Sea of Glory

“They only laugh at it. A few weeks will repair all the damage. They have heretofore sneered at men-of-war, as they had done nothing here except burning a town, and it is very important that some more effective mode of exciting their fears should be adopted.”
    Just eleven days after the burning of Solevu, Wilkes would do as Dana suggested. In addition to reducing yet another beautiful Fijian village to a smoking ruin, he would drench its sands in blood.

CHAPTER 10
    Massacre at Malolo
    IT WAS TO BE WILKES’S final survey in Fiji—a week-long swing through the westernmost islands of the group. Beginning with the Yasawas to the north, Wilkes would work his way down to the constellation of tiny islands known as the Mamanuca Group, finishing with Malolo, not far from the big island of Viti Levu. Now, with his survey of Fiji almost completed, he could finally begin to look to the future with optimism and pleasure. “I feel I have now got to the top of the hill,” he wrote Jane, “and every day shortens the time [until my return].” In typical fashion, he ended the letter with a word about his nephew, who would be accompanying him on the survey: “Wilkes is quite well & a good boy.”
    The survey party left Bua Bay on July 16. Whippy had warned that they were headed toward one of the most dangerous parts of Fiji—a place where no white man dared reside—so Wilkes made sure that the party had sufficient safety in numbers. In addition to three boats—led by Alden, Emmons, and Underwood—there would be the Porpoise and the Flying Fish, with the schooner flying his commodore’s pennant. The large number of vessels prompted Lieutenant Sinclair to wonder if “we must be bound on some war party”—words that would prove tragically prophetic.
    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