Sea of Glory

apparently unable to confront the trial that lay to the south.
    They were now more than a week into January and still had at least 1,800 miles between them and the tip of South America. Given the importance of the Antarctic cruise to the Expedition, Wilkes should have dispensed with the scheduled survey of the Rio Negro in Patagonia and sailed with all dispatch for Cape Horn. But to the astonishment of his officers, the squadron proceeded under easy sail and on January 25 dropped anchor at the mouth of the Rio Negro. The next morning, as First Lieutenant Craven directed preparations to begin the survey in the boats, Wilkes retreated to his cabin, where he lay in the grip of yet another one of his debilitating headaches.
    By sundown, the boats were more than three miles from the Vincennes. The current was so strong that it was almost impossible to row against it, so with night approaching, Craven and his men made for the much closer Porpoise. Meanwhile, back on the Vincennes, Wilkes, still suffering from a headache, began to suspect that Craven had taken the opportunity to spend a night “in merrymaking” aboard the Porpoise.
    The next morning, Wilkes determined that Craven must be punished. Even though he had absolutely no tangible proof of misconduct, he sent his trusted flag lieutenant Overton Carr to do his bidding. Craven was ordered back to the Vincennes while Carr assumed command of the survey. Craven soon learned that he had been suspended and that Carr had been named first lieutenant.
    Craven and his fellow officers were at a loss to know what he had done wrong. As Wilkes would come close to admitting years later in his Autobiography, Craven’s real sin was not a breach of discipline, but his undeniable competence. By suspending Craven and making Carr the first lieutenant, Wilkes was consciously striking out at an officer whose chief fault was that he “regarded himself as the acting spirit in . . . managing the ship.” It was a shabby, duplicitous, and manipulative abuse of power, but Wilkes’s actions against Craven may have saved the Expedition. Prior to the incident, he had become stupefied with exhaustion and self-doubt. The leadership style that had worked at Georges Bank was clearly not going to get him through a voyage of this magnitude. Instead of being everyone’s friend, he was much better at cultivating his enemies. By lashing out at Craven he had finally roused himself to action. Refreshed and invigorated by his triumph over his first lieutenant, he began to look ahead with enthusiasm for the first time in the voyage.
    Soon after Craven’s suspension, an onshore gale kicked up, putting the squadron in immediate peril. The surf was breaking on the nearby shore “with tremendous violence,” Reynolds wrote, “as if it would wash the sandy barrier away.” There wasn’t enough time to raise the heavy and cumbersome anchors, so the order was given to slip their cables. Leaving behind buoys to mark the locations of the anchors, the squadron began to claw away from the desolate shore of Rio Negro. Wilkes took great pride in the way that both he and his new first lieutenant responded to the challenge. “I was somewhat pleased to let [Craven] see that there were others quite as competent to perform the duties as he,” Wilkes wrote. By suspending his first lieutenant, he had “destroyed within his mind that over Conceit he had in the ability to alone perform and take care of the ship.” It was a form of psychological warfare Wilkes would subsequently employ against all officers who, in his judgment, dared to view themselves as indispensable.
    Reynolds and his fellow officers were not sure what to think about Craven’s suspension. No one liked trouble, and yet a suspension might allow for promotions from below. Perhaps Wilkes had his reasons. “[T]he friends who were so devoted to the Commander would not suffer a voice to be raised against him,” he wrote, “and threatened to quarrel with any one who should say a word to his prejudice. Mr. Wilkes was still an Idol to many, and he knew it.”
     
    After retrieving their anchors, the squadron left Rio Negro on February 3. Although Wilkes knew where they were headed, he chose, once again, not to share the information with his officers. Some guessed they were headed for the Falkland Islands; others figured that due to the lateness of the season, they were headed around the Horn for Valparaiso, Chile. Whatever the case might be, for the