Sea of Glory

Underwood had on a pair of thick canvas trousers they could not tear off. They were both wounded in the head. All the crew were wounded, and one of the men was crazy on the beach.”
    Hamilton: “Did not Lieutenant Wilkes endeavor to restrain the seamen from killing the inhabitants of Malolo?”
    Emmons: “He did.”
    Hamilton: “Have you not expressed a belief that Lieutenant Wilkes was moderate in his punishment of the inhabitants?”
    Emmons: “I thought so at the time, and have often said so. I received an order from Lieutenant Wilkes on that day to cease hostilities and felt mortified, because I thought they had not been punished enough.”
    Hovering over the court-martial, but left unstated throughout the many days of testimony, was the close connection between Wilkes and one of the officers killed at Malolo. It was a rare example of restraint that was calculated to work to Wilkes’s advantage, for all knew that his nineteen-year-old nephew had died on that beach.
     
    While the focus of Pinkney’s charges was much narrower than Guillou’s, the incidents, when contrasted with the life-and-death exploits at Malolo and elsewhere, inevitably came across as petty and inconsequential. The near-collision between the Flying Fish and the Vincennes in the Tuamotus was rehashed over and over again as more than half-a-dozen officers testified as to whether or not Wilkes had been guilty of using the phrase “God damn it” when addressing Pinkney. In each instance, Hamilton would attempt to prove that the witness’s testimony had been influenced by his dislike of Wilkes.
    Hamilton had a more difficult time countering the charges of excessive punishment—particularly when it came to the four marines who had refused to reenlist in Hawaii. Passed Midshipman George Colvocoresses (nicknamed Colvo) told how he had taken the marines from the prison in Honolulu to the Vincennes. “They were brought to the gangway and punished with the cat, receiving, I think a dozen though not till they had been asked if they were willing to return to duty. And their reply was ‘no!’” Hamilton asked George Sinclair which officers in the Expedition had spoken of Wilkes’s “reputation for cruelty.” “I have heard all the officers of the squadron, with but few exceptions so speak of him,” Sinclair replied.
    Captain Isaac McKeever—the officer who had persuaded Wilkes to take on his nephew as sailing master of the Vincennes before the squadron left for the South Pacific—returned the favor by testifying that there had not been enough time for Wilkes to try the sailors and marines caught drinking in Callao. Wilkes was therefore justified in whipping each of them more than the allotted dozen lashes.
    Wilkes’s attorney was most successful in portraying Wilkes as a tireless and hardworking commander. Assistant Surgeon John Fox claimed that Wilkes “devoted his whole time to the duties of the squadron, and did not reserve to himself more than five hours a day for sleep. He was irregular in his sleep, so as to injure his health; the length of time he went without sleeping was extraordinary.” Even Wilkes’s avowed enemies acknowledged that he was “remarkably attentive to his duties.”
    There was one charge that Wilkes had no choice but to admit to. When Overton Carr was asked if he had been ordered to replace Wilkes’s coach whip with a commodore’s pennant shortly after leaving Callao, Hamilton interrupted Carr’s testimony to say that Wilkes freely acknowledged that he had flown the pennant and worn a captain’s uniform. His officers would have to wait until his defence before they heard his rationale for elevating himself in rank.
     
    On Saturday, August 27—ten days into Wilkes’s court-martial—the trial took on a new life. That morning the judge advocate announced that he would devote the rest of the proceedings to proving that Wilkes had deliberately lied about sighting Antarctica on January 19, 1840. Two years earlier President Van Buren had staked the reputation of the nation on Wilkes’s claim by officially announcing the discovery of a new continent. If Wilkes had lied, he had dishonored not only himself but the entire United States of America. “The Judge Advocate took his seat,” the Herald reported, “arranged his papers, and prepared for the examination of the witnesses, with the air of one who was determined to use every effort to elicit the whole truth, if possible, on this most important