Sea of Glory

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Wilkes’s tour in the Mediterranean proved mercifully brief. Soon after his return to New York, however, he contracted smallpox. Delirious for days at a time, his face a mass of ulcerous lesions, Wilkes, who was confined to his bedroom due to the contagiousness of the disease, “became almost beside myself that I was deprived of the pleasure of my little ones.” In December 1831, he was ordered to serve as first lieutenant aboard the Boxer, a schooner then at Boston. His poor health made it impossible for him to report for duty, delaying by six years his introduction to a midshipman who had also been ordered to the Boxer, sixteen-year-old William Reynolds.

  After a convalescence of almost a year, Wilkes received an assignment that was, short of an exploring expedition, the duty he most desired. He was ordered to join a group of five officers working on a survey of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. Jane and the children were soon settled in a cottage in Newport. As Hassler’s student, Wilkes suggested to the survey’s leader, Captain Alexander Wadsworth, that they adopt his master’s methods. Before funding had been withdrawn for the proposed exploring expedition back in 1828, Wilkes had been ordered to purchase some surveying instruments. He had taken particular pride in overseeing the construction of a theodolite—a large leg-mounted surveying instrument used to measure horizontal and vertical angles with a telescope. The theodolite was sitting unused at the Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington, and Wilkes arranged to have the instrument delivered to Newport.

  Wadsworth, an officer from the old school, remained reluctant to attempt a survey of the kind Wilkes proposed. Tensions were mounting until Jane interceded on her husband’s behalf. Jane was, according to Wilkes, “well posted on the subject,” and she soon convinced Wadsworth that her husband actually knew what he was talking about. The couple then offered Wadsworth the use of a room in their cottage as an office for the survey, allowing Wilkes to work up his calculations and draw the charts amid the cheerful bedlam of his young family.

  It was during this pleasant interlude in Newport that he responded to a navy circular requesting his ideas on the rehiring of Hassler as director of the Coast Survey. Although praising Hassler’s science, Wilkes was highly critical of his teacher’s organizational abilities and urged that Hassler be required to report to a board of navy and army officers. When presented with this plan, Hassler refused to work under any supervision. After much discussion, he was eventually hired on his own terms. The reinstated director of the Coast Survey soon learned of Wilkes’s disloyalty and let it be known that, in Wilkes’s words, “he was not altogether anxious for my services.”

  Wilkes claimed that he could not have worked with Hassler in any event, but his betrayal of his old friend and mentor would trouble him more than he cared to admit. It also robbed him of a career path that was one of the few in the navy that agreed with his talents and personality. But it was also an object lesson. If the Coast Survey could be resuscitated after a hiatus of more than a decade, then why not the exploring expedition?

  In the spring of 1833, just a few months after the birth of his third child, Edmund, Wilkes was ordered to Washington to take over the three-year-old Depot of Charts and Instruments. The Depot was where the navy’s fifty or so chronometers were tested and maintained. A chronometer is an exceptionally precise timepiece built to withstand the hostile environment of a ship at sea. Set to Greenwich Mean Time, the chronometer enables a navigator to compare the time of the noon sight with the time in Greenwich and then quickly calculate the ship’s longitude. Even the most accurate chronometers were not perfect. The trick was to determine how much an individual instrument lost or gained per day, which was known as its “rate,” and adjust accordingly. Calculating the rate of a chronometer required several noon sightings at a known location, with the average difference between the chronometer’s time and the mean time producing the error of the chronometer. In addition to an office and a room to store the instruments and charts, the Depot included a tiny observatory where the staff could perform the celestial observations for rating chronometers.

