Sea of Glory

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  As he had told Poinsett, Wilkes planned to rely on a corps of young, energetic officers who had just passed their examinations. On most naval vessels, a passed midshipman was relegated to a subordinate role, but on the Exploring Expedition a different standard would prevail. “[T]he Passed Midshipmen will perform the duties of Lieutenants,” Reynolds excitedly wrote Lydia. Wilkes felt it was important that the more senior passed midshipmen be given acting appointments, temporary promotions that reflected their increased responsibilities during the voyage. Soon after Poinsett had been struck down by illness, Mahlon Dickerson was replaced by James Paulding as secretary of the navy. In July, Wilkes asked Paulding to grant the rank of acting lieutenant to ten of the passed midshipmen. Unfortunately Reynolds and May were too far down the list to be included.

  Wilkes was under the impression that Poinsett had already agreed that he and his second-in-command William Hudson would be given acting appointments as captains. Since it would leapfrog both of them past the rank of commander, the appointments would undoubtedly infuriate the already irate navy hierarchy. But it would have been just as scandalous to place the nation’s first exploring expedition, a squadron comprising six vessels and several hundred men, under the command of a mere lieutenant.

  The issue of rank had become a matter of deep concern in the U.S. Navy. In Britain and France, an officer could aspire to the rank of admiral, but in the United States he could rise no higher than captain, with the title of commodore being given to a captain who commanded a squadron. When an American naval officer encountered a European officer of equivalent age and experience, he was inevitably outranked—a difficult and often embarrassing situation for an officer attempting to uphold the honor of his country. But it wasn’t simply a question of creating the proper impression in foreign ports. If an officer was to maintain discipline among his own officers, he needed to outrank them. Due to the backlog in promotions in the peacetime navy, many lieutenants were placed in the unenviable position of commanding officers of their own rank. “It poisons the very fountain of discipline,” an anonymous naval officer insisted in a widely read article of the day, “and never fails to bring forth insubordination—letting loose among the crew those refractory and evil spirits, which discipline alone can chain down.” Wilkes was not out of bounds in expecting an acting appointment to captain.

  Unfortunately, Poinsett’s illness made it impossible for Wilkes to confirm his understanding about this critical issue. Assuming the promotions would be forthcoming, he instructed his purser to pay both himself and Hudson as captains. In the middle of July, Poinsett had recovered enough to resume his former duties. To Wilkes’s shock and disappointment, the secretary of war backed away from what Wilkes felt had been an earlier promise to make him a captain. Wilkes attributed the change of heart to Poinsett’s illness, claiming that his “boldness and grasping of thought . . . had been greatly weakened.” He could only hope that as the day of the squadron’s departure approached, Poinsett would make it right.

  Counseling him on this and many other issues was Jane. It is clear that her influence extended well beyond mere pillow talk. Wilkes regarded her as his “assistant” and at one point suggested (only half jokingly) that she and the children might accompany him on the Expedition. “I only wish I could have you as my second in command,” he wrote from Norfolk in July, “and all would go well. What think you of rigging yourself in men’s clothes . . . and all our chicks as little middies [and then] embarking with me.” When on July 19, Jane gave birth to their fourth child, Eliza, it meant that, at least for a time, she must concentrate on other things besides her busy husband and his voyage.

  On the day of Jane’s delivery, Wilkes sat down to draft a long and impassioned letter to Poinsett. Now, more than ever before, Wilkes realized that if he was to bear the full weight of his command throughout the long, arduous voyage that lay ahead, he needed an acting appointment to captain. He understood why Poinsett was reluctant to give him the acting appointment he deserved. The secretary had already suffered the wrath of nearly the entire department by appointing him to lead the Expedition. But a promise was a promise. “[O]n this I did rely,” Wilkes wrote. If he had suspected he would not be awarded an acting appointment, he would have never agreed to command the Expedition. The following week, President Van Buren was scheduled to travel to Norfolk with Poinsett and Paulding to review the fleet. Wilkes felt it would be only appropriate if the acting appointments were made official during that ceremony.

