Sea of Glory

it—the Relief at anchor. By six in the morning, they, too, were anchored in Orange Bay.
    That afternoon Wilkes finally withdrew “the veil of mystery.” “[A]ll hands went to work as if Life & death depended on their exertions,” Reynolds wrote. Despite the lateness of the season, they were “to go South. ”

CHAPTER 5
    The Turning Point
    THERE WASN’T MUCH that could intimidate James Cook. But on January 30, 1774, the indomitable explorer met his match. Four days after crossing the Antarctic Circle, he reached latitude 71°10’ south—farther south than anyone had ever ventured. In front of him stood an immense and impenetrable field of ice, “whose horrible and savage aspect I have no words to describe.” He could have pushed east or west in search of an opening to the south, but Cook had had enough. “I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go, was not sorry at meeting with this interruption,” he later recorded in his journal. He suspected that a large landmass existed to the south, but he was quite content to leave its discovery to someone else. “[W]hoever has resolution and perseverance to clear up this point by proceeding farther than I have done,” he wrote, “I shall not envy him the honour of the discovery.”
    More than sixty-five years later, on February 25, 1839, Charles Wilkes held out hope that he might claim that prize. Unfortunately, it was already a month later in the season than when Cook had reached what had become known as his “Ne Plus Ultra” (Latin for “No Farther”), and Wilkes had not yet left Orange Bay.
    The last week had been a mad scramble of preparation. The Vincennes was to remain in Orange Bay, where Lieutenant Carr would oversee the collection of meteorological data as well as the celestial observations required to check the rates of their chronometers. Lieutenant Alden, with Passed Midshipman William Reynolds as his second-in-command, was to survey the rocky coastline of Tierra del Fuego in a thirty-five-foot launch. In the meantime, Lieutenant Long in the Relief would take the scientists on a collecting trip into the Strait of Magellan. That left the Porpoise, the Peacock, and the two schooners for a voyage south.
    The Antarctic summer had already turned to autumn—dramatically increasing the risk of becoming trapped in the ice. In the event that they might be forced to winter below the Antarctic Circle, the vessels were loaded with enough provisions to last between eight and ten months. Orange Bay became a scene of near-constant activity. Boxes of provisions were taken from the Relief and the Vincennes and loaded into the Peacock, Porpoise, Flying Fish, and Sea Gull as boats bearing firewood and casks of water continually came and went from shore.
    Due to the dangerous nature of the duty they were about to undertake, Wilkes decided that lieutenants, instead of passed midshipmen, should be put in command of the schooners. When it was learned that two junior lieutenants, Robert Johnson and William Walker (both part of Wilkes’s inner circle), were to command the Sea Gull and the Flying Fish, respectively, there was an outcry of protest from the senior lieutenants; Hudson’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Samuel Lee, even wrote Wilkes a strongly worded letter. Wilkes responded in a manner that was calculated “to astonish everyone.” With a stroke of his pen, he dismissed Lee from the squadron, ordering him to report to the Relief for passage back to the United States once he reached Valparaiso. This required a complete reshuffling of officers, and in less than an hour, Wilkes had issued the necessary orders, reassigning a total of eleven lieutenants. (Now down an officer, Wilkes reinstated First Lieutenant Craven to active duty aboard the Vincennes, but not until Craven had written a letter of apology.)
    Wilkes would later describe the suspension of Lieutenant Lee as “the turning point of the discipline of the cruise.” Lee, like Craven before him, was one of the senior lieutenants he had inherited from the earlier expedition. He was now convinced that they were part of a “mutinous cabal” that if allowed to continue unchecked would destroy the squadron. “[T]he many headed Hydra is completely overcome,” he wrote Jane, “but I have [to] keep a very watchful eye on the boys hereafter.” Lieutenant Johnson, the new commander of the Sea Gull, had a different