Sea of Glory

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Reynolds gives a fascinating account of Wilkes’s propensity to dismiss the input of others: “[Wilkes] was so accustomed to contradict most flatly anyone who approached him with a report or with any subject that did not originate with himself, that his officers were really loath to subject themselves to such insolence,” Manuscript, p. 41. Wilkes’s description of navigating the ice in fog is from his Narrative, vol. 2, p. 294; his explanation of why he gave up on the idea of sailing in tandem is on p. 295. My description of the Newfoundland breed of dog is based on information in “Newfoundlands” by Sharon Hope available on the Web site www.k9.com. My thanks to Susan Beegel for bringing this resource to my attention.

  Alden’s description of the events of January 19, 1840, is from his testimony at Wilkes’s court-martial, pp. 153-54; his journal of the voyage is logbook #120 at the Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia. Wilkes speaks of his lack of faith in his officers in a January 19, 1840, journal entry. John Williamson’s testimony concerning his conversation with Wilkes on January 19 is from Wilkes’s court-martial, p. 195. Davis tells of Hudson insisting that he erase the mention of land in testimony from Wilkes’s court-martial, p. 195; Hudson also testified about the events of that day, p. 187. Reynolds provides added details about the Peacock’s encounter with an iceberg in his March 4, 1840, letter to his mother. The details about the Peacock’s chronometers being knocked over and the near crushing of a boat by two icebergs is from Wilkes’s Narrative, vol. 2, pp. 302, 304; Wilkes also describes Hudson’s last desperate attempt to push the Peacock through the ice, p. 305. Information on how to reship a rudder comes from John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, p. 302. Reynolds refers to Wilkes as the “hero of Pago Pago” in his Manuscript, p. 39.

  CHAPTER 8: A NEW CONTINENT

  Unless otherwise indicated, Wilkes’s description of the Vincennes’s Antarctic cruise after January 23, 1840, comes from his Narrative, vol. 2, pp. 309-65. Joseph Underwood tells of his belief that a vessel might be driven further south, “if it were thought to be an object” in a January 22, 1840, journal entry; he describes his square-off with Wilkes in a January 24, 1840, entry. Wilkes speaks in detail about the episode at Disappointment Bay in ACW, p. 443. Reynolds tells of Wilkes’s hatred of Underwood in his Manuscript, p. 42. Alden recounts his January 28 conversation with Wilkes about land in his testimony at Wilkes’s court-martial, p. 157. Jared Elliott provides information on how the Vincennes was handled amid the ice in a February 21, 1840, entry. Reynolds tells of Wilkes’s command style in the Antarctic in his Manuscript, p. 40; he also tells of Alden’s and Blunt’s account of the rescue of seaman Brooks, p. 41; as might be expected, Wilkes’s account is quite different; in fact, he claims he was the one who first spotted Brooks on the yard, a statement that Reynolds angrily refutes.

  For information on the aurora, I have relied on Robert Eather’s Majestic Lights: The Aurora in Science, History, and the Arts, pp. 3, 51. Wilkes tells of his celebration of the discovery of the continent and some of his officers’ disparaging remarks in ACW, p. 443. For information on the unusual clarity of the Antarctic atmosphere and the difficulties it creates in judging distances, see the Antarctic Pilot, p. 80. Charles Erskine tells of his experiences on the iceberg in Twenty Years Before the Mast, pp. 113-15; he also tells how he learned to read and write, pp. 39, 129. In New Lands, New Men, William Goetzmann refers to Wilkes’s picture of himself sliding down the ice as “the only recorded instance where Wilkes seemed to have had a sense of humor,” p. 206. Kenneth Bertrand in Americans in Antarctica mentions Ringgold’s misguided decision to head the Porpoise north, p. 178. D’Urville’s description of his encounter with the Porpoise is from his Two Voyages to the South Seas, p. 486.

  Alden recounts the construction of the chart of Antarctica in his testimony at Wilkes’s court-martial, p. 154. Wilkes tells of his “wisdom and perseverance” in a March 7-11, 1840, letter to Jane. Alden recounts Wilkes’s speech about the secrecy of their discovery in Wilkes’s court-martial, p. 159. D’Urville speaks of the “tough work” of sailing along the ice barrier in Two Voyages to the South Seas, pp. 489-90. Alden’s testimony concerning his conversation with Wilkes about seeing land on January 19 is from Wilkes’s court-martial, pp. 153-54. I am following William Stanton’s lead in suspecting that Wilkes altered his journal entry for January 19; see Stanton, p. 173. Hudson unsuccessfully fended off charges that he altered his report to the secretary of the navy at Wilkes’s court-martial, p. 185. Wilkes tells of his emotional meeting with Hudson in a March 27- April 5, 1840, letter to Jane. Ringgold speaks of asking Wilkes why he hadn’t mentioned discovering land on January 26 in his testimony at Wilkes’s court-martial, p. 162. Sinclair’s skeptical words about Ringgold’s newfound memory of seeing land are from an April 12, 1840, journal entry. Wilkes confesses to Jane that no one on the Porpoise and Flying Fish was originally aware of land to the south in a March 31, 1840, letter. Wilkes’s April 5, 1840, letter to James Ross is included in Appendix XXIV of Wilkes’s Narrative, vol. 2, pp. 453-56.

