Sea of Glory

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  In a May 5, 1838, letter to Wilkes, the naturalist Titian Peale states that “a reduction in the number of members of the Scientific Corps . . . is absolutely requisite as far as regards the beneficial results of the Exped” (KSHS). For information about Joel Poinsett, I have relied on the Dictionary of American Biography and Stanton, pp. 60-61. John Quincy Adams’s stern words to Poinsett about the Expedition are in the Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volume 9, p. 491. Poinsett’s March 1, 1838, letter to Dickerson is in LRWEE.

  CHAPTER 3: MOST GLORIOUS HOPES

  William Reynolds speaks of reading in the Library of Congress in an April 24, 1838, letter to his sister Lydia. Unless otherwise indicated, William Reynolds’s letters are located at the Shadeck-Fackenthal Library, Franklin and Marshall College. Reynolds speaks of “the immaculate ‘Bowditch’” in a November 19, 1836, letter to Lydia; he writes of Lydia’s relationship with Rebecca Krug in an October 30, 1836, letter. He tells of a midshipman being “bilged” in a May 26, 1837, letter. Howard Chapelle provides the dimensions of the Pennsylvania in The History of the American Sailing Navy, pp. 371-72, 549. Reynolds tells of the Pennsylvania’s voyage to Norfolk in a January 6, 1837, letter to Lydia. Herman Viola provides information on Reynolds’s family background in his introduction to Voyage to the Southern Ocean, pp. xxviii-xxix. Reynolds’s letter describing a typical day at the Depot is dated April 24, 1838. In a May 1, 1838, letter he writes of his admiration of Wilkes, and on May 13, 1838, he writes of Wilkes’s family seal.

  Wilkes recounts how he was awarded command of the Ex. Ex. and then put the squadron together during the spring and summer of 1838 in ACW, pp. 333-59, 370-72, 374. Beverley Kennon’s April 13, 1838, letter protesting Wilkes’s appointment is in LRWEE. Joseph Smith’s April 21, 1838, letter of congratulations to Wilkes is at KSHS. The congressional debates involving Wilkes’s appointment are contained in the Congressional Globe, 25th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 297.

  Lieutenant Matthew Maury, a bitter rival and critic of Wilkes, claimed that Poinsett wanted to offer him the same opportunity Poinsett gave Wilkes. Maury wrote a friend that Poinsett had asked him to tell him, without regard to rank, who was the officer most qualified to lead the Expedition. Even though he felt he was the best suited, he gave Poinsett a list of officers with his name at the bottom, claiming he felt he had no right “to draw distinctions among brother officers.” Maury said that Poinsett “froze up in disgust . . . and gave Wilkes the command, and so I was the gainer, for I preserved my integrity.” Rather than a question of integrity, it may have been a lack of personal courage. Maury was even farther down the list than Wilkes, and his appointment would have inspired an even greater uproar—if indeed Poinsett was seriously considering him for the command. Later in his career, Maury would prove just as politically opportunistic, if not more so, than Wilkes. See Frances Williams’s Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the Sea, pp. 114-20.

  In volume one of William Hudson’s official journal of the Expedition (at the American Museum of Natural History, New York), Hudson was careful to include a copy of Poinsett’s June 5, 1838, letter insisting that the Expedition was “purely civil.” James Natland’s comments about James Dana’s religious conversion prior to the departure of the Expedition appear in his “At Vulcan’s Shoulder: James Dwight Dana and the Beginning of Planetary Volcanology,” pp. 312-39. In an April 3, 1838, diary entry, Secretary of the Navy Dickerson writes, “Mr. Poinsett considered as dying” (The New Jersey Historical Society). An April 7, 1838, letter from Hudson to Wilkes (at Duke University [DU]) reveals that it was Hudson’s idea to replace the ships’ iron water tanks with casks.