  On July 26 President Van Buren and his retinue arrived at Norfolk. Colorful signal flags fluttered from the rigging. All the officers, the full marine detachment, and the marine band were lined up on the quarterdeck of each vessel. Aloft, the enlisted men, in white duck trousers and blue jackets, stood on the yards and booms, facing the president. Since the chronometers had not yet been brought aboard, Wilkes allowed the guns to fire a salute.

  About sixty people sat down to a “bounteous lunch” in honor of the Expedition. (Although Commodore Lewis Warrington and the other officers of the navy yard had been invited, none of them chose to attend.) Toasts were delivered. Much wine was drunk. “It was a well timed encouragement,” Wilkes remembered, “and showed that, however the officers [of the navy yard] might feel themselves opposed to it, the Gov[ernment]t gave me its full Sanction.”

  But instead of elation, Wilkes felt a gloom settling over him. Apparently, the acting appointments were not forthcoming—at least not that day. When Poinsett praised the progress that had been made so far, Wilkes responded “that I was not deceived or to be humbugged by such things.”

  By the beginning of August, Jeremiah Reynolds, the Expedition’s original promoter, realized that he was about to be left behind. Dozens of letters, many of them from his supporters in Ohio, had been written insisting that he be included, but Jeremiah’s most articulate defender was the writer Edgar Allan Poe. Poe had become so fascinated with Symmes’s and Jeremiah’s earlier claims about the holes in the poles that he had written several short stories and even a novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, that referred to a mysterious opening at the bottom of the earth. Poe would later pay tribute to Jeremiah’s role in instigating the Expedition: “Take from the enterprise the original impulse which he gave—the laborious preliminary investigation which he undertook—the unflinching courage and the great ability . . . by which he ensured its consummation—let the Expedition have wanted all this, and what would the world have had of it but the shadow of a shade?” In the years ahead, Jeremiah would insist that Wilkes—that “cunning little Jacob”—had schemed along with Dickerson to deny him his due. But long before Wilkes was named to the command, Jeremiah had been foolish enough to take on the secretary of the navy in the pages of The New York Times. As Jeremiah knew better than anyone, the politics of the Ex. Ex. had been part chess game, part internecine warfare, and the only man left standing after a decade of struggle was Charles Wilkes.

  In the meantime, the other Reynolds was busy preparing for the voyage of his dreams. In early July, Passed Midshipman William Reynolds had briefly visited his family in Lancaster. After picking up his clothing and other supplies, he traveled to Norfolk to join the squadron. By August, the departure date had been pushed back to the middle of the month.

  Reynolds was in charge of purchasing food for his mess, the group of officers with whom he would be sharing meals for the foreseeable future. On August 12, he wrote Lydia telling her he had been “most busily and arduously engaged in Expending $1000 for the Mess & $600 for myself: we have a great many stores, and I flatter myself that the mess over which I preside will be the most respectable, tasty, and somewhat stylish.” He would be sharing a stateroom with his best friend May on the Expedition’s flagship, the Vincennes. May, who had been assisting Wilkes, had not yet arrived from Washington, leaving Reynolds to prepare their living quarters. Although it was not yet finished, he claimed the room “will be carpeted, cushioned, curtained (one set crimson damask, one white), mirrored, silver
candlesticks, etc. etc.—a little boudoir, most exquisitely luxurious in its arrangements.”

  The squadron was now, for the first time, fully assembled, and Reynolds was delighted by the addition of the two schooners, just delivered from New York. “Passed Midshipmen will command them,” he enthused to Lydia. “I wish my rank would entitle me to one. ’[T]is something to be a Captain [the title applied by courtesy to any commander of a vessel], and those Boats are large, beautiful & swift—perhaps I may return Captain Reynolds.”

