Sea of Glory

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    On January 21, the Vincennes and the Flying Fish weighed anchor. As she straggled behind the flagship, the schooner passed a merchant vessel, just four months out of Boston, whose captain offered a pile of newspapers. Reynolds was making his leisurely way through one of the papers when he came upon the latest list of navy promotions. Since he felt he was, at the very least, three years away from a promotion, he began to examine the list with only the mildest interest—until he found his name among the lieutenants. “I was confounded,” he wrote. “Joy and surprise made me dumb! I had not had even the shadow of a hope for such good fortune. . . . Yet here, I had made a Lieut, more than a month ago! I screamed the glorious news aloud, but the utterance nearly choked me. I never felt so proud or happy in all my life.”
    Making Reynolds’s elation all the sweeter was that Wilkes’s name was not on the list. He took out a pen and ink, drew a thick black line around the pertinent paragraph, and folded the paper so that the page remained in full view. Then he sent the paper to Wilkes aboard the Vincennes.
     
    The crew of the Flying Fish arrived in Singapore to discover that the two brigs had preceded them by three weeks but that the Vincennes, which had failed to meet them at two prearranged rendezvous points, had not yet arrived. Reynolds and his companions were delighted to have the opportunity to explore this busy, cosmopolitan port, where merchant vessels from no fewer than twenty-four “Asiatic nations,” including the “Chinese, Hindoos, Malays, Jews, Armenians, [and] Parsees” mixed with vessels from Europe and America.
    The Vincennes followed just a few days later. Wilkes was in a “great uproar,” claiming that the Flying Fish had failed to meet him at a third rendezvous point. Both Knox and Reynolds were mystified since their written orders only mentioned two points of rendezvous. Instead of speaking directly with Knox, who was one of his most faithful officers, Wilkes angrily ordered a court of inquiry to investigate the actions of the Flying Fish ’s commander. The court, comprising Ringgold, Carr, and Alden, with Emmons acting as the judge advocate, would exonerate Knox, but the breach between Wilkes and his officers was now complete. “This act of [Wilkes’s],” Reynolds wrote, “was as black a deed as any that have disgraced him during the cruise.”
    It was also the act of a man who had just received dreadful news from home. In Singapore Wilkes found forty-two letters waiting for him from Jane. The latest was dated July 15, 1841—a month later than any other letter received in the squadron; for once, Wilkes had the freshest news from the United States. Jane reported that a large number of objects from the Ex. Ex. had already arrived in Washington and that a geologist with no familiarity with the Expedition’s aims had been allowed to ransack the collections. Wilkes and the scientific corps had been assured that the crates would remain untouched until their return. “They have broken their faith and in all probability ruined half our results,” he wrote.
    The news concerning his promotion was also not good. Jane had even dared to question the wisdom of his having flown the pennant of a commodore. “[P]ray, how can you join sides against me . . . ,” he demanded. “I feel proud of having borne [the pennant] with triumphant sweep the world over. . . . My only fault was I did not hoist it the moment I left [Norfolk].” It infuriated Wilkes to know that while he received only criticism from his nation’s leaders—not to mention his wife—the commanders of competing European expeditions had already received their just rewards. He had heard that d’Urville had been promoted to admiral on his return to France; similar honors had been promised to Ross, while his official standing had, if anything, lessened since leaving Norfolk. With the return of the Expedition’s disgruntled officers to the United States, the secretary of the navy, who had formerly addressed him as a lieutenant commandant, now referred to him simply as Lieutenant Wilkes. “I serve a glorious country,” he wrote Jane, “but an administration the shabbiest on Earth.” In desperation, he urged Jane to speak to her “influential friends” concerning his promotion.
    But the most disturbing news from his home on Capitol Hill was of a more personal nature. Wilkes’s sister Eliza, Jane reported, was not doing