  Compared to the bustling intimacy of their native New York, Jane and Charles found Washington a virtual ghost town. “There was not an individual stirring,” Wilkes remembered, “and the Capitol arose before us in all its blankness, a most uninteresting object it then appeared, lifeless and deserted. . . . The Whole impressed us with the most gloomy foreboding.” He and Jane set out to create their own island of happiness within a city that was in 1833 little more than a vast swamp, criss-crossed with dusty dirt roads that became quagmires whenever it rained. Instead of living in the fashionable part of town near the White House, they purchased two large connected brick buildings on wind-swept Capitol Hill. Built in 1799 with funds provided by George Washington to serve as boardinghouses, the structures possessed more than enough room for a family of five and their servants. Just 1,200 feet from the Capitol, it was the perfect home for a naval officer intent on increasing his influence with the nation’s power brokers, and in April, Wilkes moved the entire Depot to his house on the Hill.

  At his own expense, he built a new observatory—just a small box, fourteen by thirteen feet and only ten feet high, with two-foot-wide doors on the roof that could be opened to the sky with a system of pulleys. Mounted on granite piers that extended six feet above the floor was a brass transit (an instrument similar to a theodolite that measures horizontal and vertical angles) that Hassler had originally purchased for the Coast Survey back in 1815. The entire building was surrounded by a ditch, five feet wide and deep, to prevent what were termed “the transmission of terrestrial vibrations”—many of them, no doubt, emanating from that big white building atop the hill. Although a meager and unimpressive structure compared to national observatories in England and France, what became known as the Capitol Hill Observatory marked a crucial first step in bringing science to the attention of the federal government.

  Wilkes soon found that living on the less fashionable side of town had its advantages. He was able to study at the nearby Library of Congress whenever he wanted, and many members of Washington’s society took to stopping to chat with Jane during their morning carriage rides. Perhaps most important to the couple was that this unusual arrangement gave them the opportunity to be a regular part of their children’s upbringing. “[W]hat we most valued,” Wilkes remembered, “[was that] our Children were Removed from all contact with others, and their lessons & our teaching was Rarely interrupted. This was a great pleasure to us as well as service to them and, as our house was roomy & the garden large, we had the choice of the children to unite with them in their home amusements; at the same time they were under our own eye.”

  For the next three years, Wilkes and Jane would also make their mark on Washington society, regularly attending parties given by a wide range of foreign dignitaries and government officials. It was commonly said in naval circles that “a cruise in Washington was worth two around Cape Horn,” and for Wilkes, this was time well spent.

  When Andrew Jackson came to office in 1829 and oversaw the abandonment of John Quincy Adams’s exploring expedition, few would have predicted that he would eventually become a fervent advocate of his own voyage of discovery. The president who had railed against the aristocratic merchants of the Northeast, and who portrayed himself as the anti-intellectual advocate of farmers in the South and West, gradually began to see the importance of science and exploration to the United States. Much of his change of heart had to do with the reality of ruling a nation that, like it or not, already had a thriving overseas trade. But there were personal factors as well. Jackson could not help but respect a man like Ferdinand Hassler, who was as ornery and determined as himself. Thus, contrary to all expectations, it was the Jackson administration that presided over the reinstatement of Hassler’s Coast Survey. On the diplomatic front, Jackson’s combative, highly nationalistic nature made it impossible for him to back away when American interests were challenged abroad, interceding with the firepower required to right any actual or perc
eived wrongs. It was what one historian has called “a frontier sense of honor” transferred from the backwoods of America to the oceans of the world. And it was the navy that must uphold the nation’s international reputation.

  In 1831, at Quallah Batoo in Sumatra, a local rajah allowed Malay pirates to attack a Boston ship involved in the pepper trade. Several crewmembers were killed, and the ship was temporarily taken and plundered. In August 1831, Captain John Downes was sent in the frigate Potomac to investigate the incident. Instead of demanding restitution and indemnity, Downes chose to launch a full-scale attack. A force of 250 sailors and marines destroyed the fort, burned the town, and killed more than a hundred natives. Although it was clear Downes had exceeded his orders, Jackson publicly praised the mission for having “increased respect for our flag in those distant seas [while providing] additional security for our commerce.”

