Sea of Glory

region. As it was now already the middle of June, Wilkes realized that he would have to add another full year to the Expedition if he was to survey the Columbia River.
    Belcher’s lack of candor was a disappointment, but Wilkes’s visit with the British commander ultimately proved of immense benefit to him. Belcher was a notorious disciplinarian, and while he and Wilkes spoke in Belcher’s cabin, the British officers entertained their American counterparts with tales of abuse and cruelty that made Wilkes’s actions seem relatively benign. “[My officers] looked upon me with very different eyes,” Wilkes wrote, “and were well satisfied that my discipline was no more rigid than necessary to make my command efficient.”
    Elsewhere in Fiji, however, there was scant evidence of the supposed efficiency of Wilkes’s command. The Peacock had recently arrived at Bua Bay on the western tip of Vanua Levu, where two boat-crews led by Lieutenant Perry had been sitting idle for several weeks, waiting for orders from their commander. Although Wilkes would later accuse Perry of laziness, the truth was that Wilkes had forgotten about him, and Perry had no way of knowing where his commander was. Given the tremendous time constraints under which they were all working, this was an inexcusable lapse on the part of the leader of the Ex. Ex.
    But if Wilkes’s organizational skills might be lacking, at least he was a capable surveyor. As Reynolds was belatedly discovering, Hudson didn’t even know the basics of how to conduct a survey, and he wasn’t about to learn. Just as he had proven weirdly indifferent to early sightings of the Antarctic coast, Hudson now showed an abysmal lack of interest in the primary mission of the Expedition. For Hudson’s officers, who were saddled with the responsibility of carrying out one of the most ambitious survey operations ever undertaken by the U.S. Navy, it was a highly exasperating situation. “Of course we are without a system, and things are done in the most confused disorder,” Reynolds fumed, “when they are done at all. It is damnable!”
    The Peacock ’s most recent swing along the west coast of Viti Levu had gone so badly that the sailors had begun to grumble that there was a Jonah aboard the ship. In a single week they had rammed into so many coral reefs that it was a miracle the ship was still afloat. The Peacock ’s cutter had capsized and sunk before it could be saved. An entire day was lost unsuccessfully attempting to raise the lost boat. But there had been more: one man lost three fingers in an anchor chain; another shot his forefinger in two; yet another nearly amputated his leg; and then there had been the sailor who had crushed his ribs while working the capstan. The once happy Peacock had become a ship of gloom.
    Reynolds was greatly relieved to be named second-in-command of a two-boat survey of the eastern edge of Vanua Levu. Reynolds and five sailors were to spend the next two weeks in a twenty-eight-foot whaleboat containing a mast, sail, five oars, six muskets, six pistols, four cutlasses, boxes of ammunition, two casks of water, a bag of bread, “a chest of grub,” a cask of whiskey, and an anchor and chain. “We had no more room for exercise,” Reynolds wrote, “than a chicken in the shell.” Since their orders prohibited landing on shore, they were required to find a way to sleep in this overcrowded vessel. Reynolds reserved the boat’s stern grating for himself. This put his head in unpleasant proximity with the bilge until he hit upon the idea of using an upside-down bucket for a pillow. His men were left to contort themselves around each other until they were “mixed together so, that to extricate themselves was a matter requiring some care & trouble.” When the wind picked up that first night, kicking up a steep chop, sleep became impossible. The next morning, Reynolds “felt as if I had been well cudgeled.”
    The days were no easier. The weather was beautiful, without a cloud in the sky, but they had no way of shielding themselves from the sun. By noon, the brass portion of Reynolds’s sextant had become so hot that he couldn’t touch it, and the whaleboat’s interior planks were nearly as warm. At times like these, he sometimes sought relief in the water, where a submerged rock might offer a vantage point for his observations. “Often have I been up to my middle,” he wrote his family, “screwing away with my sextant upon objects