Wilkes writes of the great potential of Pearl Harbor in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 79. Reynolds recounts his last-minute transfer from the Peacock to the Flying Fish in his journal. For information on Mauna Loa I have relied on the monograph Mauna Loa Revealed, edited by J. M. Rhodes and John Lockwood, especially the Preface, xi-xii; and the chapter by Walther Barnard, “Mauna Loa Volcano: Historical Eruptions, Exploration, and Observations (1799-1910),” pp. 1- 19. See also Volcanoes in the Sea: The Geology of Hawaii by Gordon Macdonald, et al., and Andrew Doughty and Harriett Friedman’s Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed, pp. 28-29. Victor Lenzen and Robert Multhauf in “Development of Gravity Pendulums in the 19th Century” discuss Bouguer’s pioneering use of the pendulum in the Andes in The Museum of History and Technology, pp. 307-9. See also John Noble Wilford’s account of Bouguer’s activities in The Mapmakers, pp. 128-30.
James Dana describes his hastily formed impressions of Mauna Loa and Kilauea in a November 30, 1840, letter to Edward Herrick, in Daniel Gilman’s Life of James Dwight Dana, pp. 124-26. Wilkes writes of his climb up Mauna Loa “being one of the great works of my cruise” in a December 11, 1840, letter to Jane. He writes of his sedan chair and the absurdity of the scene as they set out up the volcano in a January 24, 1841, letter to Jane. Unless otherwise indicated, Wilkes’s description of his climb up Mauna Loa, as well as his visit to Kilauea, are from his Narrative, vol. 4, pp. 112-75. Wilkes would visit Kilauea a second time after climbing up Mauna Loa; it was during this second visit that Dr. Judd’s hairbreadth escape occurred. Roberta Sprague’s “Measuring the Mountain: The United States Exploring Expedition on Mauna Loa, 1840-41” in The Hawaiian Journal of History, pp. 71-91, is based almost exclusively on Wilkes’s Narrative. Charles Erskine recounts the yarn about dropping an iceberg in the caldera of Kilauea in Twenty Years, pp. 214-15. Wilkes speaks of regretting the loss of his chair soon after departing from Kilauea in a January 24, 1841, letter to Jane.
For information on altitude sickness, I have depended on Medicine for Mountaineering, edited by James Wilkerson, pp. 220-26. Erskine describes his and his fellow sailors’ “mirth and gayety” in the cave at Recruitment Station in Twenty Years, p. 219. Wilkes tells of his reaction to Judd’s news of the natives’ desertion in a January 24, 1841, letter to Jane. Erskine’s description of the hurricane atop Mauna Loa is in Twenty Years, pp. 221-22. Wilkes tells of his final examination of the snow-covered caldera of Mauna Loa in his Narrative, vol. 4, pp. 159-60. Snow blindness is described in Medicine for Mountaineering, p. 285. Wilkes speaks of the “loomi-loomi” in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 166.
John Dyes’s account of “yellow Hores” aboard the Vincennes is in a March 2, 1841, journal entry, in which he adds, “This has took place several times while her in the Captains Absence.” William May writes of his sexual relationship with a native girl in a May 9, 1841, letter to William Reynolds, Box 1, Area File 9, RG 45, NA. Wilkes complains of Chaplain Elliott’s behavior in an undated letter to Jane probably written in the fall of 1840.
CHAPTER 12: THE WRECK OF THE PEACOCK
An excellent discussion of the joint occupation of the Oregon territory by the United States and Britain is The Wilkes Expedition: Puget Sound and the Oregon Country, edited by Frances Barkan, p. 92. For information on the discovery and exploration of the Columbia River, I have relied on William Dietrich’s Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River, pp. 67-70, and Timothy Egan’s The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, pp. 27-29. Vancouver’s mention of detecting freshwater along the Oregon coast is cited in Egan, p. 28. Gray’s discovery of the Columbia is recounted in John Boit’s log, which appears in Voyages of the Columbia, edited by Frederick Howay. My thanks to Mary Malloy for providing me with the estimate of the number of ships that had visited the Columbia River prior to Lewis and Clark. William Reynolds writes of the surprise of Belcher’s officers when they heard the Ex. Ex. was to survey the Columbia River in a October 19, 1840, letter.
