Sea of Glory

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Captain Isaac McKeever—the officer who had persuaded Wilkes to take on his nephew as sailing master of the Vincennes before the squadron left for the South Pacific—returned the favor by testifying that there had not been enough time for Wilkes to try the sailors and marines caught drinking in Callao. Wilkes was therefore justified in whipping each of them more than the allotted dozen lashes.

  Wilkes’s attorney was most successful in portraying Wilkes as a tireless and hardworking commander. Assistant Surgeon John Fox claimed that Wilkes “devoted his whole time to the duties of the squadron, and did not reserve to himself more than five hours a day for sleep. He was irregular in his sleep, so as to injure his health; the length of time he went without sleeping was extraordinary.” Even Wilkes’s avowed enemies acknowledged that he was “remarkably attentive to his duties.”

  There was one charge that Wilkes had no choice but to admit to. When Overton Carr was asked if he had been ordered to replace Wilkes’s coach whip with a commodore’s pennant shortly after leaving Callao, Hamilton interrupted Carr’s testimony to say that Wilkes freely acknowledged that he had flown the pennant and worn a captain’s uniform. His officers would have to wait until his defence before they heard his rationale for elevating himself in rank.

  On Saturday, August 27—ten days into Wilkes’s court-martial—the trial took on a new life. That morning the judge advocate announced that he would devote the rest of the proceedings to proving that Wilkes had deliberately lied about sighting Antarctica on January 19, 1840. Two years earlier President Van Buren had staked the reputation of the nation on Wilkes’s claim by officially announcing the discovery of a new continent. If Wilkes had lied, he had dishonored not only himself but the entire United States of America. “The Judge Advocate took his seat,” the Herald reported, “arranged his papers, and prepared for the examination of the witnesses, with the air of one who was determined to use every effort to elicit the whole truth, if possible, on this most important specification.”

  The first witness was James Alden, the watch officer when Wilkes claimed he first sighted land. Alden testified that once the squadron had returned to Sydney, Wilkes had attempted to convince him that he had seen land on the nineteenth when he was certain he hadn’t. It wasn’t until January 28, Alden insisted, that they saw land for the first time. It was damning testimony, difficult to refute, but Hamilton did the best he could. He asked Alden why, on January 31, he had recommended that Wilkes abandon their pursuit of Antarctica. “We had been constantly beset by ice and in a gale of wind for the greater part of two days,” he testified. “The ship was in imminent peril of being lost constantly. It required all hands a greater part of the time. The sick list was large; and the medical officers were the cause, by their reports, of our being called on for our opinion.” Wilkes, of course, had overridden the officers’ and medical staff ’s recommendation and continued on. Now that he had established that Wilkes had persevered in spite of his officers, Hamilton asked, “Did you ever hear any officer say Lieutenant Wilkes was a d——d lucky fellow, or words to that effect and that it was no further use of opposing him? Was not that remark made when in sight of land?” Although the question was labeled as hearsay and struck from the record, the implication was clear; Wilkes had been struggling against both the elements and his officers, whose hatred for their commander was so intense that they had been disappointed by the discovery of Antarctica. Wouldn’t men so inclined be willing to deny earlier reports of sighting land?

  Then Hamilton called the gunner John Williamson to testify. Williamson claimed that on the morning of January 19, Wilkes had questioned him if he thought he saw land in the distance. “If it isn’t land,” Williamson had responded, “I’ve never seen land.” To many, Williamson’s testimony seemed highly suspicious; at the very least, it demonstrated the dysfunctional nature of Wilkes’s command. Instead of consulting his fellow commissioned officers, Wilkes had been forced to leave the quarterdeck and approach a gunner on the gangway.

