by the striking setting of the mountain headquarters, Paulding, at a dinner with Bolívar and his officers, toasted the revolutionary figure: “Success to the liberating army of Peru and the Washington of the south, may glory attend them.”
Paulding is a good writer. His Sketch of Bolivar in his Camp was published in 1834, but three years before he had brought out the book that narrated the adventures he had the year after he visited Bolívar, Journal of a Cruise of the United States Schooner Dolphin Among the Islands of the Pacific Ocean and a Visit to the Mulgrave Islands, in Pursuit of the Mutineers of the Whale Ship Globe. Hiram Paulding has been compared, fairly enough, with his cousin James Kirke Paulding, who was not only a prolific writer and an associate of Washington Irving but also President Van Buren’s secretary of the navy. Both writers are characterized by the fluent presentation of unexaggerated and self-dramatizing detail and imagery.
On August 18, 1825, the Dolphin sailed from Chorrillos, Peru, and the rescue mission was under way, but not like an ambulance rushing to an emergency. Percival moved along the coast for almost two weeks, stopping at ports where he could complete the provisioning of the ship. And even the provisioning was not done with a display of urgency; it left time for a bit of recreational seal hunting when the ship anchored off the Lobos Islands: “The noise of our landing gave [the seals] the alarm, and, as we had cut them off from the water, they made the best of their way for the other side of the hill, joining in a terrific growl like so many furious mastiffs. They had reached the top of the hill, and were descending on the opposite side, when we overtook them, and very wantonly killed several.”
On August 26, in the port of Paita, Peru, “we filled the deck with pigs, poultry, and vegetables,” and the supplies looked complete, but not so complete as not to allow more than a hundred giant tortoises to be taken on in the Galápagos, where the ship arrived two weeks out of Paita.
The ship’s stop in the Marquesas, which lasted three weeks, gave Percival and Paulding an impression of the natives that derived from the competition between the Typee and Happah tribes, the conduct of “these wild ladies” (Paulding’s term), and the relatively sophisticated character of the people. Paulding’s Journal anticipates in many ways Herman Melville’s Typee, which made Nukahiva, the group’s main island, the enduring movie model of the tropical paradise.
That was not going to be the case at the next stops, all of them brief, that the Dolphin made. Caroline Island was uninhabited and notable only for high surf and shark infestation. The natives of Nukunono (“Duke of Clarence Island”) in the Tokelau group north of Samoa were thieves and hostile but easily frightened by pistol shots. On Atafu (“Duke of York Island”) nearby the natives were not merely thieves but con men who had found a way to sell the same fishing nets to the white visitors two or three times.
The Dolphin was now moving along a route that paralleled the route of the Globe after the mutiny, but was considerably to the south. Around the Ellice Islands it turned north, working through bad weather and difficult currents. On November 9 the ship was in the Gilberts, anchoring off Nikunau (“Byron’s Island”). Here it contended with a boarding party of arrogant thieves whom the officers were lucky to rid the ship of without serious incident, but a landing party, escaping from the island through almost uncrossable surf, was in serious danger. On nearby Tabiteuea (“Drummond Island”) the natives were timid at first, but no less inclined to steal, even if it were only a sailor’s hat. Other thefts were more serious. The ship was soon going to need water, and nothing would have been more natural than to send a party ashore to dig wells, but the “enterprising” character of the natives was warning enough not to try that.
The weather was becoming very squally and the currents utterly irregular. The Dolphin was within a few hundred miles of its goal, but maintaining course had become very difficult, the ship drifting back during the night as far as it had advanced in the day. Finally, on November 19, 1825, someone called out, “Land-ho!” The unprecedented rescue mission was three months out of Chorrillos.