Sea of Glory

letter with Wilkes’s own family crest. “The seal,” he explained to Lydia, “is Mr. Wilkes coat of arms, a Norman cross bow.” With this wax seal the destinies of William Reynolds and Charles Wilkes would be joined for the next four years.
     
    Back in March, when Wilkes had first received orders to return to Washington, he did not want to leave the Porpoise and his young and enthusiastic group of officers. After their success at the Georges Bank, they were continuing to do excellent work on Georgia’s Calibougue Sound. The orders simply said to proceed without delay to Washington. “What could it mean?” Wilkes wondered out loud. When one of his officers suggested that it might have something to do with the Exploring Expedition, Wilkes shook his head. “Oh no, I have done with it and [am] content to let it alone.”
    Within a few days, Wilkes was back in Washington, where he learned that Captain Joseph Smith, the latest candidate to lead the Exploring Expedition, had requested that he accompany him as a surveyor. Wilkes would be given command of his own vessel. But he still had his reservations. Smith was not in good health. In addition, many of the officers Smith would inherit from Commodore Jones were senior to Wilkes and would quite naturally object to their junior being elevated to such a high post. After talking it over with Jane, he decided to have nothing to do with an expedition led by Smith.
    It is impossible to know if Wilkes anticipated what happened next, but when Smith learned that he would not have Wilkes as a surveyor, he—like so many captains had done before him—declined the offer to command the Expedition. Soon after, Secretary of War Poinsett began to consider offering the post to Wilkes. Even though the lieutenant lacked comparable command experience, he was clearly a competent surveyor. And besides, who else was there? The navy rumor mill would later accuse Wilkes of having schemed to wrest the command from Smith, but Wilkes insisted, “I never thought of such a thing. I was too young an officer to aspire and did not dream of it.”
    On an evening in March, Poinsett requested that Wilkes meet with him at his home. The two men sat beside the fireplace in Poinsett’s parlor. The secretary began by asking Wilkes to describe how he thought the Expedition should be organized. It was, of course, a topic that he had been considering for most of his life. The squadron should be made up of only young officers with the technical training required to conduct a nautical survey. The scale of the Expedition must be reined in. Instead of large and unwieldy ships, a brig similar to the Porpoise and several even smaller schooners should be used; they were the only craft suitable for surveying the coral-fringed islands of the South Pacific. As part of this reduction in scale, the scientific corps must be cut by at least two-thirds to less than a dozen men.
    Poinsett asked if he thought an expedition along the lines he’d just described could be quickly and successfully organized. Wilkes insisted that it could. Poinsett had been staring at the fire; he now turned to look directly at Wilkes. “I have been authorized by the President,” he said, “to offer you the command of the expedition.” Wilkes was unable to respond. “Why do you hesitate?” Poinsett asked. “Are you afraid to undertake it?” Wilkes struggled for words. “No sir, but there are very many reasons that crowd upon me why I should not accept it.” They continued to talk, and once Poinsett made it clear that he would have almost total control in organizing the Expedition, Wilkes tentatively accepted the appointment. “[I]t was so entirely unexpected,” he remembered, “I [told him] I must have time to think the matter over.”
    That night Wilkes and Jane had what he later described as “a good cry.” Jane assured her husband that he had acted honorably throughout these difficult proceedings and that he would “establish a name which both she and our children would glory in.” When they finally went to bed, Wilkes almost immediately nodded off. But Jane could not sleep. Her husband would soon be leaving on a voyage that would last at least three years, and Jane, already a mother of three, was five months pregnant.
     
    Almost immediately, enormous pressures came to bear on Poinsett to rescind Wilkes’s appointment. The young lieutenant might be one of the navy’s top surveyors and a creditable scientist, but this