  He was also fascinated by the most unusual passengers who would be accompanying them on the voyage: the “Scientifics.” “I like the associates we shall have during the cruise, these enthusiastic artists, and those headlong, indefatigable pursuers & slayers of birds, beasts & fishes & gatherers of shells, rocks, insects, etc. etc.” What particularly interested Reynolds about these men was that it was not the promise of glory or wealth that had inspired them to sail on a voyage around the world, but their thirst for knowledge: “They are leaving their comfortable homes to follow the strong bent of their minds, to garner up strange things of strange lands, which proves that the ruling passion is strong in life. . . . We, the ignoramuses, will no doubt take great interest in learning the origin, nature & history of many things, which we have before regarded with curious and admiring eyes.” To make sure he had an adequate record of his experiences, he purchased two large journals. “[I]f I fill them,” he told Lydia, “I trust I shall make a perusal interesting.”

  In a hasty addendum written the following evening, his enthusiasm was even greater than the day before. “I am perfectly charmed with everything on board,” he gushed, “& have the most glorious hopes of a most glorious cruise. [N]othing could tempt me to withdraw. I am wedded to the Expedition and its fate, sink or swim.”

  On August 10, it was time for Wilkes to head to Norfolk. “I will not soon forget the scene at the Breakfast table,” he wrote Jane the next day, “with your dear self and little Eliza at your breast & those other children around. It was enough to have halted any man [even] if his heart had been made of stone and [has] made me cry a dozen times since. How much comfort & happiness I have left behind.” He was leaving not only his wife, but his best and perhaps only true friend, a person with whom he had lived and worked for most of his adult life. Wilkes knew that when he returned in three to four years, his youngest daughter Eliza would have no memory of her father.

  By Sunday, August 12, he was in his freshly painted cabin aboard the Vincennes, awaiting the sailing orders he had already drafted but which needed to be formally issued by the secretary of the navy. Wilkes would not have been faulted if he had taken time that evening to bask in the glory of his achievement. He had done all that he had promised he would do. Despite almost every kind of opposition, Wilkes had assembled a squadron of six vessels and 346 men. Almost miraculously, he had succeeded in turning around the Expedition’s morale. Instead of the nest of intrigue and mistrust it had been just a few months before, the squadron was now characterized by an extraordinary eagerness and zeal. Years later, William Reynolds would remember the astonishing sense of promise he and his fellow officers felt at the voyage’s onset.

  The Commander of the Expedition was hailed by all his subordinates, with an éclat that must have touched his feelings. The impression in his favour was universal, and the most unlimited confidence as to his abilities as a leader, and his character as a man, was the deep and proper feeling of those who were to trust to him so much. Not a few were bound to him with a personal devotion that was almost chivalrous in its extent, and which had been created by a recent association with him on a perilous service, the survey of a bank in the open ocean. The fervour of these gentlemen, communicated itself to others, who with the ardour of youth, and the impulse of their nature, were ready to believe that the object of such generous promise must be the very beau ideal of a Captain for the hazardous enterprise in which they had embarked.

  But Wilkes was in no mood to enjoy the marvel he had created. He had heard nothing about his and Hudson’s acting appointments. In a final, now blighted gesture of optimism, they had brought with them new captain’s uniforms, each equipped with two epaulet straps instead of a lieutenant’s one and a round jacket with four buttons over each pocket flap. It was humiliating to have to tell Hudson that they could not yet put them on. It was not a matter of ceremony; the acting appointments were absolutely vital if he was to lead this squadron. With a hurt that still festered decades later, he remembered in his Autobiography that he needed the rank of captain “to give force to my position and surround me with, as it were, a shield of protection.”

  Desperately missing his wife and children, and without this crucial vote of confidence from the secretary of war, Wilkes was being abandoned to his fate, just as his own widowed father had done back when he was four years old. “I hope you will never feel the mortification that I do at this moment,” he wrote in a final letter to Poinsett, “at being left now to grapple with things that the Govt. might have put under my entire control by the one act of giving Mr. Hudson and myself temporary acting app[ointment]ts for this service and which I consider was fully pledged to us. . . . I have one consolation left that everything that we do earn by our exertions will be due entirely to ourselves.”

