Sea of Glory

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  By the second day of the survey, Wilkes had already come close to running the schooner up onto the rocks at least twice. He insisted on overruling the pilot Tom Granby at just about every juncture. “I never, in my life, have seen a man handle a vessel as Capt. Wilkes does,” Sinclair wrote. When he wasn’t making Sinclair’s and Granby’s lives miserable, Wilkes continued to harass Lieutenant Underwood. Since publicly vilifying him at Disappointment Bay in Antarctica, Wilkes had suspended Underwood for no apparent reason during the passage to Tonga and was now routinely criticizing his work, even though Underwood was one of the best surveyors in the squadron. At one point Underwood’s boat, the Leopard, broke its mast, forcing him to return to the Flying Fish for a replacement. As Underwood stood on the schooner’s deck, working on the mast, Wilkes untied his boat and let it go adrift, requiring Underwood to drop everything and scramble for the boat. But the lieutenant refused to be goaded into anger. “His politeness was not merely external,” it would later be said of him, “but that of the heart.” Charismatic and kind, with more than a touch of flamboyance, Underwood brought out the worst in a commander who had an astonishing ability to nurse a grudge.

  By July 23, a week into the survey, they had reached Drawaqa Island at the southern tip of the Yasawa Group. Wilkes decided to split up the party for the survey of the many small islands of the Mamanucas. Alden and Underwood would proceed ahead in their boats while the Porpoise took the western side of the islands and the Flying Fish, along with Emmons in the cutter, took the eastern route. The plan was for all five vessels to rendezvous at Malolo the following day.

  During a stop at Vomo Island later that afternoon, Tom Granby climbed to the schooner’s masthead and saw a large number of canoes heading in their direction from Waya Island to the west. It was time to be off. The wind was from the southwest, forcing them to sail toward the treacherous shore of Viti Levu. Clinging to the masthead, where he had the best possible view of the hazards ahead, Granby guided them through the many reefs and rocks. By sunset the wind had deserted them; as luck would have it, so had the canoes, and they anchored near the shore of Viti Levu. Around two A.M., a light breeze sprang up from the southeast, and under the light of a nearly full moon, they weighed anchor and began sailing for the rendezvous point at Malolo. At eight A.M. the wind once again fell calm. They were near a tiny island that Wilkes named Linthicum for his coxswain. “[N]ot wishing to lose the day,” Wilkes decided to land on the island and make some observations. The anchor was lowered, and Wilkes and Passed Midshipman Henry Eld rowed to shore and began connecting the island by triangulation with Malolo, just five miles to the west. “Would to God that we had kept on,” Sinclair would later write.

  After completing their survey of the Mamanucas, Alden’s and Underwood’s boat-crews spent the night of July 23 anchored in a bay on the east side of Malolo, bounded on the south by Malololailai, or Little Malolo. That morning the men had only a few yams to divide among them for breakfast. To the east they could see the Flying Fish at anchor in the distance, and when Emmons and his boat-crew arrived an hour or so later, Alden and Underwood were hopeful that he had brought some food with him from the schooner. But Emmons informed them that the Flying Fish was almost completely depleted of provisions. The officers agreed that they urgently needed to find some food for their men.

  That morning, Underwood and a sailor named Joseph Clark were walking the beach, collecting shells, when a group of natives appeared from the island’s interior. With the help of the New Zealander John Sac, who served as an interpreter, Underwood began bartering for food. One of the natives claimed there were four big hogs at Sualib, his village on the southwestern side of Malolo, but they would have to bring a boat around the southern point of the island to pick them up. Underwood insisted that one of the natives, who claimed to be the chief’s son, serve as a hostage to ensure his own men’s safety. The Fijian readily agreed, and Underwood took him back to where Alden’s and Emmons’s boat-crews were eating their meager breakfast on the beach.