  CHAPTER 9: THE CANNIBAL ISLES

  In a March 18, 1840, letter to Jane, Wilkes speaks of his not having received a letter from her in sixteen months, as well as of Hudson having received a letter in Sydney dated the middle of August. His reference to not blaming Jane for the delay is in an August 13, 1840, letter. He speaks of being a “worn out old voyager” in a letter written between March 27 and April 5, 1840. Wilkes mentions the self-imposed distance between himself and Wilkes Henry in an August 18, 1840, letter to Jane.

  R. A. Derrick’s History of Fiji provides a good summary of exploration, shipping, and trade in the group, pp. 64-74. I have depended on Derrick’s The Fiji Islands: A Geographical Handbook for geographical and cartographic information about the islands. Reynolds speaks of the motivations behind the Ex. Ex.’s survey of Fiji in his private journal, in which he also refers to Wilkes’s actions against various officers; he writes of the destruction of his and May’s “little palace” in an October 19, 1840, letter to his family. For information about Congreve war rockets I have depended on Richard Hobbs’s “The Congreve War Rockets, 1800-1825,” in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, pp. 80-88.

  James Cook’s reference to the Fijians’ “addiction” to cannibalism is cited in Fergus Clunie’s Fijian Weapons and Warfare, p. 1. Derrick writes about Tasman, Cook, and Bligh in A History of Fiji, pp. 37-47. Reynolds, who speaks of Wilkes’s preliminary chart of Fiji in his journal, tells of the pilot’s interchange with the Expedition’s commander in his Manuscript, p. 47. Wilkes writes of the squadron’s arrival in Fiji in his Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 45-47. Reynolds’s enthusiastic description of Ovalau is in a September 21, 1840, letter to his family. His description of a Fijian warrior is from his journal. Wilkes describes how a Fijian son strangles his mother and father in his Narrative, vol. 3, p. 94; he also speaks of the sacrifices that accompanied the launching of Tanoa’s canoe, p. 97. Derrick chronicles instances of human sacrifice in A History of Fiji, p. 21, as does Clunie, p. 7. The reference to man being the most popular animal food source in Fiji is from Patrick Kirch’s On the Road of the Winds, p. 160; Kirch also discusses the development of “conquest warfare” in Fiji, p. 160.

  Derrick in A History of Fiji tells of the impact of Charlie Savage, pp. 44-45; he also speaks of “tame white men,” p. 47. Clunie refers to David Whippy’s mercenary beginnings in Fiji, p. 92. Wilkes tells of his strategy in contacting Tanoa in his Narrative, vol. 3, p. 48, in which he also recounts his climb up Nadelaiovalau, which he refers to as Andulong, pp. 50-52. Wilkes tells of setting up the observatory at Levuka and the organization of Alden’s and Emmons’s surveying parties in his Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 52-53. Wilkes recounts giving Sinclair a “severe rebuke” in ACW, p. 457; Sinclair gives his side of it in a May 11, 1840, journal entry.

  Wilkes recounts Tanoa’s dramatic arrival in his Narrative, vol. 3, p. 54. Derrick in A History of Fiji tells about Tanoa’s and Seru’s decimation of Verata, p. 22. The missionary’s acc
ount of Seru’s torture and eating of two prisoners appears in Clunie, p. 41. In his journal Reynolds refers to the squadron’s determination “to have the thing settled” when it came to the question of cannibalism, adding: “I remember reading in some book of travels, the assertion of the author, ‘that he considered all the accounts of such a practice among any people, to be fabulous: the bug bear stories of voyagers who delighted in tales of the marvelous: that he did not believe mankind could be so vile, or human nature so degraded: in short, that there was no such thing as a People who fed upon men for the love of it.’ If this gentleman, who had such exceeding faith in the goodness of human kind, had been killed in Fegee, his ghost would have corrected his notions with a vengeance. (See Quarterly review, Dec. or Sep. 1836.)” The argument to which Reynolds refers is essentially the same made by William Arens in The Man-Eating Myth (1979). See Gananath Obeyesekere’s attempt to discount contemporary references to cannibalism in “Cannibal Feasts in Nineteenth-Century Fiji: Seamen’s Yarns and the Ethnographic Imagination,” pp. 87-109; in Cannibalism and the Colonial World, edited by Francis Barker, et al. While Obeyesekere makes the excellent point that the sailors’ fears of survival cannibalism at sea contributed to their obsession with native cannibalism, he chooses not to refer to the Expedition’s findings concerning cannibalism, even though he is clearly aware of Wilkes’s Narrative. For a contrasting view, see Marshall Sahlins’s “Raw Women, Cooked Men, and Other ‘Great Things’ of the Fiji Islands,” in The Ethnography and the Historical Imagination, edited by John and Jean Camaroff.