Wilkes was in such a rush to get the Vincennes and the Porpoise out of Honolulu that he personally oversaw the recoppering of the brig. His lack of knowledge in this area, however, turned the usually straightforward procedure into a comical embarrassment for his officers. In his March 26, 1841, journal entry, George Sinclair writes, “Capt. Wilkes seems to have taken charge of the operation and everything goes on head over heels and is more noise and confusion than would be made in heaving down the whole navy at home.” Robert Johnson speculates about Wilkes’s commodore’s pennant in a March 24, 1841, journal entry: “I can suppose the possibility of the commander of the Expedition having authority to hoist a broad pendant, but it does appear to me strange he should do so without by intimation (at least) of such authority, Subject himself to the Suspicion, which I believe to be general, of an usurpation of dignities which are not his of right.” Wilkes writes of meeting Captain Aulick with his commodore pennant flying in a letter to Jane written from March 14-April 4, 1841.
Wilkes’s description of the Columbia River bar is in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 293. My description of the Columbia River and the many shipwrecks that have occurred at the bar are based on Dietrich’s Northwest Passage, pp. 97-109, and Egan’s The Good Rain, pp. 16-18. See also James Gibbs’s Pacific Graveyard. The Columbia River pilot Captain James McAvoy, of the aptly named Peacock, compares the collision of waters at the bar to “two giant hammers” in Egan’s The Good Rain, p. 24; Dietrich cites the reference by the Reverend Samuel Parker to the large number of deaths at the bar, p. 108. Wilkes refers to his decision not to cross the Columbia bar and to survey Puget Sound, as well as the near-disaster at Destruction Isle, in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 294. William May tells of the “tremendous bustle of bending cables” that ensued in a May 9, 1841, letter to William Reynolds, Box 1, Area File 9, RG 45, NA. Wilkes’s description of Veidovi’s “contempt” for the region’s native people is in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 297, as are his words of praise for Puget Sound, p. 305. Dietrich in Northwest Passage points out that there are now four navy bases in Puget Sound with none on the Columbia River, p. 109.
My account of Wilkes’s activities in the Pacific Northwest owes much to Constance Bordwell’s “Delay and Wreck of the Peacock: An Episode in the Wilkes Expedition” in Oregon Historical Quarterly; also, Edmond S. Meany provides a useful transcription of Wilkes’s difficult-to-decipher journal in his “Diary of Wilkes in the Northwest” in The Washington Historical Quarterly. Wilkes writes of having “no further difficulties with the officers” in a May 28, 1841, letter to Jane.
Wilkes tells of his concerns about Hudson’s ability to complete his assignment in the central Pacific cruise in ACW, pp. 499-500. Wilkes’s orders to Hudson are in Appendix VIII of his Narrative, vol. 4, pp. 517-19. Reynolds’s complaints about Hudson and the six-month cruise are from his journal. Daniel Appleman in “James Dwight Dana and Pacific Geology” in MV discusses how Dana’s observations of the linear pattern of island chains was “fundamental” to the formulation of the theory of plate tectonics, pp. 106-110. See also Robert Dott Jr.’s “James Dwight Dana’s Old Tectonics—Global Contraction Under Divine Direction” in American Journal of Science, pp. 283-311.
Bordwell in “Delay and Wreck of the Peacock” makes the point that Wilkes’s appearance at Fort Vancouver, “attended by a middle-aged draftsman clad in navy fatigues and armed only with a sketchbook,” had the effect of reducing the likelihood that the Hudson’s Bay Company would perceive the Ex. Ex. as a possible threat to their dominance in the region, p. 135. Charles Erskine describes the Fourth of July celebration at Fort Cowlitz in Twenty Years Before the Mast, pp. 235-38. Wilkes recounts how he found the celebration “truly gratifying,” as well as his concerns about the Peacock, in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 412.
Reynolds’s remarks about the importance of the Columbia survey to the Expedition and the sense of foreboding that gripped himself and the others are from his journal. Wilkes attributes the loss of the Peacock to Hudson’s “apprehensions and imaginat
ion” in ACW, p. 502. My account of the wreck is based primarily on Hudson’s journal, a microfilm copy of which is at the University of North Carolina, and Emmons’s journal, at Yale, for the days July 18-20, 1841, and Wilkes’s Narrative, vol. 4, pp. 489-94. Bordwell in “Delay and Wreck of the Peacock” also provides a useful description of the wreck, pp. 162-63, as do Stanton, pp. 249-52, and Tyler, pp. 285-99.
