Sea of Glory

July 3, 1839, letter to Jane, Wilkes writes, “I have bought or rather had made a pair of beautiful epaulettes & that I intend to wear them— keep this to yourself as I think it now high time to appear in my proper uniform.” In a September 12-21 letter to Jane written from Tahiti, Wilkes recounts how he “hoisted the Broad Pendant and . . . my two straps as did Hudson by an order of mine so you see I have had the impertinence to give myself sufficient Dignity at least in appearance.” Wilkes refers to this action as “a bold and unwarranted stroke of policy on my part” in ACW, p. 377, but insists that “it was justified under the necessities of the case.” Reynolds speaks of Wilkes’s “immense” epaulets in his Manuscript, adding, “It is not a little remarkable that the assumption of all this Naval Splendour was deferred until Mr. Wilkes felt himself out of the regions usually infested by American men of war. Perhaps he thought he could carry it more bravely among the breechless savages than amidst the pomp and circumstance of real, full blooded Captains and Commodores, in whose presence he might have been disagreeably reminded of the old fable of the ‘Daw in borrowed plumes!’” p. 17. Wilkes’s decision to make himself a commodore also fits with what psychologists have termed the “glass bubble syndrome”: “People with a narcissistic personality sometimes fantasize consciously and often unconsciously that they are living by themselves in glory, protected from the rest of the world and the common herd by a shield made of something impervious, like a glass bubble. From this vantage point, they can look out at the world with disdain and without fear of challenge”; from Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography, by Vamik Volkan et al., p. 98. Wilkes refers to his hoped-for acting appointment to captain as a “shield of protection” in ACW, pp. 370-71.
    Reynolds speaks of the mystery of a coral island in a September 12, 1839, letter to Lydia. Titian Peale’s comments about the “sorry business” of leaving the scientific corps idle are in an August 14, 1839, journal entry. In contrast to their experiences in the Tuamotus, the scientists had spent a profitable two months in South America, much of it spent hiking into the Andes, where they collected numerous specimens and artifacts. At one point a condor decided that Charles Pickering was the one who should be collected. When the giant bird swooped down with its talons outstretched, the naturalist was forced to fight it off with his Bowie knife pistol.
    My description of how Wilkes conducted a survey is based largely on his own “Mode of Surveying the Coral Islands” in the appendix of volume 1 of his Narrative, pp. 429-32, as well as “Surveying and Charting the Pacific Basin” by Ralph Ehrenberg, John Wolter, and Charles Burroughs in MV, pp. 165-70. William Goetzmann talks about the speed of Wilkes’s survey method in New Lands, New Men, p. 276.
    Wilkes’s order about being kind to natives is reprinted in his Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 308-9. Johnson speaks of Sac’s enthusiasm for killing penguins in a March 10, 1839, journal entry. Wilkes’s words about the encounter with the natives of Reao Atoll (referred to as Clermont de Tonnere) are from his Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 312-14. Reynolds’s comments on the dignity of the natives are in his journal. Wilkes’s pronouncements about the effects of the Expedition’s first encounter with Polynesians is in ACW, p. 423; Whittle’s outrage is recorded in his journal (at the University of Virginia), p. 48. Couthouy’s angry encounter with Wilkes is recorded in an August 31, 1839, entry. Peale’s frustrations appear in an August 29, 1839, entry. For an interesting analysis of the tensions between the Expedition’s officers and scientists, see Elizabeth Musselman’s “Science as a Landed Activity: Scientifics and Seamen Aboard the U.S. Exploring Expedition” in Surveying the Record, edited by Edward C. Carter II, pp. 77-101. Reynolds tells of the disintegration of relations between Wilkes and his officers in a December 22, 1839, letter to Lydia. Reynolds includes a copy of Wilkes’s order concerning “familiarity among officers of the different grades” in his August 28, 1839, response to Wilkes, in Box 1, Area File 9, RG 45, NA. Reynolds talks about the motivations behind the order in his Manuscript, pp. 26-27. Wilkes writes to Jane of his having “given up inviting the officers to my