  Reynolds’s description of how he and May assisted Wilkes in his observations is in a June 17, 1838, letter to Lydia. Wilkes requested the acting lieutenant appointments in a July 11, 1838, letter to Paulding, LRWEE; on the back of the letter Paulding notes the appointments as going to Carr, Walker, Johnson, Hartstene, Alden, Case, Emmons, Perry, Underwood, and Dale. The reference to “refractory and evil spirits” resulting from “senior officers contending among themselves” is from Matthew Fontaine Maury’s “Scraps from the Lucky Bag,” published anonymously in the Southern Literary Messenger, April 1840, p. 235. For an excellent analysis of the issue of rank in the nineteenth-century U.S. Navy, see Donald Chisholm’s Waiting for Dead Men’s Shoes: Origins and Development of the U.S. Navy’s Officer Personnel System, 1793-1941, especially Chapter 8, “Movement Toward Rationalization, 1837-44,” pp. 167-94; my thanks to John Hattendorf for bringing this source to my attention. In a June 11, 1838, letter to his uncle (at DU), Wilkes’s nephew Wilkes Henry writes that “From Mr. Waldron [the purser of the Vincennes] I heard that Mr. H. would hereafter be Captn Hudson. It must give you a great deal of pleasure.” Wilkes refers to Poinsett’s change of heart after his illness in ACW, p. 372; elsewhere in ACW Wilkes describes how Poinsett “left the impression on my mind that it was the intention of the Govt to do it [give him and Hudson acting appointments] just before the departure of the Expedition and I was gulled into the belief it would be done and from day to day anticipated receiving Acg Commissions, but none came,” p. 371. Wilkes also claimed that after the Expedition had been concluded Poinsett “admitted to me that it had been a great omission on the part of the Government to have entrusted me with such an important Command without conferring on me the Mantle of a nominal rank,” ACW, p. 371. Wilkes’s half-joking reference to having Jane come along as his “assistant” was written in July 1838 from Norfolk and is at DU; unless otherwise indicated, all letters between Wilkes and Jane are located at Duke University. Wilkes’s July 19, 1838, letter to Poinsett about the acting captain appointments for himself and Hudson is in LRWEE.

  In A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession, Christopher McKee provides a detailed description of the preparation of a naval vessel for a presidential visit, p. 123. Edgar Allan Poe’s tribute to Jeremiah Reynolds’s role in instigating the Expedition is included in his review of a pamphlet about the Exploring Expedition in Graham’s Magazine, September 1843, pp. 164-65. Jeremiah Reynolds’s reference to Wilkes as a “cunning little Jacob” is taken from an anonymous article written by Matthew Maury, in Reynolds’s Pacific and Indian Oceans, p. 464. William Reynolds’s enthusiastic letter to Lydia about the final preparations for the Expedition is dated August 12, 1838. Wilkes’s sorrowful letter to Jane about leaving her and the children was written August 11, 1838. The description of Wilkes’s captain uniform is taken from the Wilkes Court-Martial Records, Vol. 44, No. 827, p. 26. William Reynolds’s description of the “éclat” of the Expedition’s officers at the eve of departure is from an unpublished manuscript describing Wilkes’s behavior during the Expedition (subsequently referred to as Manuscript) at FMC, p. 1. Wilkes refers to the acting captain appointment as his “shield of protection” in ACW, pp. 370-71. Wilkes’s final letter to Poinsett describing his “mortification” is dated August 18, 1838, and is at the Pennsylvania Historical Society. The pilot’s report of the high morale of the Expedition’s officers appears in the August 25, 1838, Niles Register. Wilkes’s description of feeling “doomed to destruction” is from his Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (subsequently referred to as Narrative), vol. 1, p. 3.

  CHAPTER 4: AT SEA

  I have based my description of the squadron’s departure on an illustration in Charles Erskine’s Twenty Years Before the Mast, p. 15. Wilkes claims the Vincennes can “do everything but talk” in an April 5, 1840, letter to fellow explorer James Ross, reprinted in the appendix to vol. 2 of the Narrative, pp. 453-56. Louis Bolander in “The Vincennes, World Traveler of the Old Navy” in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings cites a reference to the cabin of the flagship being a “pavilion of elegance,” p. 826. First Lieutenant Thomas Craven’s praise of the Vincennes is in a June 10, 1838, letter to Wilkes in KSHS. Philip Lundeberg in “Ships and Squadron Logistics” in MV speaks of the alterations to the Vincennes and the thirty-six-foot stern cabin, p. 152; he also provides excellent information
about the other Expedition vessels. See also Lundenberg’s and Dana Wegner’s “‘Not for Conquest But Discovery’: Rediscovering the Ships of the Wilkes Expedition” in American Neptune, pp. 151-67. Howard Chapelle discusses the Expedition vessels in The History of the American Sailing Navy, specifically mentioning the Relief’s innovative use of spencers on all three masts, p. 389. Stanton, who also provides an overview of the Expedition’s vessels on the squadron’s departure from Norfolk, cites the Peacock’s difficulties on the Persian Gulf, p. 75. Hudson discusses his concerns about his vessel in his log. Philip Lundeberg has compiled a useful comparison of exploring vessels in Appendix 1, “Characteristics of Selected Exploring Vessels” in MV, p. 255. Wilkes speaks of his “very distressing thoughts” in ACW, p. 376. A copy of Wilkes’s instructions is included in the Narrative, vol. 1, pp. xxv-xxxi. Wilkes writes Jane of his “fatigues” on September 2, 1838.

