Sea of Glory

later claim that he had, from the very beginning of the Expedition, chosen to remove himself from regular contact with his officers. Reynolds insists, however, that it was only after this bitter exchange that the policy became strictly enforced. “Henceforward the door of the Cabin was only passed on matters of duty,” he wrote, “and the commander was left to the delight of his own society.” For Wilkes, whose original style of command had involved an unusual amount of interaction with his officers and who had spent much of his professional life working at home in the company of his family, it was going to be a very lonely voyage across the Pacific.
     
    At the island of Napuka (called Wytoohee by the Expedition), the natives once again appeared unwilling to allow them to land. John Sac was in a boat and already conversing with a group on shore when Wilkes rowed up in his six-oared gig with his broad commodore’s pennant flying. Thumping his chest, Wilkes shouted out to Sac, “Tell them that I am the Big Chief ! ” Sac duly communicated this information, but the natives were apparently unimpressed, forcing Wilkes and his party to return to the Vincennes without landing on the island.
    What made this incident particularly galling to Wilkes was that, as he and his officers could plainly see, just a short way down the beach Hudson’s boat-crews had succeeded in reaching the shore and were engaged in pleasant conversation with the natives. Wilkes ordered one of his officers to inform Hudson that he must immediately vacate the beach. That night he wrote a letter chastising his second-in-command for unreasonably risking his men’s lives when, in fact, his only crime had been that he had succeeded where Wilkes had failed.
     
    On the morning of September 2, Wilkes signaled the Flying Fish to come within hail. They were just off Kauehi, and he wanted the schooner to transport several of the scientists to the island. The Vincennes was lying with her maintopsail aback, moving at a leisurely one knot. The schooner approached from windward and astern, and as she sailed under the ship’s stern, Wilkes hailed her commander, Lieutenant Robert Pinkney, to head up and wait, or heave to. Not hearing the order, Pinkney continued on, sailing to leeward of and parallel to the Vincennes. Wilkes, irritated that Pinkney had not immediately responded to his hail, ran to the leeward side of his ship and shouted, “Heave to! Mr. Pinkney, I told you to heave to!” Since the schooner was now less than a hundred yards from the ship, there wasn’t room for her to heave to in the Vincennes ’s lee without risking a collision. This did not deter Wilkes, who was now jogging along the gangway so as to keep abreast of the Flying Fish. “Why don’t you heave to, Mr. Pinkney?” he screamed through the speaking trumpet.
    Pinkney could have first headed downwind so as to create a sufficient gap between himself and the ship and then hove to. That was what Wilkes later claimed he had expected him to do. Instead, Pinkney decided to try to sail past the Vincennes and, once ahead of the ship, heave to to windward. But when he put the helm hard down, there was not sufficient space between the Flying Fish and the Vincennes, and the schooner rounded head to wind directly in front of the ship. By this point, Wilkes had made it to the bowsprit. “What do you mean, sir!” he shouted. “What do you mean? I never saw anything of the like! God damn you! I did not tell you to heave to under my bows!” If not for the quick-witted Lieutenant Joseph Underwood, who ordered the foretop-sail backed, the Vincennes would have surely run down the schooner and very likely killed all hands.
    From Reynolds’s perspective, it appeared as if Wilkes’s excessive badgering of the Flying Fish ’s commander had pressured him into doing something he would not ordinarily have done. The real fault lay with Wilkes’s style of command. As was becoming increasingly clear, even to the youngest boys in the squadron, Wilkes, despite his claims of being “another John Paul Jones,” was no seaman. He might be adept at pushing the Porpoise through the ice, but he seemed at a loss when it came to the more nuanced intricacies of maneuvering his ship among other vessels. While at Valparaiso the Vincennes had become caught up in the rigging of a bark from Hamburg, and Wilkes’s “lubberly obstinacy” had deeply embarrassed Reynolds and the other officers. In truth, Wilkes