  But as the judge advocate proceeded to prove, it really made no difference whether or not Wilkes had seen land on the morning of the nineteenth. Three days earlier, on January 16, two young passed midshipmen had become the first to see what would later be recognized as the continent of Antarctica. Even though William Hudson had refused to acknowledge it and Wilkes had done his best to ignore it, the fact remained that these two young men had rescued the nation’s honor—if not Wilkes’s and Hudson’s—through their discovery. The judge advocate called William Reynolds to the stand and asked him to describe what he had seen from the masthead on that historic day.

  Reynolds: “I saw what I supposed to be high land on the morning of the 16th about 11 o’clock from the masthead, with Mr. Eld. We were looking at it an hour before we went below to report, and then procured a spyglass, and looked until we became satisfied that it was land. We went below and reported it to the officer of the deck, and Lt. Eld to Capt. Hudson. I could see the land from deck, but not so distinct as aloft. I pointed out the direction of the land to the officer of the deck, Lt. Budd. He didn’t seem to think it was land, and didn’t send anyone to the masthead to make further observation. I waited on deck some time, expecting Captain Hudson would come up; he didn’t come up, and I went below. We then tacked ship and stood off from the barrier, and there was no entry made in the log or notice taken of the report, much to my disappointment and mortification.”

  Judge Advocate: “Were you then, and are you now, convinced it was land?”

  Reynolds: “I was convinced that it was land at the time, am now so convinced, and never doubted it.”

  The true goat in this account was William Hudson, who was subsequently subjected to a heated and humiliating series of questions by the judge advocate. Not only were Hudson’s competence and intelligence brought into question, it was even suggested that he had willingly doctored his report to the secretary of the navy so as to corroborate Wilkes’s claims. “The whole matter is horrid in a national point of view,” Du Pont wrote a friend. “[ M ]y mind is clearly made up as to the moral bearing & integrity which the matter involves—though to me, Hudson stands if possible in a more unenviable light than Wilkes. Alden’s testimony tells the whole story; & to my mind the 19th was the blankest day as far as log books & Journals can show, of the whole week or ten days previous to discovery.”

  But if Wilkes’s honesty had been brought into serious doubt, the judge advocate was unable, in the end, to prove incontrovertibly that he had lied. When it came to the reputation of the Expedition, however, the damage had been done. Wilkes’s hunger for glory had permanently tainted what might otherwise have been recognized as one of the most courageous feats of exploration of the nineteenth century.

  After almost three weeks, it finally came time for Wilkes’s defence. “The room was crowded with spectators,” the Herald reported, “among whom were many ladies.” One of them was Rebecca Reynolds, just back from a brief weekend visit to West Point, from which her husband’s younger brother John had recently graduated. Wilkes had gone to the trouble and expense of having his defence printed—a pamphlet of “56 closely printed pages,” according to the Herald. Wilkes was only able to read a portion of it before his voice gave out and he handed the pamphlet over to Hamilton. “This gentleman bungled so much in his delivery,” Reynolds wrote his father, “and spoke in such monotonous & hurried tones that we wondered whether he could be reading a production of his own.”

  The defence began by relating how Wilkes had returned from the Expedition “to find that I had already been condemned in my absence.” He went on to describe the circumstances he had struggled under during the voyage. “A cabal . . . existed,” he asserted, “to thwart all the objects of the Expedition, which were not consistent with the ease of the gentlemen who composed it.” “I did not spare myself,” he continued. “I feel no derogation to my character to admit that I did not spare others when the public service was promoted.” His problem with his officers, he explained, relat
ed to two diametrically opposed theories of discipline. In a blatant attempt to appeal to the sympathies of the senior members of the court, Wilkes claimed that he subscribed to the “old discipline of the service.” “I avow myself, and shall ever be found, opposed to the new idea that authority is to be derived from the steerage and wardroom, and that officers are to be shown the instructions of their commander, and be civilly asked if they will perform their duty.” If Wilkes was a throwback to an earlier and harsher era, he was proud of it. “[T]he work we have executed . . . is enormous,” he maintained. “I attribute it to the discipline that has prevailed, and which the laws, rules and regulations of the naval service allow.”

