PERILS OF CAPE HORN 



corps, Dana among the number, were transferred tempo- 

 rarily to the Relief for a cruise through the Straits of 

 Magellan. The Vincennes was left in Nassau Bay to 

 make some surveys and instrumental observations. 

 Orders were given to the Relief 'to enter the Straits by 

 the Breakneck Passage and Cockburn Channel, which 

 opens to the southward about three degrees west of Nas- 

 sau Bay, and return by the Atlantic around Cape Horn. 

 It was expected that about two months would be spent 

 by the naturalists. 



But all these projects came to naught. After beating 

 about at sea for twenty days, Commandant Long deter- 

 mined to run in and anchor under Noir Island, which 

 King had commended as an excellent harbor. Here 

 they encountered a terrific gale lasting three days and 

 three nights, during which the fate of the ship and the 

 lives of the passengers and crew hung in the balance. 



Dana's direful experience was reported to the family 

 in Utica, and it is easy to imagine the breathless atten- 

 tion with which the mother read aloud to the household 

 a narrative which is still extant. Another letter was sent 

 to Robert Bakewell, a valued friend in New Haven, and 

 it was quickly handed to one anxious friend and another, 

 including the Sillimans, Day, Herrick, and Whelpley, 

 and warm expressions of sympathetic congratulation on 

 his escape were sent to the traveller. The letters, in- 

 cluding one addressed to Dr. Gray, show that the perils 

 of the sea, and the escape from them, made a deep im- 

 pression on Dana's religious nature. 



From the Straits of Magellan northward, the Relief 

 sailed for Valparaiso, and arrived there April I4th; the 

 Vincennes came on the i$th of May, the Peacock several 

 days before. The pilot-boat which, under its new name 

 Sea-Gull, had acted as tender was never seen after leaving 

 Orange Bay, and the conclusion was ultimately reached 

 that it perished in a gale, and that two promising passed 



69 



