Sea of Glory: The Epic South Seas Expedition 1838–42. Nathaniel Philbrick
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.”
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.
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 Cadwallader 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.
It was an unusual collection of sailing vessels. European exploring expeditions had relied on sturdy but slow ships such as colliers, built to carry coal from the northern ports of England, or, in the case of the latest French expedition, a beamy horse-transport, euphemistically referred to as a corvette. Not only could these vessels bear heavy loads of provisions and men; they could withstand punishment from uncharted hazards such as rocks and ice. Since the initial fleet of heavily reinforced vessels had proven unseaworthy, the Americans had been forced to settle for this eclectic assortment of ships, brigs, and schooners. Sleek and quick, instead of broad and strong, the vessels of the U.S. Exploring Expedition made for an inspiring sight as they glided away from Hampton Roads.
The U.S. Ex. Ex. carried with it the expectations of a young, upstart nation that was anxious to prove it could meet and perhaps surpass what had already been achieved by dozens of European expeditions. But, as all of the Ex. Ex.’s officers and scientists knew, it was very late in the game to be launching an expedition of this scale. The potential for new discoveries in the Pacific was limited, and European scientists were highly skeptical that anyone from the United States might return with significant results. Then there was the potential for disaster – losing a ship, even the entire squadron, in a storm off Cape Horn or on a hidden reef in the Pacific. But it was the prospect of sailing amid the icebergs in this fragile hodgepodge of a fleet that was the most daunting. “On me Rested everything,” Wilkes wrote. “I communed with myself under very distressing thoughts.”
His instructions called for a three-year dash around the globe. In the next five months alone he was to investigate a group