  Beating the drum for the United States on this particular operation was none other than Jeremiah N. Reynolds. After the disappointing conclusion of his privately financed exploring expedition, Jeremiah jumped at the chance to serve as secretary to Captain Downes of the Potomac. His jingoistic account of the Potomac’s mission to Sumatra was published soon after his return to America in 1834. (He would also publish a short story based on a whaling legend he had heard in Chile titled “Mocha Dick, the White Whale of the Pacific,” which would later attract the attention of Herman Melville.)

  Once back in the United States, Jeremiah seized the day. The nation was in the midst of a period of unparalleled prosperity, and his old friend former navy secretary Samuel Southard was now a senator from New Jersey and head of the Committee on Naval Affairs. The time was right for another attempt at an exploring expedition. As he had done eight years before, he encouraged marine and scientific societies to send petitions of support to Congress, and in March 1836 Senator Southard’s committee reported a bill recommending a naval expedition to the Pacific. Two weeks later, on the evening of April 3, Jeremiah addressed Congress in the Hall of Representatives on the subject of the proposed voyage. Fired to an awesome eloquence, he breathed new life into the arguments he had made back in the 1820s. Without once mentioning Symmes, he spoke of the mystery lurking to the south, as well as the continuing need for an expedition as an aid to navigation. But his most passionate plea was in the name of science. His vision of the expedition’s civilian corps had expanded well beyond the naturalist and astronomer who were to have sailed on the voyage in 1828.

  At a time when a trip to the Pacific was equivalent to a modern-day trip to the moon, a voyage of this kind offered scientists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to investigate exotic habitats: rain forests, volcanoes, tropical lagoons, icebergs, and deserts. Before cameras and video equipment, the only way scientists could convey the scope and essence of what had been observed, besides field notes and sketches, was to bring the specimens back with them. Whether it involved shooting and skinning animals and birds, preserving delicate marine organisms in bottles of alcohol, pressing and drying plants, collecting seeds, or accumulating boxes of rocks, soil, fossils, shells, and coral, scientists in European expeditions had inevitably returned with staggering numbers of objects. At the end of the eighteenth century the great German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt had ventured to the interior of South America and proved that a scientist could base an entire career on studying the returns from a single expedition.

  Jeremiah Reynolds proposed that America mount an expedition on a scale that had never before been attempted. In keeping with the giant size and boundless ambition of the young nation it represented, the U.S. expedition would “collect, preserve, and arrange every thing valuable in the whole range of natural history, from the minute madrapore to the huge spermaceti, and accurately describe that which cannot be preserved.” In addition, the expedition’s scientists would study the languages and customs of the many peoples they encountered, while also collecting data concerning weather, navigation, the earth’s magnetism, and other fields of interest.

  Jeremiah’s stirring and patriotic call to science resonated with Congress, and an expenditure of $150,000 was approved in both houses. When a slight ripple of protest arose in the House, his ever-loyal Ohio delegation came to his defense. In response to those who claimed the expedition amounted to a “chimerical and hairbrained notion,” Thomas Hamer reminded Congress that the grain-growing states of the West had a “deep interest” in the voyage. America’s farmers needed new places to sell their surplus wheat, and the exploring expedition would help to identify potential foreign markets. Hamer’s remarks were an indication that all Americans, not just merchants from the Northeast, were beginning to appreciate the importance of the nation’s growing economic presence around the world, and it had been the prospect of an exploring expedition to the Pacific that had helped America recognize what its new role had come to be. With his second term ending in less than a year, President Jackson made a personal commitment to seeing that the expedition sailed in the next few months; as early as June 9 he wrote that he was “feeling a lively interest in the Exploring Expedition . . . [and] that it should be sent out as soon as possible.”