  The officers and men were ecstatic to hear that Underwood had found a possible way to get them some food. It was a low, incoming tide, and Underwood volunteered to go to the village on the other side of the island. His boat was considerably smaller than the two cutters, enabling it to sail over shoals that would have grounded the larger craft. To reduce his boat’s draft even further, Underwood had elected to leave many of his muskets aboard the Porpoise. While this was a clear violation of Wilkes’s orders, Underwood was convinced that the risk of attack from the Fijians had been greatly exaggerated. As he had repeatedly told Alden and Emmons, “the best way to gain their confidence was to trust and show that you did not fear them.”

  Underwood prepared to set out for the village. Instead of the ten muskets he had initially been given, he had only three. In addition to the Fijian hostage, he brought along Sac as an interpreter. As Underwood and his men pushed off from the beach, Alden called out to him, “in a jocose manner, to, ‘Look out for the Fijis.’” Emmons added that Underwood had better take a life preserver—after all the water was all of a foot deep.

  The Leopard soon grounded on the shoals that connected the southern tip of Malolo to Malololailai. While Underwood stayed aboard to guard the hostage, his men jumped out and began dragging the boat over the reef. When a group of natives waded out from shore, the sailor Joseph Clark became fearful that they were about to claim the boat in accordance with Fijian salvage customs, especially when some of them insisted on getting into the boat. “[E]very mark of treachery was apparent in their countenances,” Clark insisted.

  As sailors often do when performing difficult work, one of the seamen began singing a chantey as they attempted to drag the boat across the shoals. Soon the natives were singing along with them; a few of them even jumped out of the boat and started helping the sailors pull and push the boat over the shallows. “[T]hey had marked us as their victims,” Clark wrote. “[But] so great was the effect of the music that they not only permitted us to escape, but literally aided us by grasping the rope and attempting to sing with us.” As soon as the boat had reached deeper water, Underwood’s men leapt back in, and after ejecting the Fijians who were still in the boat, they were on their way to the village of Sualib.

  About a quarter mile from the village, the boat grounded on the beach. Leaving the hostage under armed guard in the boat, Underwood and seven men, including Clark and the interpreter John Sac, walked to the village. They found a group of natives waiting for them in the shade of a tree, its branches festooned with an imposing array of war clubs. The clubs were of two basic types: some had long handles and were used for crushing skulls and breaking bones; others were much smaller and were designed to be thrown at their victims. But of more importance to Underwood and his men were the two skinny pigs tied to the trunk of the tree.

  When Underwood asked about the hogs, he was told the chief was away fishing but would return soon to speak to him. About a half hour later, the chief arrived. He wore a white tapa headdress that he drew over his eyes to protect them from the sun. The chief said he would only give them his pigs in exchange for a musket, powder, and ball.

  By this time, the tide had risen far enough to enable Alden to sail up beside the Leopard. Underwood sent a man to report to Alden that the chief would only trade his hogs for arms. Alden, who did not share Underwood’s faith in the natives’ trustworthiness, said it was time to cease the negotiations. More than enough time had already passed if the natives really wanted to make a trade.

  As the sailor began to wade back to the village with Alden’s message for Underwood, Midshipman Wilkes Henry asked if he could go along to assist in the negotiations. Alden hesitated, then allowed the boy to go.

  Not long after Henry had left, some natives in a canoe paddled up and spoke briefly with the hostage, who had been transferred to Alden’s cutter. Alden noticed that the hostage “displayed a little anxiety to return with them to shore” and even tried to jump out of the cutter when
the canoe started back for shore. Alden grabbed the native by the arm and insisted that he remain seated and quiet.

  By now, Underwood’s protracted negotiations were making Alden extremely apprehensive. He ordered the crew of Underwood’s boat to move the vessel in as close as possible to the village. About a half hour later, the sailor Jerome Davis came to Alden with another message from Underwood. All they needed was one more hatchet and they would have their hogs. Alden gave Davis the hatchet, insisting that Underwood “should come off as soon as possible with what he had.”