  William Reynolds discusses Wilkes’s changing uniform; for most of the first year of the voyage, Wilkes’s “shoulders, with an excess of modesty, had not even borne the single swab, the only insignia, which his rank as a Lieutenant in the Navy, and as the ‘first officer,’ in Command of the Squadron, entitled him to”; Manuscript, p. 17. In a September 1, 1838, letter to Jane, Wilkes writes, “I have made Carr my flag Lieut. . . . and [he] is much with me.” In a personal communication (February 9, 2002), William Fowler expresses his doubts about Wilkes’s having the authority to name a flag lieutenant. Dudley Pope writes insightfully about the solitude of command, as well as different command styles, in Life in Nelson’s Navy, pp. 62-64. J. C. Beaglehole in The Life of Captain James Cook speaks of Cook’s “paroxysms of passion,” p. 711. Reynolds mentions that Wilkes “was accustomed to be the guest of the ward room,” as well as Wilkes’s habit of squishing spiders, in his Manuscript, p. 5. Wilkes describes how he responded to the facial hair challenge in ACW, pp. 384-85. He speaks of his ability to read the characters of his officers in an October 21, 1838, letter to Jane.

  Unless otherwise indicated, all of Reynolds’s quotations are from his private journal. He writes of the “youthful faces” among the officers in an August 30, 1838, letter to Lydia. In a September 16, 1838, letter to Jane, Wilkes mentions his breakfast with Reynolds and May. In a May 8, 1838, letter to Lydia, Reynolds tells how he was mistaken for his friend May. Wilkes writes Jane of how “very smoothly” his relations with his officers have been in a September 26, 1838, letter. In an October 21, 1838, letter to Jane, he predicts that in a short while “I shall have gained [the officers’] affections and will be enabled to do most anything with them.” Charles Erskine describes his contemplated murder of Wilkes in Twenty Years Before the Mast, pp. 14-20.

  Reynolds refers to the “graceful beauty” of the schooners in a September 6 entry of a letter to Lydia begun on August 30, 1838. George Emmons refers to the schooners as “the pets of the squadron” in the February 5, 1838, entry of his journal (at Yale). In an October 21, 1838, letter to Jane, Wilkes tells of both Craven’s and Lee’s pleas to Hudson that they be given command of the schooners. Reynolds describes Wilkes’s daily inspection of the schooners in his Manuscript, pp. 4-5. Wilkes’s September 13, 1838, order concerning journals is included in the appendix to volume 1 of the Narrative, pp. 367-68. Reynolds speaks of the George Porter incident in both his journal and a September 15, 1838, entry in his August letter to Lydia.

  For a brief history of Madeira, see Jean Ludtke’s Atlantic Peeks: An Ethnographic Guide to the Portuguese-Speaking Islands, pp. 233-34. Samuel Eliot Morison discusses Christopher Columbus’s relationship to Madeira in Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 517-19. The amount of Madeira taken by Cook in 1768 is noted in The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768-1771, edited by J. C. Beaglehole, p. 8; my thanks to John Hattendorf for bringing this to my attention. Wilkes tells of the wine he purchased in ACW, p. 388. In a revealing passage in ACW, Wilkes states, “It was surmised that when I had got through my Scientific duties and preparations & was to take command of my own ship and the Squadron, I would be embarrassed and prove a failure, but I felt myself completely at home and gave my attention to all parts essential to the Service,” p. 374. As he makes clear in the subsequent description of how he proceeded to frustrate First Lieutenant Craven’s attempts to make crew assignments, Wilkes was anything but “at home” on the deck of the Vincennes.

  Wilkes describes how the squadron searched out doubtful shoals in his Narrative, vol. 1, p. 28. For information on bioluminescence, I have depended on Richard Ellis’s Encyclopedia of the Sea, pp. 36, 95, 255. For information on Magellanic Clouds, I consulted the Web site www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/orbit/2. For information on the artists James Drayton and especially Alfred Agate, I have looked to Philip Lundeberg’s “Legacy of an Artist Explorer,” pp. 1-5. Bernard Smith in European Vision and the South Pacific writes about the camera lucida, p. 255. William Reynolds tells of the busy scene on Enxadas Island in a December 4, 1838, letter to Lydia. Wilkes refers to the anxiety he was feeling in Rio in a December 22, 1838, letter to Jane. Doris Esch Borthwick’s “Outfitting the U.S. Exploring Expedition” contains a good description of how a pendulum experiment was conducted in the nineteenth century. The description of Wilkes’s outburst while performing experiments in Rio is contained in a small daybook kept by William Reynolds, in which he appears to have recorded testimony from the court of inquiry Wilkes later called in Valparaiso, Chile, to investigate the actions of Lieutenant John Dale. Reynolds speaks of the ominous nature of these “little outbreaks” in his Manuscript, p. 6.

