Sea of Glory

are from the October 29, 1838, entry of his private journal. On the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a model of good leadership, see James Ronda’s “‘A Most Perfect Harmony’: The Lewis and Clark Expedition as an Exploration Community” in Voyages of Discovery, edited by James Ronda, pp. 77-88. William Reynolds’s enthusiastic remarks about the Expedition and Wilkes appear in his private journal, recorded on October 29, 1838.
    Samuel Clemens’s memories of Wilkes the explorer were prompted by his reading the obituary of Wilkes’s widow, Mary, in 1906; in Mark Twain’s Autobiography, vol. II, pp. 120-21. Thoreau’s reference to the Expedition appears in the final chapter of Walden, p. 560, in The Portable Thoreau, edited by Carl Bode, Penguin, 1977. For an examination of Thoreau’s wide reading in the literature of exploration, see John Aldrich Christie’s Thoreau as World Traveler. In the pamphlet The Stormy Petrel and the Whale, David Jaffé argues that Wilkes was a major inspiration for Ahab in Moby-Dick. Jaffé cites Melville’s reference to “young ambition,” p. 21, and elsewhere says of Wilkes, “Clearly, here was a man who could have been a great national hero for any one of a dozen incredible exploits. But the hero was a tarnished one. Melville must have perceived in a sudden flash that here was a great man with a tragic flaw—a will that was unbending to the point of fanaticism or monomania,” p. 18.

CHAPTER 1: THE GREAT SOUTH SEA
    For an account of how the names “South Sea” and “Pacific” came into being, see Ernest Dodge’s New England and the South Seas, p. 10; Herman Melville also provides an interesting version of this naming process in his lecture “The South Seas,” in The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860, pp. 411-12. In the Autobiography of Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes, U.S. Navy, 1798-1877 (subsequently referred to as ACW), Wilkes writes that “the adventures of discoveries” had possessed him since “my early boyhood.” He continues, “Indeed, it was this strong bias which led me to sea & the naval Service. I had indulged in the idea of procuring distinction and a craving after the excitement and scenes which such an enterprise would offer,” p. 337. Bernard Smith in European Vision and the South Pacific discusses how exploration in the first half of the nineteenth century was predominantly by sea instead of land, p. 2.
    Wilkes speaks of his traumatic separation from his father in ACW, pp. 7-8; he describes the witch, Mammy Reed, in ACW, pp. 4-5; he writes of having “no other companions than my books and teachers” in ACW, p. 12. Dodge’s New England and the South Seas contains a good account of the sea otter trade, pp. 22-25; 57-65. Even before the secret of sea otter furs became public knowledge, an American who was part of Cook’s expedition, John Ledyard, mounted a personal campaign to send a trading venture to the Northwest. He even traveled to France, where he won the support of Thomas Jefferson and John Paul Jones, but it wasn’t until 1787, when a group of six New England merchants enlisted Captains John Kendrick and Robert Gray, that an American sea otter voyage became a reality. When Astor died in 1848, he was considered to be the richest man in the United States; his great grandson, also named John Jacob Astor, would have the distinction of going down with the Titanic in 1905. Edmund Fanning, who sold the Tonquin (named for the gulf that would become famous during the Vietnam War) to Astor, wrote about the ship’s demise in Voyages to the South Seas, Indian and Pacific Oceans, pp. 137-50. F. W. Howay in “The Loss of the Tonquin ” compares various known accounts of the disaster and tells of how the story eventually made its way east.
    For an account of the naval side of the War of 1812, see William Fowler’s Jack Tars and Commodores. Daniel Henderson in Hidden Coasts describes the celebrations New Yorkers regularly gave naval heroes during the War of 1812, pp. 9-10. Wilkes relates Mammy Reed’s prediction that he would one day be an admiral in ACW, p. 4. James Fenimore Cooper’s pessimistic words about Wilkes’s chances of getting a midshipman’s appointment are in ACW, p. 37. Wilkes speaks of his “hankering after naval life” in ACW, p. 16. He describes his first voyage on a merchant vessel in ACW, pp. 20-28. Wilkes’s revealing statement about how his “tastes were not in unison” with a life at sea is in ACW, p. 29.