Sea of Glory

Columbia River. In 1792, one of Cook’s junior officers, George Vancouver, returned to lead a survey of the coast. Although Vancouver would explore the Strait of Juan de Fuca and discover and name Puget Sound, he sailed past the wall of breakers at the mouth of the Columbia without suspecting that a huge river existed on the other side. “The sea had now changed from its natural to river-coloured water,” Vancouver wrote, “the probable consequence of some streams falling into the bay. Not considering this opening worthy of more attention, I continued our pursuit to the northwest.”
    Later that same year, in May 1792, three hundred years after Columbus arrived in America, a humble sea otter trader from Boston by the name of Robert Gray also detected evidence of a strong flow of freshwater along the coast. Unlike the British explorer, Gray thought it was worthy of more attention, particularly if it might yield him some additional otter pelts. Taking advantage of a break in the weather, the thirty-seven-year-old captain managed to sail the 212-ton sloop Columbia Rediva over the wave-whipped bar. Once within the six-mile-wide river mouth, Gray found a new world that rivaled anything discovered by Columbus.
    At that time of year, the river would have been roiling with salmon, many of them more than five feet long. As he gradually felt his way up the river, Gray was astounded by the size of the trees—some as high as three hundred feet. A merchant instead of an explorer, Gray was most interested in the pelts offered to him by the Clatsop, Tillamook, and Chinook Indians living along the river. By the time he had sailed just fifteen miles, Gray had accumulated 150 otter, 300 beaver, and several hundred other animal furs. Later that summer, after successfully recrossing the bar, Gray encountered Vancouver and told the explorer about the river. Vancouver dispatched a lieutenant to the bar, who eventually ventured almost a hundred miles upstream. The fact remained, however, that an American merchant captain had outdone a government-sponsored explorer from the most powerful maritime nation on earth.
    By the time Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805-6 at Fort Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia, the river had been visited by close to a dozen American ships. In 1811 the New Yorker John Jacob Astor launched his plan to establish the trading post of Astoria. Although the War of 1812 forced Astor to sell Astoria to the British, who renamed it Fort George, the recorded history of the river, as its name would suggest, began with Captain Gray’s Columbia.
    Wilkes’s awkward meeting in Fiji with Captain Belcher had made it clear that the British considered the region their own. “The Officers of Belcher’s vessels, like true Englishmen, heard with surprise that we intended to Survey that Coast . . . ,” William Reynolds wrote. “You may be sure that when Belcher reaches England his Government will do something towards increasing the Colony they have there already. . . . They want a large slice of the Main and if we do not take care, they will be in the Columbia River before us, and we may get them out, if we can.”
     
    When the Porpoise returned from her sweep through the Tuamotu and Society Islands on March 24, 1841, Wilkes was seething with more than his usual anxiety and impatience. If it had been possible, he would have left immediately for the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, the Porpoise ’s bottom was in need of recoppering, requiring that they remain in Honolulu for another ten days.
    Ringgold and his officers soon realized that their commander was motivated by something more than a need to reach the Columbia River in a timely fashion. Word had made its way to Oahu that the U.S. naval vessels St. Louis and Yorktown were due to arrive shortly. No one knew for certain if Wilkes had improperly assumed his rank, but everyone had his suspicions and could only wonder what would happen if the squadron were to encounter a naval vessel commanded by a legitimate captain. “I feel curious to know the fate of the proud Swallow tail,” wrote the Porpoise ’s first lieutenant Robert Johnson, referring to the commodore’s pennant.
    The Yorktown was captained by John Aulick, an officer who had objected so vehemently to Wilkes’s appointment that he had attempted to intimidate Wilkes during a private meeting in Washington. If there was an officer in the U.S. Navy who would delight in calling Wilkes’s bluff, it would