Sea of Glory

available to them for their private gardens, but Wilkes instructed Brackenridge to deny all requests for plants. One congressman became so angered that he threatened to stop the Expedition’s funding, but Wilkes stood firm. “The restriction was carried out,” he wrote, “and our plants preserved.”
     
    In January 1843, William Reynolds, who had just spent his first Christmas at home in eleven years, traveled to Washington to lobby in Congress for the extra pay that had been promised the Expedition’s officers. He stayed at the house of William May, who had just been promoted to lieutenant. The two friends traveled to Baltimore to attend the wedding of Lieutenant George Emmons. Reynolds reported to Henry Eld, who was then stationed in New York, that there were “a dozen Explorers who graced the occasion. We had a merry time, you may be sure. The very idea of seeing Old George spliced—to me, it was an ocean of fun.” During the ceremony it became apparent that Emmons had escaped from the Peacock with more than his life, for there he stood, resplendent in the dress uniform he had “preserved with so much cunning & forethought from the wreck of the Peacock. ”
    These dozen explorers had a bond that would unite them for the rest of their lives—a bond made all the more powerful by their shared loathing for their former commander. Reynolds undoubtedly knew that Eld was one of the few officers whose relations with Wilkes were almost cordial, but he could not help but vent his own bitter emotions in his letter. He revealed that he had run into Wilkes while in Washington and “had the Supreme gratification of cutting him dead” by refusing to acknowledge his presence. Marriage and the passage of time had done nothing to assuage the vehemence of Reynolds’s feelings for Wilkes. He closed his description of their meeting with a denunciation that outdid anything in his journal: “God everlastingly damn him!”
    Reynolds would never admit it, but Wilkes had taught him well over the last four years. He had taught him how to hate.
    When he wasn’t stalking the Great Hall of the Patent Office or overseeing the completion of the Expedition’s charts or finishing up a final round of pendulum experiments, Wilkes worked on his narrative. In addition to his own journal of the cruise, he consulted those of his officers and the scientific corps. He claimed to have been amused rather than angered by the many “malicious remarks” he came across, resolving that his own narrative would be “truthful and free from all vituperation.” Inevitably, however, he could not resist the opportunity to settle some scores with his officers, particularly the ones who had spoken against him during the court-martial.
    With Jane serving as his “amanuensis,” he wrote at what can only be described as a ferocious pace. “I am afraid you’re pushing it so hard,” his sister Eliza wrote him in April, “[that] you are making a toil out of what should be a pleasure.” By the winter of 1844, he was approaching the end of a manuscript that had swelled to three thousand pages. Wilkes considered it “a monument to my exertions in overcoming all impediments.”
    In late February, he and Jane were invited to attend a gala event aboard the Princeton, a new propeller-driven warship that had been equipped with an experimental weapon known as the “Peacemaker.” Constructed out of wrought iron and weighing close to ten tons, this “Monster Cannon” had been designed by John Ericsson (who would later gain fame for his ironclads in the Civil War) and was being promoted in naval circles by Captain Robert Stockton. Stockton had invited President Tyler and his cabinet, along with a host of influential senators and diplomats, to a demonstration on the Potomac River, and after being entertained in the cabin with wine and champagne, they were all invited on deck to witness the firing of the great gun.
    Since Secretary Abel Upshur had been responsible for funding this expensive vessel, he was offered a prime spot, only a few feet from the Peacemaker. Wilkes later claimed that he held “many misgivings” about the safety of this wrought-iron gun, and he urged Jane and their friends to watch from amidships. “The gun was fired,” Wilkes wrote, “but instead of its noise and [the] whistling of its far [flung] shot, a cloud of the blackest smoke arose & scarcely any report.” The breech of the experimental cannon had exploded, hurling a deadly