  Wilkes describes his meeting with Tanoa in his Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 55-60. Wilkes tells of his meeting with Paddy O’Connell and his decision to abduct Veidovi, whom Wilkes refers to as “Vendovi” (my thanks to Fiji scholar Paul Geraghty for pointing out the proper spelling of Veidovi), in his Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 68-69, 104-5. Reynolds recounts how Hudson went about capturing Veidovi in his journal, as does Wilkes in his Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 126-36. Wilkes tells of Whippy’s concerns about the taking of Veidovi in his Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 141-42; his description of how his dog Sydney protected him in Fiji is from ACW, p. 462. Wilkes recounts his meeting with Belcher in his Narrative, vol. 3, p. 182; in ACW, pp. 463-64; and in a June 22, 1840, letter to Jane.

  Reynolds speaks of Perry’s three weeks without orders from Wilkes in his Manuscript, p. 53. In addition to his journal, Reynolds tells of boat-surveying duty in a September 21, 1840, letter to his family. Hudson’s calculation about the number of miles traveled by the Peacock’s boats in Fiji is in his journal, p. 567. Reynolds describes the cannibalism incident aboard the Peacock in his journal, while Wilkes tells of Hudson vomiting in an August 10, 1840, letter to Jane. My thanks to Jane Walsh, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution who has worked extensively with the Ex. Ex. collection, for sharing an article in manuscript in which she writes probingly about how the Fijians consciously manipulated the Expedition’s officers’ and scientists’ fears of cannibalism.

  James Dana refers to the botanist Rich as “so-so” in a June 15, 1840, letter to Asa Gray in Daniel Gilman’s Life of James Dwight Dana, p. 122. Wilkes mentions the discovery of a new species of tomato and a stand of sandalwood trees, as well as Horatio Hale’s Fijian vocabulary, in his Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 306, 309, 325, 341. Derrick cites Hale’s reference to Fiji being “the school of arts of the Pacific Islands,” p. 17. For information about Pickering and Brackenridge in Fiji, I have also relied on Richard Eyde’s “Expedition Botany: The Making of a New Profession” in MV, p. 30. James Dana tells of how Darwin’s insights “threw a flood of light” on his own thinking about coral reefs in the preface to his Corals and Coral Islands, p. 7. Daniel Appleman’s “James Dwight Dana and Pacific Geology” provides an excellent account of Dwight’s use of Darwin’s insight about coral reefs, MV, pp. 91-95; Appleman also refers to how Dwight’s subsequent work during the Expedition would anticipate the theory of plate tectonics, p. 110.

  Wilkes’s account of what he did during the four-day gale is in his Narrative, vol. 3, p. 239, in which he also provides a detailed account of the incident at Solevu, which he refers to as Sualib, pp. 239-44. My account of the attack on Solevu also relies on the journals of Reynolds and Sinclair; Erskine, who was part of Perry’s boat-crew, also tells of the incident in Twenty Years Before the Mast, pp. 163-65. James Dana writes of the need to do something more than burn a Fijian village in a June 15, 1840, letter to Asa Gray in Daniel Gilman’s Life of James Dwight Dana, p. 120.

  CHAPTER 10: MASSACRE AT MALOLO

  Wilkes tells of organizing the survey of the Yasawa Group in his Narrative, vol. 3, p. 247. Sinclair voices his suspicions that Wilkes was mounting a “war party” in a July 15, 1840, journal entry. Wilkes refers to having reached “the top of the hill” in a June 22, 1840, letter to Jane. Reynolds’s bitter remarks concerning Wilkes’s unwillingness to include him in the survey party are in his journal. Sinclair describes Wilkes’s unseamanlike management of the Flying Fish in a July 16, 1840, entry; he also expresses his bewilderment and frustrations with his commander on July 17; he mentions Underwood’s loss of a mast on July 16. Reynolds details Wilkes’s persecution of Underwood in his Manuscript, p. 52. In his journal, William Briscoe, the ship’s armorer, included excerpts from Jared Elliott’s eulogy for Underwood and Henry, in which Elliott speaks of Underwood’s innate politeness. Wilkes tells of being pursued by native canoes to the western shore of Viti Levu in his Narrative, vol. 3, p. 259-61. Sinclair expresses his regret that the Flying Fish did not sail on to Malolo in a July 24, 1840, journal entry.