  He claimed that the only charge that caused him “the least anxiety” was that of excessive punishment, but he was confident that it had been proven that the floggings “were absolutely necessary for the good order and discipline of the service.” When it came to the discovery of Antarctica, he now chose to acknowledge and, in fact, acclaim the sighting of land on January 16. But in Wilkes’s version of the discovery, Reynolds played no part in it. Without once mentioning his name or his testimony, Wilkes only referred to Eld’s description of the sighting. “If ever the testimony of a witness was calculated to produce an impression on the court,” he insisted, “it was that of Mr. Eld”—even though Reynolds had made essentially the same remarks earlier in the trial.

  He also attempted to explain why he had been forced to rely on the testimony of a noncommissioned officer when it came to proving he had seen land on the morning of January 19. “Those who are unacquainted with the isolation in which the etiquette of the navy places the commander of a strictly disciplined ship of war,” he wrote, “may express surprise that no interchange of opinion on the subject of land took place between myself and the officers. Such discipline being maintained, we had little communication.” He branded the judge advocate’s accusation that he had purposely lied about seeing land as a “wanton and unprovoked assault” on his reputation.

  Wilkes saved his most creative arguments for the charge concerning his having flown a commodore’s pendant and worn a captain’s uniform. “I admitted the facts stated in the specification,” he maintained, “but deny that I am therefore guilty of ‘scandalous conduct unbecoming an officer.’” The navy regulations read: “No officer shall wear a broad pendant of any kind, unless he shall have been appointed to command a squadron, or vessels on separate service.” “Mine was the command of a squadron,” he insisted, “and that regulation, if law, is my authority for using the pendant.” His argument was somewhat slipperier when it came to the matter of wearing a captain’s uniform. There was nothing on the current books that gave him the authority, he admitted, but there were some new regulations under consideration that read, “When an officer shall receive an acting appointment to fill a vacancy from the Secretary of the Navy, in conformity with these regulations, he may assume the uniform, and annex his acting rank to his signature.” What Wilkes neglected to mention, however, was that Poinsett and Paulding had specifically refused to give him an acting appointment. Still, given the trouble that the issue of rank was currently creating in the service, it was not difficult to appreciate Wilkes’s need to find a way to assert his authority over the rest of the squadron’s officers. For Reynolds and his friends, it was distressing in the extreme to think that what had been regarded as such an outrageous abuse of privilege during the Expedition might now be viewed as a mere bending of the rules.

  As he approached the end of his defence, Wilkes could not help but make a few personal references. He slammed Upshur for making a court-martial out of what so clearly should have been a court of inquiry and for giving Guillou “unprecedented” access to the files of the Navy Department. He blasted Pinkney for daring to impugn the competence of the officers of the Sea Gull in his defence. “I might contrast the intelligence, attention to duty, and untiring activity of the lamented Reid and Bacon with all that is opposite in the character of Lieutenant Pinkney.” He claimed that the judge advocate’s conduct during the trial had revealed a level of “ignorance and prejudice [that] had it not been publicly exhibited could not have been believed to exist.”

  Finally, he appealed to the judges as a “brother officer,” even as he wrapped himself in the American flag. “[A] bare verdict of not guilty is far less than the nation has a right to require at your hands,” he insisted. “Its honor, its glory, the untarnished luster of its unconquered flag, have all been assailed through me. With you rests the power of vindicating that honor, exalting that glory, and wiping off any stain which these proceedings have cast upon that banner.”