Unless otherwise indicated, Reynolds’s accounts of his time at the Columbia River are from his journal. Wilkes speaks of the “state of feeling” that led him to drive his officers to complete the survey of Puget Sound in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 478. Drew Crooks provides a detailed account of the Washington place names left by the Ex. Ex. in The Wilkes Expedition, edited by Frances Barkan, pp. 96-124. Wilkes recounts first hearing the news of the loss of the Peacock in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 484. He speculates as to why Hudson was delayed so long in a July 27, 1841, journal entry. John Frazier Henry, in “The Midshipman’s Revenge” in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, theorizes that William May introduced two nonexistent islands into the survey of the San Juan Islands, Adolphus and Gordon, so as to embarrass Wilkes, p. 159. Although an intriguing theory, the bogus islands may have also been the result of the hurried nature of the Expedition’s survey of the island group in the wake of the Peacock’s loss. Wilkes’s confrontation with Robert Johnson is detailed in Wilkes’s July 17, 1841, journal entry.
Wilkes’s frustrations about how Hudson conducted his cruise of the central Pacific are in an August 6, 1841, journal entry. I have found Bordwell’s analysis of the mounting tensions between Wilkes and Hudson during the survey of the river especially helpful, pp. 169-73. Wilkes tells of having to start from scratch with the survey of the river in his Narrative, vol. 5, p. 113; he speaks of how he labored to “bring things into order” in ACW, p. 503. Soon after Wilkes asked Reynolds about his pea jacket, he decided that it was too dangerous to continue sailing up the river on a foggy night and ordered the Flying Fish back to Bakers Bay. “No man in his senses,” Reynolds ranted, “would have started. Great was our relief, to get rid of him. When we reached the cove, he went ashore & pitched his tent for the night.” Wilkes describes the incident with his commodore’s pennant in an August 25, 1841, journal entry. Both Stanton, p. 267, and Bordwell, p. 175, speak of the importance of Wilkes’s decision to allow the philologist Horatio Hale to leave the squadron and pursue his own interests.
Henry Eld’s praise of Wilkes’s “indomitable perseverance & tenacity” comes from a letter he wrote to his father after the Expedition on March 16, 1845 (at LOC); cited by Tyler, p. 397. Unlike Reynolds, Eld had maintained a healthy skepticism concerning the Expedition and its leader from the very beginning. Back on August 17, 1838, as the squadron sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, he wrote his father that “all the Zeal that I ever felt for the Service or my country has Evaporated” (LOC). Having never committed himself on a personal level to Wilkes, Eld was able to witness the disintegration of relations between the commander and his officers with an unusual, and much-needed, degree of detachment.
Wilkes writes about his potential difficulties with the secretary of the navy and the possibility of a “full investigation” in an October 18, 1841, letter to Jane. Reynolds predicts that there will be a court-martial at the end of the Expedition in an August 10, 1841, letter to his father. Reynolds compares refitting the schooner at sea to a drowning man mending his clothes in a November 7, 1841, letter. He describes the Flying Fish’s difficulties off Oregon in both his journal and a November 7, 1841, letter to Lydia. Wilkes writes about Yerba Buena and San Francisco Bay, as well as the Vincennes’s ordeal at the bar, in his Narrative, vol. 5, pp. 152, 171, 254-56. He tells of being “master now of all” in an October 18, 1841, letter to Jane.
CHAPTER 13: HOMEWARD BOUND
In a November 22, 1841, letter to Jane, Wilkes reveals his plan to use his findings from the Pacific Northwest to win himself a promotion: “I have no idea of giving up my results until I am satisfied they intend doing what I conceive ought in justice to be done for me.” For information concerning how developing American attitudes toward the Oregon territory influenced Wilkes and the Expedition, I have looked to John Wickman’s dissertation “Political Aspects of Charles Wilkes’s Work and Testimony, 1842-1849,” Indiana University, pp. 27- 28. Wilkes speaks of John Aulick’s claims about his unbalanced mental state and Ross’s dismissal of his Antarctic results in two letters written on November 22 and November 27, 1841, both written from Oahu. James Ross would write in detail about his doubts about Wilkes’s claims and his meeting with Aulick in A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, pp. 275-90. Wilkes tells Jane to remove Aulick and his family from “the vocabulary of our acquaintance” in a November 27, 1841, letter.
