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The Homecoming. At last the patch was set. The men started up 22 pumps. One hour, two, three—and slowly, reluctantly, the African Queen began to stir. A tug hove to, ready to tow the Queen by the stern the no miles down to Norfolk. But the cripple's rudder was stuck hard left. The sea tossed the Queen back against the shoal, and she shuddered. For two days they tried to budge the rudder. Finally they brought in a pair of twelve-ton hydraulic jacks—and the rudder moved.
In tow, the African Queen lurched, got groggily under way at two knots. The salvagers kept working the pumps. Aching, worn out, fearful of the approaching Hurricane Gracie, they kept at it day and night. Once Deir went to sleep on his feet, was guided to his grubby bunk as he mumbled over and over, "Got to get this ship in, that's all that matters."
Forty-two hours after the African Queen was freed from the shoal, the salvagers made out Virginia Beach in the distance. Six hours later the Queen entered Norfolk Harbor. It was well past midnight when four tugs pushed her into a shipyard berth, and families and friends waited on the docks in the eerie glare of floodlights. The men stumbled down the gangway. One fell sobbing into the arms of his wife. "Oh, God," he cried, "we made it—but I could never do it again."
It seemed extremely unlikely that Lloyd Deir and his men would realize as much money as they had hoped; professional salvage people figured that the African Queen might bring $200,000, or $300,000 at the most. But Deir and his companions had something else: the memory and pride of having endured and survived a saga of the sea.