Sea of Glory

specification.”
    The first witness was James Alden, the watch officer when Wilkes claimed he first sighted land. Alden testified that once the squadron had returned to Sydney, Wilkes had attempted to convince him that he had seen land on the nineteenth when he was certain he hadn’t. It wasn’t until January 28, Alden insisted, that they saw land for the first time. It was damning testimony, difficult to refute, but Hamilton did the best he could. He asked Alden why, on January 31, he had recommended that Wilkes abandon their pursuit of Antarctica. “We had been constantly beset by ice and in a gale of wind for the greater part of two days,” he testified. “The ship was in imminent peril of being lost constantly. It required all hands a greater part of the time. The sick list was large; and the medical officers were the cause, by their reports, of our being called on for our opinion.” Wilkes, of course, had overridden the officers’ and medical staff ’s recommendation and continued on. Now that he had established that Wilkes had persevered in spite of his officers, Hamilton asked, “Did you ever hear any officer say Lieutenant Wilkes was a d——d lucky fellow, or words to that effect and that it was no further use of opposing him? Was not that remark made when in sight of land?” Although the question was labeled as hearsay and struck from the record, the implication was clear; Wilkes had been struggling against both the elements and his officers, whose hatred for their commander was so intense that they had been disappointed by the discovery of Antarctica. Wouldn’t men so inclined be willing to deny earlier reports of sighting land?
    Then Hamilton called the gunner John Williamson to testify. Williamson claimed that on the morning of January 19, Wilkes had questioned him if he thought he saw land in the distance. “If it isn’t land,” Williamson had responded, “I’ve never seen land.” To many, Williamson’s testimony seemed highly suspicious; at the very least, it demonstrated the dysfunctional nature of Wilkes’s command. Instead of consulting his fellow commissioned officers, Wilkes had been forced to leave the quarterdeck and approach a gunner on the gangway.
    But as the judge advocate proceeded to prove, it really made no difference whether or not Wilkes had seen land on the morning of the nineteenth. Three days earlier, on January 16, two young passed midshipmen had become the first to see what would later be recognized as the continent of Antarctica. Even though William Hudson had refused to acknowledge it and Wilkes had done his best to ignore it, the fact remained that these two young men had rescued the nation’s honor—if not Wilkes’s and Hudson’s—through their discovery. The judge advocate called William Reynolds to the stand and asked him to describe what he had seen from the masthead on that historic day.
    Reynolds: “I saw what I supposed to be high land on the morning of the 16 th about 11 o’clock from the masthead, with Mr. Eld. We were looking at it an hour before we went below to report, and then procured a spyglass, and looked until we became satisfied that it was land. We went below and reported it to the officer of the deck, and Lt. Eld to Capt. Hudson. I could see the land from deck, but not so distinct as aloft. I pointed out the direction of the land to the officer of the deck, Lt. Budd. He didn’t seem to think it was land, and didn’t send anyone to the masthead to make further observation. I waited on deck some time, expecting Captain Hudson would come up; he didn’t come up, and I went below. We then tacked ship and stood off from the barrier, and there was no entry made in the log or notice taken of the report, much to my disappointment and mortification.”
    Judge Advocate: “Were you then, and are you now, convinced it was land?”
    Reynolds: “I was convinced that it was land at the time, am now so convinced, and never doubted it.”
    The true goat in this account was William Hudson, who was subsequently subjected to a heated and humiliating series of questions by the judge advocate. Not only were Hudson’s competence and intelligence brought into question, it was even suggested that he had willingly doctored his report to the secretary of the navy so as to corroborate Wilkes’s claims. “The whole matter is horrid in a national point of view,” Du Pont wrote a friend. “[ M ]y mind is clearly made up as to the moral bearing &