Sea of Glory

but the fact remained that the secretary of the navy still addressed him in official correspondence as a lieutenant. But none of this seemed to trouble Wilkes. Ever since Mammy Reed had predicted he would one day become an admiral, he had been driven by a sense of election. “[T]here is an all protecting care over me,” he assured Jane even before the squadron set out from South America, “and both you and I must strive to deserve it.” Like that other self-crowned hero of the age, Napoleon, Wilkes did not feel bound by the rules that governed most men, and it annoyed him that others were so slow to appreciate that destiny had earmarked him for greatness. When his replacement at the Depot of Charts and Instruments, Lieutenant James Gilliss, wrote him as a friend instead of a superior, Wilkes was outraged. “I am now of different flesh & blood from him,” he told Jane. “The idea of a Lt. in the Navy writing to me on terms of familiarity—that day has gone by and I hope you will carry yourself with all due dignity to these jackanapes and vulgar upstarts. . . . I cannot my dear Jeanie any longer think and feel as a Lieutenant. I am only opposed to them and goading of them to their duty.”
    These are extraordinary words coming from a man who was still, by all rights, a lieutenant, suggesting that Wilkes was delusional if not delirious. But as Reynolds recognized, there was more than a little method to Wilkes’s madness. “I wish almost, that the plea of insanity could be advanced for him,” Reynolds wrote, “for his acts proclaim him to be either crazy, beyond redemption, or to be a rascally tyrant & a liar.” Wilkes’s unswerving belief in himself had led him down a dangerous, potentially catastrophic path, but his claims of being a captain were more than mere wish fulfillment. As always, he had a plan.
    As the news of his many accomplishments reached the United States, he was convinced that the secretary of the navy would have no choice but to promote him to captain. In fact, Wilkes would later claim that both Paulding and Secretary of War Poinsett had promised him a captaincy before the completion of the voyage. As long as the promotion came through, he could safely return to the United States with his commodore pennant flying. By extending the duration of the voyage by a year, Wilkes felt he had made this a virtual certainty. “[I]t will enable me to add many [things] to increase the glory of the cruise,” he wrote Jane. “I shall certainly make it a brilliant one.”
    That fall, a vessel from Mexico arrived in Honolulu with the latest news from the United States. Wilkes was pleased to learn that the discovery of Antarctica “was received with great Enthusiasm.” He was also pleased to learn that as of the middle of September Congress was still in session. “[ I ]f the American Nation could be depended upon,” he wrote Jane, “I should think they would have passed our promotions before the adjournment of the Senate.” In the meantime, he continued to conduct himself as if his promotion had already occurred.
     
    If Wilkes felt free to oppress his officers, he was under even fewer constraints when it came to the sailors and marines. The Ex. Ex. was a nonmilitary operation, but a naval code of discipline still prevailed. Buttressed by the Articles of War, a naval captain ruled with what Herman Melville called “a judicial severity unknown on the national soil.” But there were limits. Unless formally sentenced in a court-martial, no sailor could receive more than twelve lashes. So far, however, this had not deterred Wilkes. Since the squadron left Norfolk, there had been no less than twenty-five instances in which men had received double the legal limit, and in Honolulu Wilkes’s enthusiasm for the lash reached new, appalling heights.
    His decision in Fiji to add another year to the Expedition had created a problem. The sailors’ and marines’ terms of duty expired in November, and Wilkes was required to provide them with transportation home if they chose not to reenlist. After their raucous two-week fling in Honolulu, most of the sailors opted to remain with the squadron. Those who did decide to leave were replaced with native Hawaiians, who would be returned to Honolulu after the squadron’s visit to the Pacific Northwest. When it came to the marines, Wilkes adopted a different policy. The marines functioned as the squadron’s police force, and Wilkes knew that it would be difficult to