Sea of Glory

Congress, 2nd Session, p. 191.
    For information on Jeremiah Reynolds, who despite being a famous person of his day has virtually slipped through the cracks of history, I have depended on R. B. Harlan’s The History of Clinton County, Ohio, pp. 580-85, and Henry Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio, pp. 431-33. Instead of his relationship with Symmes, it has been Reynolds’s connection to Edgar Allan Poe that has interested most scholars; see Robert F. Almy’s “J. N. Reynolds: A Brief Biography with Particular Reference to Poe and Symmes” in The Colophon, pp. 227-45, and Aubrey Starke’s “Poe’s Friend Reynolds” in American Literature, pp. 152-59. In Remarks on a Review of Symmes’ Theory, Jeremiah Reynolds speaks of Weddell and the open polar sea, then continues, “suppose, like Weddell, under some fortuitous circumstances, the icy circle should be passed, a few days press of sail would reach the 90°, where anchor might be cast on the axis of the earth, our eagle and star-spangled banner unfurled and planted, and left to wave on the very pole itself, where, amid the novelty, grandeur, and sublimity, of the scene, the two little vessels would turn once around in twenty-four hours,” p. 72.
    A letter from Jeremiah Reynolds on the subject of “an Antarctic Expedition” appears in Doc. No. 88, House of Representatives, 20th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 3-4. A series of memorials and letters of support (from such notables as Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones and Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard) are included in Rep. No. 209, 20th Congress, 1st Session. Reynolds’s 1828 report on uncharted islands and shoals is in Doc. No. 105, House of Representatives, 23rd Congress, 2nd Session. In a letter dated June 22, 1838, Wilkes’s old naval friend Lieutenant R. R. Pinkham, a Nantucketer, charges that Reynolds’s report “was copied word for word, from the Nantucket Inquirer, after Jenks [editor of the newspaper], Thornton, and myself had spent months in collecting [the information]” (KSHS). The launching of the “strong and splendid discovery ship Peacock ” is described in the New York Mirror, October 4, 1828, p. 106.
    Wilkes tells of his chance meeting with Jane and her mother at a chemistry lecture in ACW, p. 209. For the relationship between science and the U.S. government, see A. Hunter Dupree’s Science and the Federal Government, as well as Robert Bruce’s The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876, George Daniel’s American Science in the Age of Jackson, and Nathan Reingold’s “Definitions and Speculations: The Professionalization of Science in America in the Nineteenth Century” in The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic, edited by Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn Brown, pp. 33-69. For information concerning Ferdinand Hassler, I have depended on Ferdinand Cajori’s The Checquered Career of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, as well as Albert Stanley’s “Hassler’s Legacy” in NOAA Magazine, pp. 52-57. For information on Wilkes’s brother-in-law James Renwick see the Dictionary of American Biography and ACW, pp. 724-27. Wilkes describes his relationship with Hassler in ACW, pp. 216-25.
    Wilkes’s October 5, 1828, letter to Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard is in Collection 250, Box 28, Folder 11 of the Southard Papers at the Princeton University Library. Jeremiah Reynolds’s October 28, 1828, letter to Southard, in which he describes Wilkes’s and Renwick’s “spirit of dictation,” is also at Princeton. Senator Hayne’s arguments against the 1829 expedition are in No. 94 of 20th Congress, 2nd Session.
    For information on the South Sea Fur Company and Exploring Expedition, see Edmund Fanning’s Voyages Round the World, pp. 478-91, which includes a report from the expedition’s leader, Benjamin Pendleton; see also William Stanton’s The Great United States Exploring Expedition (subsequently referred to as Stanton), pp. 26-28. The geologist James Eights’s description of the South Shetland Islands is contained in Edmund Fanning’s Voyages to the South Seas, pp. 195-216. Wilkes tells of being stricken with smallpox in ACW, pp. 285-86. In his introduction to Voyage to the Southern Ocean, Herman Viola speaks of how Wilkes’s bout with smallpox prevented him from meeting William Reynolds on the Boxer, p. xxix. Wilkes describes his surveying duty at Newport, Rhode Island, in ACW, pp. 286-93. He tells of his fallout with Hassler in ACW, pp. 294-96.
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