Sea of Glory

table” in a September 12-21, 1839, letter.
    Reynolds describes Wilkes’s behavior at Napuka Atoll (referred to as Wytoohee) in his Manuscript, pp. 24-25. The near-collision of the Flying Fish and the Vincennes would be seemingly endlessly revisited in both Pinkney’s and Wilkes’s courts-martial (No. 826 and 827, NA); Wilkes gives his side of what happened in his Narrative, p. 332, and ACW, p. 429-30, while Reynolds gives a quite different version in his Manuscript, pp. 22-23; Reynolds also details several incidents that illustrate Wilkes’s lack of seamanship, pp. 27-28.
    Reynolds questions Wilkes’s sanity in a December 22, 1839, letter to Lydia. Wilkes speaks of Jane being his “moderation” in an August 18, 1838, letter. Wilkes brags to Jane about his management of his officers, whom he refers to as “drones,” in letters written on June 12-16 and July 3, 1839. In the introduction to ACW, John Kane, Jr., refers to Wilkes as the “Stormy Petrel,” p. v. Reynolds talks about Wilkes’s tendency to order all hands on deck in his Manuscript, p. 27. The surgeon John Fox testifies to Wilkes’s sleeping habits in testimony recorded during Wilkes’s court-martial, No. 287, p. 240. Wilkes’s writes of his “constant anxiety” in ACW, p. 429.
    Jacques Brosse in Great Voyages of Discovery recounts how De Brosses coined the term “Polynesia,” p. 16. Ernest Dodge tells of Magellan’s voyage across the Pacific in Islands and Empires, pp. 3-7. For information on Wallis, Cook, Bougainville, and Tahiti, I have relied, in large part on Brosse’s Great Voyages, pp. 19-42. Dodge discusses the missionaries in Tahiti in Islands and Empires, pp. 87-92. Wilkes’s memories of the squadron’s arrival at Tahiti appear in ACW, p. 424. Wilkes tells Jane about the measures he has taken to eliminate improper relations between his men and the Tahitian women in a September 12-21 letter. Wilkes writes of the scientists’ forays into the interior of the island in his Narrative, vol. 2, pp. 28-29, 44-47. Charles Pickering writes about the fallacy of applying Western rules to the Tahitians in a September 21, 1839, entry; he speaks about the Tahitians’ ability to take advantage of their environment on September 23, 1839; Pickering’s journal is at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Ewell Sale Stewart Library. In New Lands, New Men, William Goetzmann attributes “the first glimmerings of what came to be known by the end of the nineteenth century as ‘cultural relativism’” to Herman Melville, p. 234. But here we see the concept in the writings of both Pickering and Reynolds, well before the publication of Melville’s first novel Typee in 1846. James Dana testifies to the positive shift the scientists experienced once the squadron reached Tahiti in a February 12, 1846, letter to Asa Gray (at the Gray Herbarium Archives, Harvard): “The Scientifics had all they desired, after this first year’s doings of which Couthouy so complains.” Reynolds records Wilkes’s arrogant words about the impossibility of action being taken against him until the return of the squadron in his Manuscript, p. 31.
    Wilkes describes Pago Pago Harbor in his Narrative, vol. 2, p. 70. Reynolds recounts his and Underwood’s circumnavigation of Tutuila in his journal. Wilkes speaks of the Peacock ’s difficult leave-taking from Pago Pago in his Narrative, p. 81; of his own troubles leaving Pago Pago, he simply says, “The moment was a trying one, and the event doubtful; all were at their stations, and not a word was spoken. Of my own feelings on the occasion I have no very precise recollection; merely remembering that I felt as if I breathed more freely after the crisis had passed and we were in safety,” p. 87. Reynolds provides two detailed accounts of the near-disaster at Pago Pago—in his journal and in his Manuscript, p. 30. In Seamanship in the Age of Sail, John Harland speaks of the methods of coaxing a ship through a tack in light air, p. 186. Whittle’s assessment of Wilkes’s “symptoms of confusion and alarm” are in his journal, p. 80. Reynolds’s account of the events that led to his suspension is from his journal.
    My account of the “almost mutiny” aboard the Vincennes has been pieced together from ACW, pp. 430-31, and Hudson’s November 4, 1839, journal entry, pp. 328-30, describing a meeting aboard the Vincennes in which Wilkes accused Couthouy of insubordination. According to Hudson, Couthouy urgently denied “any