  In a November 25, 1838, letter to Jane, Wilkes writes, “[Nicholson] calls us all Mr. Hudson, Mr. Wilkes and I spoke to him yesterday about it & told him that if I had a disposition to retaliate, I should call him only Capn Nicolson.” Commodore Nicholson’s correspondence with Wilkes while the Expedition was at Rio is at KSHS; he makes the comments about Wilkes not being a captain in a January 4, 1839, letter. Wilkes tells of crying during a pendulum experiment in a December 9, 1838, letter to Jane; he tells of his physical collapse in a December 22, 1838, letter to Jane; he also describes the incident in ACW, p. 398.

  In a January 2, 1839, letter to Wilkes, Commodore Nicholson writes, “I most sincerely regret we have ever met, as since you have been in this Port, with every disposition on my part to serve and aid you, you have evinced nothing but dissatisfaction.” On a copy of Wilkes’s correspondence with Nicholson, Secretary of the Navy Paulding scribbled a March 13, 1839, note concerning Wilkes’s “tone of feeling which does not seem to be called for by the occasion” (KSHS). William Reynolds writes of Wilkes’s “hanging back” when it came to the approach to Cape Horn in his Manuscript, p. 7. Wilkes speaks in detail about his suspension of Craven in ACW, 403-5. Reynolds writes of how some of Wilkes’s officers initially defended his actions in his Manuscript, p. 6.

  Joseph Couthouy mentions Thomas Piner’s comments about “getting into the suburbs” in the February 6, 1838, entry of his journal (at the Museum of Science, Boston). Captain Porter’s words about the horrors of rounding Cape Horn are in his Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Frigate Essex, p. 84. For information about tacking a square-rigged ship, I have consulted John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, pp. 181-89.

  CHAPTER 5: THE TURNING POINT

  James Cook’s words upon reaching his Ne Plus Ultra appear in J. C. Beaglehole’s Life of Captain James Cook, pp. 365-66. When it came to Wilkes’s assigning two new commanders to the schooners, he later claimed that a “drinking bout” on the Flying Fish contributed to his decision to remove Passed Midshipman Samuel Knox from command, ACW, p. 406. Wilkes tells of how he acted to “astonish” the squadron by dismissing Lee in a February 23, 1839, letter to Jane; in that letter he adds that he was forced “to cut him off by way of example although he is a very good officer as respects to duty.” Robert Johnson refers to the “devilish Schooners” in a February 18, 1839, entry in his journal. On Weddell’s 1823 record sail south, see Jacques Brosse’s Great Voy
ages of Discovery, p. 185. Wilkes tells of their encounter with the whaleship in his Narrative, vol. 1, p. 134. Wilkes describes himself in “excellent spirits” in a February 26, 1839, letter to Jane.

  Johnson tells about the repair of the Sea Gull’s broken gaff in the February 28, 1839, entry of his journal. On the Antarctic Convergence, see Edwin Mickleburgh’s Beyond the Frozen Sea, p. 22. Johnson speaks of the many penguins and whales in his March 1, 1839, journal entry. Wilkes compares an iceberg to the Capitol building in a March 31, 1839, letter to Jane; he also speaks of his exchange with Ringgold about “adventuring with boldness.” The sealer Robert Fildes’s description of the South Shetland Islands as a place created by a drunken Mother Nature appears in E. W. Hunter Christie’s The Antarctic Problem, p. 91. Johnson describes the ice-encrusted state of the Sea Gull in a March 5, 1839, journal entry. Wilkes speaks of being “so full of energy” in a May 22, 1839, letter to Jane. Kenneth Bertrand details the route taken by Jeremiah Reynolds’s privately funded voyage south in Americans in Antarctica, pp. 144-58. Jacques Brosse in Great Voyages of Discovery tells of d’Urville’s unsuccessful first attempt to sail south in 1837-38, pp. 185-89.

  William Hudson complains of the leaky condition of the Peacock in a March 11, 1839, journal entry. Titian Peale tells of being awakened by Lieutenant Perry and his snowball in a March 9, 1839, entry. George Emmons tells of William Stewart’s fall in a March 10, 1839, journal entry. Hudson describes the Sunday service he conducted in a March 17, 1839, entry. Hudson complains of “this fancy kind of sailing” in a March 17 entry.

  All of James Palmer’s account of the Flying Fish’s sail south appears in “Antarctic Adventures of the United States’ Schooner Flying-Fish in 1839” in the appendix of Thulia: A Tale of the Antarctic, a book-length poem Palmer wrote about the voyage, pp. 65-72. William Walker’s account of the voyage appears in the appendix of volume 1 of Wilkes’s Narrative, pp. 408-14. My description of the formation of grease ice is from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency’s Antarctic Pilot, p. 18. In The Antarctic Problem, E. W. Hunter Christie says that the Flying Fish’s voyage was “no mean achievement in so small a vessel so late in the season,” p. 135. See also Henderson Norman’s “The Log of the Flying-Fish” in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, pp. 363-69.