Sea of Glory

Reynolds writes of Wilkes’s “hanging back” when it came to the approach to Cape Horn in his Manuscript, p. 7. Wilkes speaks in detail about his suspension of Craven in ACW, 403-5. Reynolds writes of how some of Wilkes’s officers initially defended his actions in his Manuscript, p. 6.
    Joseph Couthouy mentions Thomas Piner’s comments about “getting into the suburbs” in the February 6, 1838, entry of his journal (at the Museum of Science, Boston). Captain Porter’s words about the horrors of rounding Cape Horn are in his Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Frigate Essex, p. 84. For information about tacking a square-rigged ship, I have consulted John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, pp. 181-89.

CHAPTER 5: THE TURNING POINT
    James Cook’s words upon reaching his Ne Plus Ultra appear in J. C. Beaglehole’s Life of Captain James Cook, pp. 365-66. When it came to Wilkes’s assigning two new commanders to the schooners, he later claimed that a “drinking bout” on the Flying Fish contributed to his decision to remove Passed Midshipman Samuel Knox from command, ACW, p. 406. Wilkes tells of how he acted to “astonish” the squadron by dismissing Lee in a February 23, 1839, letter to Jane; in that letter he adds that he was forced “to cut him off by way of example although he is a very good officer as respects to duty.” Robert Johnson refers to the “devilish Schooners” in a February 18, 1839, entry in his journal. On Weddell’s 1823 record sail south, see Jacques Brosse’s Great Voyages of Discovery, p. 185. Wilkes tells of their encounter with the whaleship in his Narrative, vol. 1, p. 134. Wilkes describes himself in “excellent spirits” in a February 26, 1839, letter to Jane.
    Johnson tells about the repair of the Sea Gull ’s broken gaff in the February 28, 1839, entry of his journal. On the Antarctic Convergence, see Edwin Mickleburgh’s Beyond the Frozen Sea, p. 22. Johnson speaks of the many penguins and whales in his March 1, 1839, journal entry. Wilkes compares an iceberg to the Capitol building in a March 31, 1839, letter to Jane; he also speaks of his exchange with Ringgold about “adventuring with boldness.” The sealer Robert Fildes’s description of the South Shetland Islands as a place created by a drunken Mother Nature appears in E. W. Hunter Christie’s The Antarctic Problem, p. 91. Johnson describes the ice-encrusted state of the Sea Gull in a March 5, 1839, journal entry. Wilkes speaks of being “so full of energy” in a May 22, 1839, letter to Jane. Kenneth Bertrand details the route taken by Jeremiah Reynolds’s privately funded voyage south in Americans in Antarctica, pp. 144-58. Jacques Brosse in Great Voyages of Discovery tells of d’Urville’s unsuccessful first attempt to sail south in 1837-38, pp. 185-89.
    William Hudson complains of the leaky condition of the Peacock in a March 11, 1839, journal entry. Titian Peale tells of being awakened by Lieutenant Perry and his snowball in a March 9, 1839, entry. George Emmons tells of William Stewart’s fall in a March 10, 1839, journal entry. Hudson describes the Sunday service he conducted in a March 17, 1839, entry. Hudson complains of “this fancy kind of sailing” in a March 17 entry.
    All of James Palmer’s account of the Flying Fish ’s sail south appears in “Antarctic Adventures of the United States’ Schooner Flying-Fish in 1839” in the appendix of Thulia: A Tale of the Antarctic, a book-length poem Palmer wrote about the voyage, pp. 65-72. William Walker’s account of the voyage appears in the appendix of volume 1 of Wilkes’s Narrative, pp. 408-14. My description of the formation of grease ice is from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency’s Antarctic Pilot, p. 18. In The Antarctic Problem, E. W. Hunter Christie says that the Flying Fish ’s voyage was “no mean achievement in so small a vessel so late in the season,” p. 135. See also Henderson Norman’s “The Log of the Flying-Fish ” in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, pp. 363-69.
    Reynolds’s account of his open-boat survey of Tierra del Fuego is in his journal. Joseph Couthouy’s remarks about the sailing characteristics of the launch appear in a March 7, 1839, journal entry. Darwin’s remarks about the primitive state of the Yahgans appear in The Voyage of the Beagle, p. 213. Bruce Chatwin in In Patagonia claims that Darwin “lapsed into that common failing of naturalists: to marvel at the