  At this point, Emmons arrived. He had sailed over to Malololailai to scout out some possible places where they might enjoy the meal Underwood was trying to arrange for them. Alden was telling him about the hostage’s earlier attempt to escape, when the native suddenly leapt over the side and began running for shore. Instead of heading for the village, the hostage ran in the opposite direction, as if to distract them from what was happening on the beach. Both Alden and Midshipman William Clark raised their muskets and aimed at the hostage, who was looking back at them over his shoulder as he ran through about two feet of water. Realizing that a dead hostage would provide them with little leverage with the natives, Alden lowered his musket and told Clark to fire over the hostage’s head.

  Alden and Emmons would later insist that the escape of the hostage had been the prearranged signal for the killing to begin on shore. But for those on the beach, it seemed as if the bloodbath began with the firing of Clark’s musket. As its report echoed over the water, the chief cried out that the Papalangi were killing his son and ordered his men to attack. Two natives immediately grabbed Joseph Clark’s musket and attempted to rip it out of his hands. Clinging to the firearm with one hand, Clark pulled out a knife with the other and shouted out a question to Underwood: Should he give up the musket or fight? “Fight!” was Underwood’s cry. Clark proceeded to stab one of the natives with his knife, then knocked the other down with the butt of his musket.

  A mob of natives began pouring out of the nearby mangrove bushes. There were just nine officers and men on the beach, and several of the sailors began to run for the boat. Others fired their muskets and, realizing that they had no chance of reloading, followed their shipmates in a mad dash through the knee-deep water. By now there were close to a hundred natives on the beach, and almost all of them seemed to be hurling some kind of weapon. “The air around our heads was literally filled with clubs and spears,” Clark remembered. Underwood shouted out to Midshipman Henry to help him cover the retreat of the men behind them. Henry replied that he had just been hit by a short club and would “first have a crack” at the native who had hurled it. Henry ran into the midst of the natives and killed the man with his pistol. As he ran back to take up his position beside Underwood, he was struck in the back of the head by a short club and fell face-first into the water. He was instantly surrounded by natives, who began stripping off his clothes.

  As the rest of the men ran for the boats, only Clark and one other sailor remained to fight beside the two officers. Out of the corner of his eye, Clark saw a native, about fifteen feet away, with a spear in his hand. “[M]y ignorance of the force of these missiles very nearly cost me my life,” he later wrote. “It came like a flash of lightning, struck me full in the face, tearing my upper lip into three pieces, loosening my upper fore teeth, and glancing out of my mouth, passed through the left arm of Mr. Underwood.” Incredibly, Clark was able to raise his musket and shoot the native through the head before another native came up from behind and knocked him senseless into the water.

  The bite of the saltwater on his cut and bleeding face revived Clark, and he was soon back on his feet, only to see Underwood succumb to a blow to the back of the head. Clark did his best to get to Underwood, who was now lying on his left side and using his right arm to fend off the natives’ clubs, but Clark was hit on the head and shoulder and once again fell to his knees. He could see blood streaming from Underwood’s mouth, nose, and ears; he could also see that a huge native with an upraised club was standing over the fallen lieutenant. Finding reserves of energy he didn’t know he possessed, Clark sprang to his feet and attacked the native from behind, stabbing him three times with his knife. He then stooped down and pulled Underwood’s head out of the water. “Tell her,” whispered Underwood, who had been married just a few weeks before the Expedition sailed, “that I loved her until the last moment.”

  An eerie change came over the lieutenant’s face. “[H]is eyes flashed, and he seemed for a moment to recover himself,” Clark remembered, “his countenance gleaming in all the fierceness of the war spirit; he tried to speak, but his mouth was so filled with blood that I could not understand what he wished to say.” Clark later realized that Underwood had seen a native approaching him from behind, and “giving him that keen, piercing look of defiance, in the last agonies of death, he wished to warn me of the danger.” But it was too late. The last thing Clark remembered was an explosion to the head, as if a cannon had been fired a few inches away, then all was blackness.

