Sea of Glory

was awakened by the cry of “Rocks Ahead!” An undetected current had swept them to the east. The two vessels were immediately rounded up and were soon struggling against mountainous seas that threatened to dash them against the rocks. “The moment we found ourselves in deep water,” William May later wrote Reynolds, “a tremendous bustle of bending cables and giving orders ensued.”
    On May 2, at 6:30 P.M., exactly forty-nine years after Vancouver, the Vincennes and the Porpoise anchored in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. They were soon surrounded by canoes of natives in conical grass hats who asked “whether we were Boston or King George’s ships”—national designations that dated back to the days when American fur trading was dominated by Boston merchants. Over the last few months, Wilkes’s attitude toward the captive Fijian chief Veidovi had softened considerably, and Veidovi was now allowed on the Vincennes ’s deck. “It was amusing to us,” Wilkes wrote, “to observe the contempt our prisoner . . . entertained for these Indians, which was such that he would hardly deign to look at them.”
    As the two vessels made their way through Admiralty Inlet and into Puget Sound, Wilkes marveled at the contrast between this inland waterway and the mouth of the Columbia. “Nothing can exceed the beauty of these waters, and their safety: not a shoal exists . . . that can in any way interrupt their navigation. . . . I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these.” Today, there are no fewer than four U.S. Navy bases on Puget Sound; none exists on the Columbia River.
    At the Hudson’s Bay Company outpost of Fort Nisqually, situated between modern Tacoma and Olympia, Wilkes made initial contact with the powers-that-be in the Pacific Northwest. Relations would prove surprisingly cordial between the Americans and the HBC throughout the squadron’s time in the territory, and Wilkes quickly went to work, sending surveying parties throughout Puget Sound and beyond, as two log cabins were built to replace the pendulum houses damaged on the summit of Mauna Loa. When Wilkes received word from an HBC employee that the Peacock had arrived at the bar, he resolved to travel overland down to the Columbia, where he would lead the officers of the Peacock and the Flying Fish in the survey of the river.
    But when he reached Astoria on May 23, after an arduous five-day journey by horse and canoe, he was disappointed to discover that he had received erroneous information. The Peacock and the Flying Fish had not yet arrived. They were now more than a month overdue.
     
    Wilkes would later admit to having felt a strong sense of trepidation back in early December when he drew up the sailing instructions for the Peacock ’s and the Flying Fish ’s cruise to the central Pacific. He was well aware of Hudson’s deficiencies as a surveyor. He was also concerned that his second-in-command lacked the discipline, judgment, and determination to complete the cruise in the allotted time. As they all knew, the Expedition’s highest priority was the survey of the Columbia River, and Wilkes could only hope that Hudson would break off the cruise in time to reach the Pacific Northwest between April 15 and May 1. His orders could not have been more explicit: “it must not be later than the latter date.”
    By May 1, the Peacock and the Flying Fish were still thousands of miles from the west coast of North America. “This cruise of now, more than six months,” Reynolds wrote, “has had less to redeem it, than any other, I ever made.” Hudson had wasted days searching out nonexistent islands and spent just hours surveying new discoveries. At Tabiteauea (known to them as Drummond Island) in the Gilbert or Kiribati Group, the squadron encountered hostile natives armed with stingray-tipped spears and swords studded with shark teeth. Despite unmistakable evidence to the contrary, Hudson insisted that the natives were harmless and led a party ashore. Sure enough, a sailor was lured away from the group and never seen again. In retaliation, Hudson attacked the village the next day, killing an estimated twenty natives. “More War!” Reynolds wrote. “It seems to me, that our path through the Pacific is to be marked in blood.”
    The cruise was particularly exasperating for those aboard the schooner. While the officers of the Peacock were allowed to visit native villages, Hudson almost never