Sea of Glory

would require several weeks of repairs at Rio de Janeiro to make the vessel seaworthy. Then there was the matter of the Relief. The sluggish storeship soon proved to be a virtual sea anchor, slowing the squadron’s progress to a crawl. Just four days out from Norfolk, Wilkes ordered Lieutenant Long to bypass Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands and proceed directly to Rio.
    After pushing himself so hard all spring and summer, Wilkes found these new and unexpected problems particularly difficult to bear. The squadron was barely out of sight of land, and already he was exhausted. “[T]he fatigues of all are now and then too much for me,” he admitted in a letter to Jane.
     
    Still uppermost in his thoughts was Poinsett’s refusal to make Hudson and himself captains. It cast a pall over everything. Wilkes decided that they needed to do something to distinguish them from the other lieutenants in the squadron. If they couldn’t wear their captain uniforms (with an epaulet on each shoulder), then they would modify their lieutenant uniforms. Instead of epaulets on their left shoulders, both Wilkes and Hudson would do without epaulets altogether. But if their uniforms were without visible indications of rank, Wilkes insisted that his officers refer to them not as Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Hudson—the way you addressed a lieutenant—but as Captain Wilkes and Captain Hudson.
    He then decided he should have a flag lieutenant, an executive secretary who would be responsible for everything from carrying sensitive messages to making dinner arrangements. Overton Carr had been with him at the Depot even before the survey of Georges Bank. Short, boyish, and unfailingly loyal, Carr was the perfect yes-man, and he became Wilkes’s flag lieutenant. If the politicians in Washington wouldn’t do it, Wilkes would provide himself with the necessary trappings of command.
    He soon discovered what so many new captains had learned before him: life was very different in the aft cabin of a man-of-war. For one thing it was lonely. As the leader, he was expected to establish a certain distance between himself and his officers. When he appeared on the quarterdeck, his officers were expected to tip their caps and leave him to the solitude of the weather rail. Except for the occasional nights he invited a few officers to dine with him, he ate alone in his cabin. Most captains had learned how to adjust to the isolation and responsibility of command through years of experience at sea, but Wilkes had seized this position of authority almost overnight. He had not had the time and opportunity to establish a style of command appropriate to a voyage around the world.
    There was no right or wrong way to lead a ship and a squadron—every captain had his own approach, depending on his talents and temperament. Some, with Nelson being the most famous example, used the power of their personalities, as well as their considerable skills and physical courage, to inspire their officers and men to do their bidding. Some relied on the threat of the lash; others might employ a well-timed joke. Cook, though he carefully monitored his crew’s health, was also renowned for his “paroxysms of passion.” A seemingly insignificant incident could cause him to curse, flap his arms wildly about, and stamp repeatedly on the deck. Whatever the command style, consistency was essential to successful leadership. As long as the officers and men knew what to expect, they could adapt to just about anything. But if the officers’ and crews’ expectations should go unfulfilled in any significant or even insignificant way, the complex interpersonal chemistry of a crowded ship could be quickly and irrevocably altered, transforming a vessel that had once operated like a well-oiled machine into a pressure cooker about to explode.
    In the beginning, Wilkes seems to have employed the only command style with which he had any recent experience—the genial approach he had used during the survey of Georges Bank. Just as he had once messed with his officers aboard the Porpoise, he frequently left his cabin to socialize in the Vincennes ’s wardroom. As if to distract himself from the immensity of the challenges ahead, he directed his attention to the more easily managed details of shipboard life. He embarked on a personal campaign to rid the officers’ pantries of spiders. Every day the leader of the U.S. Ex. Ex. would venture into his officers’ quarters to search out and squish these