Sea of Glory

integrity which the matter involves—though to me, Hudson stands if possible in a more unenviable light than Wilkes. Alden’s testimony tells the whole story; & to my mind the 19 th was the blankest day as far as log books & Journals can show, of the whole week or ten days previous to discovery.”
    But if Wilkes’s honesty had been brought into serious doubt, the judge advocate was unable, in the end, to prove incontrovertibly that he had lied. When it came to the reputation of the Expedition, however, the damage had been done. Wilkes’s hunger for glory had permanently tainted what might otherwise have been recognized as one of the most courageous feats of exploration of the nineteenth century.
     
    After almost three weeks, it finally came time for Wilkes’s defence. “The room was crowded with spectators,” the Herald reported, “among whom were many ladies.” One of them was Rebecca Reynolds, just back from a brief weekend visit to West Point, from which her husband’s younger brother John had recently graduated. Wilkes had gone to the trouble and expense of having his defence printed—a pamphlet of “56 closely printed pages,” according to the Herald. Wilkes was only able to read a portion of it before his voice gave out and he handed the pamphlet over to Hamilton. “This gentleman bungled so much in his delivery,” Reynolds wrote his father, “and spoke in such monotonous & hurried tones that we wondered whether he could be reading a production of his own.”
    The defence began by relating how Wilkes had returned from the Expedition “to find that I had already been condemned in my absence.” He went on to describe the circumstances he had struggled under during the voyage. “A cabal . . . existed,” he asserted, “to thwart all the objects of the Expedition, which were not consistent with the ease of the gentlemen who composed it.” “I did not spare myself,” he continued. “I feel no derogation to my character to admit that I did not spare others when the public service was promoted.” His problem with his officers, he explained, related to two diametrically opposed theories of discipline. In a blatant attempt to appeal to the sympathies of the senior members of the court, Wilkes claimed that he subscribed to the “old discipline of the service.” “I avow myself, and shall ever be found, opposed to the new idea that authority is to be derived from the steerage and wardroom, and that officers are to be shown the instructions of their commander, and be civilly asked if they will perform their duty.” If Wilkes was a throwback to an earlier and harsher era, he was proud of it. “[T]he work we have executed . . . is enormous,” he maintained. “I attribute it to the discipline that has prevailed, and which the laws, rules and regulations of the naval service allow.”
    He claimed that the only charge that caused him “the least anxiety” was that of excessive punishment, but he was confident that it had been proven that the floggings “were absolutely necessary for the good order and discipline of the service.” When it came to the discovery of Antarctica, he now chose to acknowledge and, in fact, acclaim the sighting of land on January 16. But in Wilkes’s version of the discovery, Reynolds played no part in it. Without once mentioning his name or his testimony, Wilkes only referred to Eld’s description of the sighting. “If ever the testimony of a witness was calculated to produce an impression on the court,” he insisted, “it was that of Mr. Eld”—even though Reynolds had made essentially the same remarks earlier in the trial.
    He also attempted to explain why he had been forced to rely on the testimony of a noncommissioned officer when it came to proving he had seen land on the morning of January 19. “Those who are unacquainted with the isolation in which the etiquette of the navy places the commander of a strictly disciplined ship of war,” he wrote, “may express surprise that no interchange of opinion on the subject of land took place between myself and the officers. Such discipline being maintained, we had little communication.” He branded the judge advocate’s accusation that he had purposely lied about seeing land as a “wanton and unprovoked assault” on his reputation.
    Wilkes saved his most creative arguments for the charge concerning his having flown a commodore’s pendant and worn a captain’s uniform. “I admitted the facts stated in