  My account of the deaths of Underwood and Henry and the attack on Malolo are drawn from Wilkes’s Narrative, vol. 3, pp. 266-84; as well as the journals of Reynolds, Sinclair, Emmons, Alden, and Briscoe; and Joseph Clark’s Lights and Shadows of Sailor Life, pp. 149-57. Wilkes writes of being “unfit for further duty” after the massacre at Malolo in an August 10, 1840, letter to Jane, written on the second anniversary of leaving his family in Washington, D.C.; he also mentions finding fault with both Underwood and Alden in this August 10 letter. Reynolds describes the auction of Underwood’s possessions in his Manuscript, pp. 52-53, where he also writes of Wilkes’s treatment of Veidovi, p. 55. Wilkes tells of having the ship’s barber cut off Veidovi’s hair in ACW, p. 475. Reynolds describes his and his fellow officers’ depressed mental state after the Fiji survey in his journal.

  CHAPTER 11: MAUNA LOA

  Harold Bradley writes of how Americans dominated whaling in Hawaii in The American Frontier in Hawaii, p. 218. Charles Erskine describes how the sailors were dressed when they went out on leave in Twenty Years Before the Mast, p. 205. Reynolds recounts how the sailors conducted themselves while on leave in his journal. Erskine tells of writing his first letter to his mother in Twenty Years, p. 204. Reynolds recalls reading his mail in Honolulu in a September 21, 1840, letter to his family. I have also drawn upon letters he wrote on October 19, 1840, and November 16, 1840.

  Wilkes tells of the “30 or 40 letters waiting for me” in a letter to Jane dated October 2-11, 1840. In two undated private letters to Secretary Paulding at DU, Wilkes informs him of his charges against Lee and Pinkney. “Over half my labours in this service,” he writes, “have been driving the officers to their duty.” Wilkes would produce a portion of Paulding’s encouraging letter of December 14, 1839, as evidence in his court-martial; it was reprinted in the New York Herald, August 3, 1842. Wilkes writes of the dismissal of Pinkney, Guillou, and Couthouy in letters to Jane dated November 8-22, November 30, and in an undated letter probably written in November 1840, claiming, “I take great pleasure in driving them up to the mark by whip and spur.” The reference to Wilkes “getting delirious” appeared in Niles Weekly Register, LVII (December 21, 1839), p. 258. Wilkes claims in a November 8-22, 1840, letter to Jane that Couthouy “has been writing all the lies home to his friend [ Jeremiah] Reynolds that have been published.” The quotations about senior officers being “immune to any serious punis
hment” come from Harold Langley’s Social Reform in the United States Navy, 1798-1862, p. 24.

  Wilkes refers to the “all protecting care over me” in a May 22, 1839, letter to Jane. His angry words about Gilliss addressing him “with familiarity” are in an undated letter to Jane probably written in November 1840. In an undated letter probably written in the fall of 1840, he encloses a miniature of himself painted by the artist Alfred Agate that shows him with a captain’s two epaulets and asks Jane if she thinks “I am improved in appearance by the addition to my shoulders.” Reynolds’s words about Wilkes being “either crazy, beyond redemption, or . . . a rascally tyrant” are from his journal. Wilkes writes to Jane of making the Expedition “a brilliant one” in an undated letter probably written in November 1840, in which he also refers to “our promotions.” William Reynolds speaks of the news about Antarctica being received “with great Enthusiasm” in a November 16, 1840, letter.

  Herman Melville writes of the “judicial severity” practiced by a navy captain in White-Jacket, p. 301. A list of the twenty-five instances in which Wilkes inflicted more than twelve lashes on his men is included in the Wilkes Court-Martial file, pp. 19-21. Harold Langley covers the history of flogging in Social Reform in the United States Navy, pp. 137-38; he also provides an excellent description of how it was performed, pp. 139-141. Wilkes’s treatment of the marines who initially refused to reenlist is documented in his Court-Martial file, pp. 19-21; George Colvocoresses testified concerning Wilkes’s actions against the marines, pp. 123-24. Langley writes of the marines’ “strange dual situation in regard to flogging,” p. 142. George Emmons, who brought charges against the marines Ward and Riley, writes of their and Sweeney’s punishments in an October 31, 1840, journal entry. Wilkes speaks of the consul’s complaints concerning the behavior of American whalemen and his decision to whip Sweeney and the marines “round the fleet” in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 57. Langley describes flogging round the fleet as a “death sentence” and also speaks of its rarity in the U.S. Navy, p. 142. Admiral W. H. Smyth in the Sailor’s Word-Book defines flogging round the fleet as “a diabolical punishment,” p. 582. My account of the flogging is also based on descriptions provided by Charles Erskine in Twenty Years, pp. 208-9; the October 31, 1840, journal entry of John Dyes; and testimony during Wilkes’s court-martial from Robert Johnson, p. 145, and Overton Carr, p. 203.