  Jeremiah Reynolds had called for a scientific corps that amounted to a virtual university afloat, with more than twenty scientists engaged in almost as many disciplines. Instead of two ships, the American squadron would have to include at least half a dozen vessels. Assembling a specially equipped squadron of this size would require an immense amount of planning and cooperation on the part of the U.S. Navy. Unfortunately, Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson shared little of his president’s enthusiasm for the voyage. The man who should have been the Expedition’s most zealous proponent was, in fact, its principal detractor, applying what little reserves of energy he possessed in deploying strategies to delay its departure.

  In 1836, Dickerson, a former governor and senator from New Jersey, was sixty-six years old and in bad health. An amateur botanist and member of the American Philosophical Society, Dickerson did not let his personal interest in science interfere with his commitment to a minimalist navy. In addition to the proposed Exploring Expedition, he successfully fended off efforts to create a much-needed naval academy while offering as little assistance as possible to Captain Matthew C. Perry’s nearly singlehanded efforts to demonstate the importance of steam power to the future of the navy.

  The Expedition already had a commander, Jackson’s old comrade-in-arms Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones. A little man who had been permanently disabled by the musket ball he had taken in the shoulder during the Battle of New Orleans, Jones was given sweeping powers by Jackson to assemble the projected squadron, including the flagship Macedonian. In a directive that Dickerson would do his best to subvert, Jackson insisted that the secretary not assign any officers to the Expedition to whom Jones had “well-founded objections.” Jackson also insisted that Jeremiah Reynolds be included in the Expedition, writing, “this the public expect.” Since Jeremiah was a good friend of Dickerson’s primary political foe back in New Jersey, former navy secretary Samuel Southard, Jeremiah was a man whom Dickerson was predisposed to loathe. From the beginning, Dickerson did everything in his power to exclude him from the planning of the Expedition.

  Dickerson had already asked Lieutenant Charles Wilkes at the Depot to assemble a list of the instruments the Expedition would require. Wilkes, who had been through this once before eight years earlier, quickly drew up the requested list. By the middle of July, he had decided that since the Expedition had taken on a “more enlarged scale than I at first conceived,” it would be necessary to go to Europe to procure the necessary instruments. He added that the trip would also provide the opportunity “to obtain a full knowledge of everything that had been already accomplished and attempted in the way of discovery in the Pacific Ocean.”

  Given that the Expedition was due to leave that fall, a trip to Europe might have seemed out of the question. But Wilkes, who had spent the last four years as the undisputed master
of his own private domain at the Depot, was accustomed to getting his way. He also knew that if he could persuade Dickerson to send him to Europe, he—not Jeremiah Reynolds—would become the public face of the Expedition—at least when it came to the European scientific community. On top of that, Wilkes was an ardent Jacksonian Democrat who had carefully cultivated his relationship with the secretary of the navy. Despite Jackson’s clearly worded instructions that the voyage must depart soon, Dickerson told Wilkes to sail for England.

  When he returned five months later in January 1837, the Expedition was still far from ready. Three vessels had been built, but the large timbers used to strengthen them against collisions with icebergs and coral reefs had made them dreadfully slow and difficult to handle. The selection of officers for the Expedition was going just as badly. Dickerson, in a rare instance of taking the initiative, had recommended two lieutenants—one of whom was Charles Wilkes—to command two of the vessels, but Jones felt that both candidates lacked the necessary sea experience. Although Dickerson finally withdrew his suggestions, in the months ahead he and Jones would continue to squabble over virtually every aspect of the Expedition.

  For his part, Wilkes felt that his tour of Europe had been an unqualified triumph. In addition to assembling a first-rate collection of navigational and astronomical instruments from the finest makers in England, France, and Germany, he had become personally acquainted with the scientific greats of Europe, culminating in his being an honored guest at a Royal Astronomical Society dinner. Besides “the great magnetic man,” Peter Barlow, known for his pioneering work with compasses, he met Francis Baily, vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society. Baily provided him with two state-of-the-art pendulums and spent several days instructing him in the difficult and painstaking experiments by which the pendulum measures the force of gravity.