Sea of Glory

are broken.”
    Under partial rations, against light and baffling headwinds, the squadron sailed for Hawaii.

CHAPTER 11
    Mauna Loa
    OVER THE LAST FEW DECADES, the Hawaiian Islands, known to Wilkes as the Sandwich Islands, had become the epicenter of American whaling in the Pacific. Five of six whalers that passed through Honolulu were from New England or New York. That fact, combined with the strong American missionary presence throughout the island group, made Hawaii one of the few places in the Pacific where the United States exerted more of an economic and cultural influence than her European rivals. But not even this most American of Polynesian communities knew what to make of the U.S. Exploring Expedition when the squadron arrived in late September 1840—especially when several hundred sailors, all dressed in white shirts and pants, with handkerchiefs around their necks, black tarpaulin hats on their heads, and Spanish dollars in their pockets, descended on Honolulu.
    It was an ideal town for a sailor. Years of catering to the crews of whaleships had schooled the inhabitants in the fastest way to separate a sea-weary mariner from his money. Dance halls with fiddlers, prostitutes, and plenty of alcohol were open at almost all hours, and the Expedition’s sailors and marines quickly availed themselves of the local attractions. There was, however, an important difference between the Expedition and the whaling fleet. The sailors of the Ex. Ex. were proud to be representing the United States of America, and the more they drank, the more patriotic they became. A group of them procured a giant ensign and began to march through the streets of Honolulu, shouting, singing, waving the flag, and at every corner, pausing to give three hearty cheers for their native land. “It was glorious fun for them,” Reynolds wrote. “Two weeks liberty, plenty of money & their own masters. No wonder they went into such half-crazy excesses.”
    Of these sailors, Charlie Erskine had perhaps the best reason to celebrate. For the last year and a half he had been struggling to teach himself to read and write. In Honolulu he wrote the first letter of his life. “Mother, Mother, Dear Mother,” it began, “While fair away a cruseing amoung the islands of the sea, I never, Oh no Dear mother, I never, never will forget to think of thee. By going to Mr. F.D. Quincy 25 Commercial Street you will get one hundred dollars from Your absent son Charlie.”
     
    Soon after the Peacock ’s arrival in Honolulu, Reynolds received his mail from Captain Hudson. “I got such a pile of letters and papers as I could scarcely carry—my arms were full,” he wrote. “I was completely puzzled, I did not know which seal to crack first, and after inspecting and turning and tossing I found it was no use to select and so picked them as I could.” After several delightful hours of reading, he turned in for the night. “All that I had learned was floating through my head,” he wrote, “and it was near 3 before I fell asleep.”
    For Reynolds it was a joyous relief to know that his family was, as of ten months ago, “all well and happy and had not forgotten or neglected me.” He good-naturedly scolded Lydia for dashing off letters that “were not any too lengthy,” insisting, “There is nothing about Home too trifling to be overlooked.” During the long passage to Honolulu, he had begun to think about his standing in the navy, and he felt nothing but pessimism concerning the chances of his getting a promotion any time soon. “I shall be 30 years of age ,” he wrote his family, “when, by the present method of filling the vacancies occasioned by deaths and resignations, I may be made a Lieutenant. . . . What a prospect is this! It is enough to drive one crazy.” But he didn’t want them to worry and assured them with characteristic cheerfulness, “I am far from being miserable.”

    He gave his family detailed mailing instructions for the duration of the Expedition. Although Wilkes kept the future movements of the squadron “a profound mystery,” the officers generally assumed that they would spend the summer of 1841 surveying the Columbia River, then return to America via the Cape of Good Hope after stopping at Singapore. Reynolds had learned of three different routes for getting letters to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River—by way of Montreal, St. Louis, and New Orleans. After that, it would be a little