  A few days after the conclusion of the trial, the editor of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, delivered his judgment in an editorial. “Lieutenant Wilkes and his associates have exhibited some weaknesses,” he wrote, “but it may be justly doubted whether any circum-navigator, after a four years’ cruise round the world, ever returned home with fewer really tangible causes of complaint.” If there was a villain in this trial, it was Upshur, who should have investigated the loss of the Peacock and the Sea Gull rather than wasting the court’s time with so many trivial charges. “Mr. Wilkes is sensitive and quick-tempered; but did Columbus, or Cook, or Vancouver, Ross, or any other, come out as easily? This temper should be somewhat overlooked in his arduous and responsible duties. . . . No doubt Wilkes has made mistakes in some small matters, but has he not overshadowed these by his other manly qualities, energies, and conduct as commander of the expedition? Is not the whole exposition a disgrace to the navy?”

  Reynolds was deeply worried about the fate of Guillou and Pinkney. Although Johnson had been acquitted, word had leaked out that Guillou had been found guilty and sentenced to dismissal from the navy. But since he had performed such faithful service for the secretary of the navy, Upshur had made it known that if Guillou assembled as many letters of support as possible, there was a good chance President Tyler would commute the sentence. Guillou did just that, procuring letters from just about every officer in the squadron, along with letters from many influential politicians. On September 28, Tyler issued his verdict: “the sentence is mitigated by conviction to suspension without pay or emoluments for twelve months from the date of the sentence.” Pinkney would also be found guilty and suspended from duty for six months. For Reynolds, the wait for word of Wilkes’s sentence was agonizing. “I shall be in a perfect fever, until I know the result of his sentence,” he wrote his father, “and I shall be like to die if the sentence be not a severe one.”

  On September 22, Upshur issued the verdict. Wilkes was found not guilty on all charges except for illegally flogging the sailors and marines. For that, his only punishment was a public reprimand. “The sentence will astonish you,” Du Pont had written a friend, “but it will be no assessment of the way the man is estimated as a man.” Reynolds and his friends were thunderstruck, but Wilkes was not about to celebrate. “Wilkes’s extreme arrogance,” Du Pont wrote, “& conviction that he would not only be acquitted, but it would [be] accomplished with a flourish of trumpets & a swipe at his accusers, has thus rendered his sentence doubly severe to himself.”

  Du Pont carefully studied Wilkes’s reaction as the exhausted, sickly, and proud explorer listened to Upshur’s reprimand: “The country which honored you with a command far above the just claims of your rank in the navy, had a right to expect that you would, at least, pay a scrupulous respect to her laws. The rebuke, which by the judgment and advice of your associates in the service, she now gives you, for having violated those laws in an important particular, involving the rights of others of her citizens, will be regarded by all as the mildest form in which she could express her displeasure.”

  “Wilkes was cut to the very soul by his sentence & the wording of the reprimand,” Du Pont wrote. “He writhed severely under it & swears vengeance against Upshur.”

  The voyage had ended; five courts-martial had been heard; but as the Expedition’s scientists and artist
s were well aware, there was still much work to be done. There were collections to be analyzed, reports to be published, but first and foremost, there was a narrative to be written. The battle for control of the Expedition’s legacy was about to begin. For Charles Wilkes, it would be the battle of his life.

  CHAPTER 15

  This Thing Called Science

  IN EUROPE there was a long-standing tradition by which the expedition’s commander penned his own narrative. But Secretary Abel Upshur had other ideas. He had decided that a literary friend of his from Virginia named Robert Greenhow should chronicle the voyage. By this point, Wilkes had gained the support of a new and powerful ally in Senator Benjamin Tappan, a Democrat from Ohio and an amateur conchologist. During a dinner party back in March 1840, Tappan had fallen into conversation with then Secretary of the Navy James Paulding, who had promised some of the Expedition’s shells for the senator’s collection. Whether or not Wilkes ever provided him with the shells, Tappan took up the lieutenant’s cause soon after his arrival in Washington. As chairman of the Senate’s Joint Library Committee, Tappan was in a position to thwart Upshur’s attempts to appoint Greenhow as author of the Expedition’s narrative. With Tappan’s help, Wilkes maintained possession of the officers’ journals and was able to begin work on his book that fall.