Thousands of Families, One Pier: The Lincoln Comes Home to San Diego

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has tied up again in San Diego, closing out a deployment of 321 days. That is nearly eleven months away, and it ranks among the longest stretches the Navy has asked of a ship and her crew in decades. For the thousands of families who gathered at the base to meet her, the length of the absence is the whole story. Anyone who has stood on a seawall waiting for a particular sail to clear the inlet knows a little of what that waterfront looked like. A ship this size does not slip in quietly, and a crowd this size does not wait quietly either. The arithmetic of a homecoming is simple: one hull, one pier, and every person who has been counting the days since last autumn. The season on the island opens with its own arrivals, but none of them took 321 days to make.

With reporting from Vanity Fair.