William Reynolds writes of learning that the Flying Fish would not be sold in Oahu in his journal; unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Reynolds in this chapter are from his journal. Wilkes tells of the orders he issued to the Expedition’s commanders at Oahu in his Narrative, vol. 5, p. 265; he also refers to the many “Asiatic nations” at Singapore, p. 374. George Emmons included extensive notes and transcripts from Knox’s court of inquiry with the February 19, 1842, entry of his journal. Wilkes responds to the forty-two letters he received from Jane at Singapore in a February 20, 1842, letter. In a November 27, 1841, letter written at Oahu, he mentions his concerns about his sister Eliza: “I am well aware [it] will be a great trial meeting me yet I hope it may do her good. I have often been intending to write to her but could never yet bring myself to the trial.” He also writes about Eliza in his letter from Singapore. Henry Wilkes writes about the “deplorable loss” of Wilkes Henry in a February 17, 1840, letter that was sent to Singapore (at DU).
Wilkes tells of his decision to sell the Flying Fish in his Narrative, vol. 5, pp. 409-10. Charles Erskine describes his emotions on seeing the schooner for the last time in Twenty Years Before the Mast, p. 257. William Reynolds provides a statistical analysis of those who served on the Ex. Ex. in his Manuscript, p. 70; he also speaks of how Wilkes found it necessary “to concoct some scheme by which he could divert the other vessels from their homeward course and secure to the Vincennes a sufficient start,” p. 68. Erskine writes of the “gayety” aboard the Vincennes in Twenty Years, p. 258, in which he also tells of his trick using the dog Sydney and his decision not to reenter the navy, p. 263, and the death of George Porter, p. 258. Stanton describes the Fijian chief Veidovi as “the most spectacular of the specimens collected,” p. 281. Erskine in Twenty Years claims that quartermaster Tom Piner’s attempts to Christianize Veidovi were so successful that the men started referring to the chief as “The old Christian cannibal, man-eater,” p. 194. Wilkes tells of the bond between Veidovi and the interpreter Benjamin Vanderford in his Narrative, vol. 5, p. 418. William Briscoe recounts the details of Vanderford’s death in his March 23, 1842, journal entry.
For information about Secretary of the Navy Abel Upshur and his general attitude toward abuses by naval officers and by Wilkes in particular, I have depended on Wickman’s “Political Aspects of Charles Wilkes’s Work and Testimony,” p. 23, and Claude Hall’s Abel Parker Upshur, pp. 161-62. John S. Wily’s March 10, 1842, letter to Jane Wilkes, urging her to do everything possible to win her husband a promotion, is at DU, as is Jane’s memorandum, written in March 1842, describing her interviews with Upshur and President Tyler. Wilkes writes Jane of his hope of returning before the adjournment of Congress in a February 20, 1842, letter. He tells of seeing the map of Ross’s and d’Urville’s voyages to Antarctica at the Cape Town Observatory in an April 15, 1842, journal entry; he tells of the stop at St. Helena in his Narrative, vol. 5, pp. 440-41; he writes of ordering the officers to turn over their personal collections in ACW, p. 515, where he also refers to the rumors concerning his having kept a collection for himself, p. 513. George Emmons tells of having to hand over the Fijian bow and arrow in May 16, 1842, journal entry. Wilkes recounts his confront
ation with William May over his marked box of shells in a May 23, 1842, journal entry; he speaks of “The state of excitement I now feel” in a June 2, 1842, entry. Emmons describes his final run-in with Wilkes in a June 1, 1842, entry.
Wilkes recounts the Vincennes’s return to New York in his Narrative, vol. 5, pp. 452-53. Reynolds speaks of the officers’ curiosity about how Wilkes would resolve the commodore pennant issue in his Manuscript, p. 69. Although Reynolds doesn’t mention it, Wilkes’s son Jack was a brand-new midshipman aboard the Delaware when Reynolds visited her officers at Rio de Janeiro; see ACW, p. 519. Reynolds refers to his dramatic weight loss during the Expedition as “enough to have satisfied a dozen Shylocks” in a November 7, 1841, letter to Lydia. Anne Hoffman Cleaver and E. Jeffrey Stann in Voyage to the Southern Ocean cite a reference Reynolds made in a letter eight years earlier to his having reached five feet ten and a half inches in height, p. 250. Veidovi’s death and mutilation are recounted in the New York Herald, June 11, 17, 26, 1842. Veidovi’s skull subsequently became part of the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. See T. D. Stewart’s “The Skull of Vendovi: A Contribution of the Wilkes Expedition to the Physical Anthropology of Fiji.”
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