Sea of Glory

many shipwrecks that have occurred at the bar are based on Dietrich’s Northwest Passage, pp. 97-109, and Egan’s The Good Rain, pp. 16-18. See also James Gibbs’s Pacific Graveyard. The Columbia River pilot Captain James McAvoy, of the aptly named Peacock, compares the collision of waters at the bar to “two giant hammers” in Egan’s The Good Rain, p. 24; Dietrich cites the reference by the Reverend Samuel Parker to the large number of deaths at the bar, p. 108. Wilkes refers to his decision not to cross the Columbia bar and to survey Puget Sound, as well as the near-disaster at Destruction Isle, in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 294. William May tells of the “tremendous bustle of bending cables” that ensued in a May 9, 1841, letter to William Reynolds, Box 1, Area File 9, RG 45, NA. Wilkes’s description of Veidovi’s “contempt” for the region’s native people is in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 297, as are his words of praise for Puget Sound, p. 305. Dietrich in Northwest Passage points out that there are now four navy bases in Puget Sound with none on the Columbia River, p. 109.
    My account of Wilkes’s activities in the Pacific Northwest owes much to Constance Bordwell’s “Delay and Wreck of the Peacock: An Episode in the Wilkes Expedition” in Oregon Historical Quarterly; also, Edmond S. Meany provides a useful transcription of Wilkes’s difficult-to-decipher journal in his “Diary of Wilkes in the Northwest” in The Washington Historical Quarterly. Wilkes writes of having “no further difficulties with the officers” in a May 28, 1841, letter to Jane.
    Wilkes tells of his concerns about Hudson’s ability to complete his assignment in the central Pacific cruise in ACW, pp. 499-500. Wilkes’s orders to Hudson are in Appendix VIII of his Narrative, vol. 4, pp. 517-19. Reynolds’s complaints about Hudson and the six-month cruise are from his journal. Daniel Appleman in “James Dwight Dana and Pacific Geology” in MV discusses how Dana’s observations of the linear pattern of island chains was “fundamental” to the formulation of the theory of plate tectonics, pp. 106-110. See also Robert Dott Jr.’s “James Dwight Dana’s Old Tectonics—Global Contraction Under Divine Direction” in American Journal of Science, pp. 283-311.
    Bordwell in “Delay and Wreck of the Peacock ” makes the point that Wilkes’s appearance at Fort Vancouver, “attended by a middle-aged draftsman clad in navy fatigues and armed only with a sketchbook,” had the effect of reducing the likelihood that the Hudson’s Bay Company would perceive the Ex. Ex. as a possible threat to their dominance in the region, p. 135. Charles Erskine describes the Fourth of July celebration at Fort Cowlitz in Twenty Years Before the Mast, pp. 235-38. Wilkes recounts how he found the celebration “truly gratifying,” as well as his concerns about the Peacock, in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 412.
    Reynolds’s remarks about the importance of the Columbia survey to the Expedition and the sense of foreboding that gripped himself and the others are from his journal. Wilkes attributes the loss of the Peacock to Hudson’s “apprehensions and imagination” in ACW, p. 502. My account of the wreck is based primarily on Hudson’s journal, a microfilm copy of which is at the University of North Carolina, and Emmons’s journal, at Yale, for the days July 18-20, 1841, and Wilkes’s Narrative, vol. 4, pp. 489-94. Bordwell in “Delay and Wreck of the Peacock ” also provides a useful description of the wreck, pp. 162-63, as do Stanton, pp. 249-52, and Tyler, pp. 285-99.
    Unless otherwise indicated, Reynolds’s accounts of his time at the Columbia River are from his journal. Wilkes speaks of the “state of feeling” that led him to drive his officers to complete the survey of Puget Sound in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 478. Drew Crooks provides a detailed account of the Washington place names left by the Ex. Ex. in The Wilkes Expedition, edited by Frances Barkan, pp. 96-124. Wilkes recounts first hearing the news of the loss of the Peacock in his Narrative, vol. 4, p. 484. He speculates as to why Hudson was delayed so long in a July 27, 1841, journal entry. John Frazier Henry, in “The Midshipman’s Revenge” in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, theorizes that William May introduced two nonexistent islands into the survey of the San Juan Islands, Adolphus and Gordon, so as to embarrass Wilkes, p. 159. Although an intriguing theory, the