Sea of Glory

the New, p. 28. The rancorous public exchange between Jeremiah Reynolds and Dickerson is reprinted in Reynolds’s Pacific and Indian Oceans. The reference to the “Deplorable Expedition” appears in the January 25, 1838, issue of the Long Island Star; cited in David Tyler’s The Wilkes Expedition (subsequently referred to as Tyler), p. 19. For an account of the attempts made by the friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne to secure him a position with the Expedition, see James Mellow’s Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times, pp. 84-87. For information on the Panic of 1837, I have relied on Arthur Schlesinger’s Political and Social History of the United States, 1829-1925, pp. 53-61.
    Wilkes describes his survey of Georges Bank and his meeting with Nathaniel Bowditch in ACW, pp. 325-30, 360-68. According to Barbara Mc-Corkle in “Cartographic History, 1524-1850” in Georges Bank, edited by Richard Backus, “a better survey was not undertaken until 1930-1932,” p. 16. Wilkes speaks of his relationship with his cabin boy Charlie Erskine in ACW, pp. 331-33; Erskine’s account is in his Twenty Years Before the Mast, pp. 10-11. Lieutenant James Glynn in an October 21, 1837, letter to George Emmons describes being cheered at a New York theater; cited in Tyler, p. 1; see also Stanton, p. 54. Stanton describes the heating system in the Macedonian, p. 54. In an October 31, 2002, personal communication, the arms expert Charles Thayer describes the genesis of the Bowie knife pistol. Jones designed the pistol and described it as “ideal for penetrating into the interiors of islands inhabited by savages.” Jones’s attempts to retrieve the Expedition’s instruments are detailed in his letters to Poinsett in LRWEE, as is his November 21, 1837, letter of resignation. According to Stanton, word reached Washington of the French voyage to the Pacific and Antarctica in July of 1837, pp. 50-51.
    In a May 5, 1838, letter to Wilkes, the naturalist Titian Peale states that “a reduction in the number of members of the Scientific Corps . . . is absolutely requisite as far as regards the beneficial results of the Exped” (KSHS). For information about Joel Poinsett, I have relied on the Dictionary of American Biography and Stanton, pp. 60-61. John Quincy Adams’s stern words to Poinsett about the Expedition are in the Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volume 9, p. 491. Poinsett’s March 1, 1838, letter to Dickerson is in LRWEE.

CHAPTER 3: MOST GLORIOUS HOPES
    William Reynolds speaks of reading in the Library of Congress in an April 24, 1838, letter to his sister Lydia. Unless otherwise indicated, William Reynolds’s letters are located at the Shadeck-Fackenthal Library, Franklin and Marshall College. Reynolds speaks of “the immaculate ‘Bowditch’” in a November 19, 1836, letter to Lydia; he writes of Lydia’s relationship with Rebecca Krug in an October 30, 1836, letter. He tells of a midshipman being “bilged” in a May 26, 1837, letter. Howard Chapelle provides the dimensions of the Pennsylvania in The History of the American Sailing Navy, pp. 371-72, 549. Reynolds tells of the Pennsylvania ’s voyage to Norfolk in a January 6, 1837, letter to Lydia. Herman Viola provides information on Reynolds’s family background in his introduction to Voyage to the Southern Ocean, pp. xxviii-xxix. Reynolds’s letter describing a typical day at the Depot is dated April 24, 1838. In a May 1, 1838, letter he writes of his admiration of Wilkes, and on May 13, 1838, he writes of Wilkes’s family seal.
    Wilkes recounts how he was awarded command of the Ex. Ex. and then put the squadron together during the spring and summer of 1838 in ACW, pp. 333-59, 370-72, 374. Beverley Kennon’s April 13, 1838, letter protesting Wilkes’s appointment is in LRWEE. Joseph Smith’s April 21, 1838, letter of congratulations to Wilkes is at KSHS. The congressional debates involving Wilkes’s appointment are contained in the Congressional Globe, 25th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 297.
    Lieutenant Matthew Maury, a bitter rival and critic of Wilkes, claimed that Poinsett wanted to offer him the same opportunity Poinsett gave Wilkes. Maury wrote a friend that Poinsett had asked him to tell him, without regard to rank, who was the officer most qualified to lead the Expedition. Even though he felt he was the best suited, he gave Poinsett a list of officers with his name at the bottom, claiming he felt he had no right “to draw distinctions among brother officers.”