  As soon as the fighting had broken out, Alden and Emmons headed for shore. Riding the newly risen tide, with a fresh breeze behind them, they sailed for the scene of the conflict. They soon came upon the Leopard, her terrified crew pushing the boat out into the water as they shouted that Underwood was dead. “The boats had not yet grounded,” Alden wrote, “but we immediately jumped overboard, and with all speed hastened to the beach.” They were now gripped by the fear that the natives would carry away Underwood’s body before they could retrieve it.

  But before Alden reached the shore, he came upon a man staggering in the shallows, his face a horrible mess of blood and mangled flesh. It was Joseph Clark. Even as the natives “clubbed and speared us until they supposed that there could be no life in us,” Clark had somehow managed to get back on his feet. He was in a state of shock and would have no memory of his actions, but others would later tell him of how he had walked among the natives, his torn lip hanging from his face as he laughed and sang. The natives didn’t know what to make of this gruesome apparition and made no further efforts to harm him.

  As the others took Clark back to the boats, Alden forged ahead. “When I reached the beach nothing living was to be seen.” He found Underwood, stripped of most of his clothing, lying on his back on the shore. Alden cradled his friend’s head in his arms and realized that the back of Underwood’s skull had been mashed to jelly. “Your poor, poor wife,” Alden murmured. “Joe, little is she thinking of this!”

  He then turned and saw for the first time the body of Wilkes Henry, almost completely naked. Unlike Underwood, Henry seemed virtually untouched. (It would later be established that he had drowned soon after being knocked unconscious.) By this time Emmons and the men had arrived. The sailors were “excited to fury” and wanted revenge. The bodies of ten Fijians were scattered on the beach, and when one of them proved to be still alive, the sailors immediately set upon him, shooting and stabbing the body with their bayonets and even cutting off the head. Several of the men urged Alden and Emmons to pursue the natives back to the village. Knowing that hundreds of warriors might soon be headed their way, and that there were less than two dozen of them, Alden ordered that they return to the boats.

  The bodies were placed in the stern sheets of Alden’s cutter, and after covering them with jackets, they set sail for the Flying Fish. When Underwood’s leg fell from the thwart, it was all Alden could do to lift it back up. For the duration of the eight-mile sail to the schooner, no one said a word.

  At that moment Wilkes and Eld were rowing back to the Flying Fish after finishing up their observations at Linthicum Island. Eld was the first to notice the three boats sailing toward them from Malolo. He said to Wilkes that it looked as if the boats’ ensigns were at half-mast. With what Reynolds called “his usual habit of contradiction,” Wilkes replied, “Oh, no, you are mistaken.” Eld took another look and said, “They are not only half mast, but they are Union down, & something must hav
e happened.”

  “No, sir, it can’t be,” Wilkes shot back, “you are mistaken.”

  Eld repeated his claim “as peremptorily as he could.” Wilkes remained silent for a few moments, then attempted to hail Alden’s boat, but his voice failed him.

  Wilkes’s gig came up to the port side of the Flying Fish just as the cutter sailed up on the starboard. Alden was standing at the bow, his face pale and his clothes smeared with blood. “Great God, Sir,” he cried out, “Underwood and Henry are murdered. We have been attacked by the natives, and they are both dead.”

  Wilkes immediately climbed out of his gig and jumped into Alden’s cutter. As soon as the jackets were pulled back from the bodies, Wilkes fainted dead away. Eld took Wilkes into the Flying Fish’s cabin, and as Dr. Fox tended to Clark’s lip, Underwood’s and Henry’s bodies were moved to the port deck of the schooner and covered with a tarpaulin. Upon regaining consciousness, Wilkes began to weep inconsolably. When he finally emerged from below, red-eyed and sobbing, he made his way to the two bodies and asked that the tarpaulin be withdrawn. First he knelt beside his nephew. Moaning “the poor boy and his poor mother,” he kissed and patted his face. He then turned to Underwood and whispered, “poor fellow.”

  Alden was still so full of emotion that it was impossible to extract any coherent information from him. But as far as George Sinclair was concerned, “the bloody and bruised bodies of our murdered messmates told a tale [that needed no words]. . . . My whole soul was lost in one all absorbing feeling, and that feeling was anger.”