  By the morning of Sunday, August 18, the squadron had weighed anchor and made sufficient progress that it was time to bid farewell to the pilot. Later, the pilot would report that the sight of six naval vessels, all under full sail in a light breeze on a sunny summer day, was “highly pleasing,” especially since he had never seen officers “more bent on accomplishing all within their power for the honor and glory of the navy and of the country.”

  As he stood on the quarterdeck surveying the squadron behind him, Wilkes could not help but feel self-doubt. Like it or not, he was just a lieutenant, with less sea experience than many of his passed midshipmen. “It required all the hope I could muster to outweigh the intense feeling of responsibility that hung over me,” he wrote. “I may compare it to that of one doomed to destruction.”

  Part Two

  CHAPTER 4

  At Sea

  WILKES’S FLAGSHIP was one of the most beloved ships in the U.S. Navy. Beamy, yet surprisingly fast, the 127-foot sloop-of-war Vincennes, built in 1826, would so impress her new commander in the months ahead that he would boast that she could “do everything but talk.” In 1830, the Vincennes (named for the Revolutionary-era fort for which the present-day Indiana town is named) became the first U.S. naval vessel to circumnavigate the world; six years later she completed her second trip around the globe. Since then the Vincennes had been put in dry dock and given a complete overhaul. Painted black, with a white interior, she was now, according to First Lieutenant Thomas Craven, “the finest looking ship I ever saw.” Built atop the Vincennes’s original aft cabin, once described as “a pavilion of elegance,” was a new thirty-six-foot-long space that significantly increased the ship’s functionality. In addition to staterooms for Wilkes and several scientists, this new stern cabin contained a large reception room equipped with drafting tables, a library, and a large conference table. The stern cabin would serve as the command center of the squadron for the duration of the cruise.

  Sailing close behind the Vincennes was another, slightly smaller sloop-of-war, the 118-foot Peacock—named to commemorate the victory of the USS Hornet over HMS Peacock during the War of 1812. Originally built to be the flagship of the abandoned 1828 expedition, the Peacock had seen plenty of hard service over the intervening decade. Just the year before she had been nearly lost at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. After sixty hours of being pounded on a reef, she had been finally floated free, returning to Norfolk several months prior to the departure of the Ex. Ex. Given the lack of attention the Peacock had received at the navy yard, Lieutenant Hudson was deeply concerned about his ship’s condition. For now, he took some consolation in the hope that with her armament reduced, the Peacock might find an extra knot or two of speed.<
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  The storeship Relief was the one vestige of Jones’s botched attempt to mount an expedition. To all appearances she was the gem of the squadron. Comfortably fitted out, and with the latest technical innovations, including two Spencer trysails (fore-and-aft sails equipped with gaffes to assist in sailing close to the wind), the Relief’s hull shape was that of a packet—the speedy American design developed to carry passengers to and from Europe. Unfortunately, the Relief, like the other vessels built specifically for the Expedition, had been woefully overbuilt, and she was anything but fast.

  Next, under the command of Lieutenant Cadwalader Ringgold, was the Porpoise, the rakish brig that had served Wilkes so well at Georges Bank and Savannah. Almost as new as the Relief, the eighty-eight-foot Porpoise was having no problem keeping up with the squadron’s flagship—a pleasant surprise given that the brig had been outfitted with additional fore-and-aft decks. Bringing up the rear of the squadron were the schooners Flying Fish and Sea Gull, commanded by Passed Midshipmen Samuel Knox and James Reid, respectively. Some critics had claimed these slender, seventy-foot New York pilot boats, each with a crew of just fifteen men, would never survive the rough waters off Cape Horn. There was no denying, however, that the schooners were just what Wilkes needed when it came to surveying the islands of the Pacific. Equipped with tillers instead of wheels, these highly maneuverable craft were also surprisingly fast, and the Flying Fish and the Sea Gull were beginning to surge past the much larger Relief.