Sea of Glory

astonishingly high levels. One archeologist working on Upolu claims that the interior portions that were virtually vacant when Reynolds, Emmons, and Hale journeyed across the island once contained between 100 and 242 people per square kilometer—a density that would have had a disastrous effect on the island’s ecology. This fostered the development of culturally sanctioned methods of population control—from infanticide to ritual sacrifice to cannibalism, as well as additional voyages of discovery.
    Hale would think long and hard about how the early navigators made their way east against the trade winds. Using meteorological data collected by the Expedition, he would eventually be able to demonstrate that, contrary to accepted wisdom, the southeast trade winds are by no means constant. In fact, during the months of January, February, and March, westerly and northwesterly winds prevail all the way to the Tuamotus. If the early Polynesian voyagers ventured east during these months, using the stars to fix their latitude, they knew they could retrace their steps home during the other nine months of the year.
    Around 200 B.C. voyagers set out from Tonga and Samoa for the Southern Cook Islands; soon after that, they were venturing to the Societies and Tuamotus; the Marquesas were reached around 100 B.C., while the Hawaiian Islands weren’t settled until sometime between A.D. 300 and A.D. 800. New Zealand was discovered last, around A.D. 1000- 1200.
    Hale and the Expedition had retraced the routes of these early voyagers back to their starting point in Samoa, an island group where native ways had not been as thoroughly westernized as they had been to the east. But in five years’ time, Reynolds predicted, Upolu would be another Tahiti. “I could not help thinking,” he wrote, “how much better it would be to let them go on their old way. But no, no! we must have all the world like us.”
    For Reynolds, Upolu would always be the jewel of the South Pacific. (He was in good company. Fifty years later the writer Robert Louis Stevenson would decide to live out the rest of his life on the island.) What made Reynolds’s time on Upolu particularly memorable was his introduction to a chief ’s daughter named Emma. Just fifteen years old and “the image of faultless beauty, & the pearl of pure & natural innocence,” Emma tempted Reynolds with thoughts of leaving the tribulations of the Expedition behind. “I could not help thinking of a life in this Eden,” he wrote. “A half wish came in to my head, that I could free myself from my Ship, & under the shade of the delicious groves, form the mind of sweet Emma—ripen the bud into the full bloom of maturity—cherish the flower, & wear it forever! What a dream!”
     
    On November 10, the squadron sailed from Apia Bay. Wilkes had hoped to continue on to the Fiji Islands, but time was running out if they were to sail south again in mid-December. They must proceed directly west to Sydney, Australia, where they would undergo the necessary preparations. Little did Reynolds realize that his time aboard the Vincennes was about to come to an end.
    The next day he discovered that First Lieutenant Carr had consigned his India rubber jacket to the lucky bag, the ship’s equivalent of the lost and found, the contents of which were periodically sold at auction to the crew. Another officer had borrowed the jacket while Reynolds was away from the ship, and someone had found it on the gun deck. What particularly rankled Reynolds was that Carr had known it was his jacket and still ordered it to be placed in this “receptacle of all the old & dirty clothes, blankets, soap, etc. that may be kicking about the decks.”
    When Reynolds asked Carr if he could have the jacket back, the first lieutenant responded “in a short & peculiarly snappish tone, ‘You shan’t have it, Sir!’” Reynolds protested and Carr threatened to report him to Wilkes. Reynolds replied that he would save him the trouble and report the matter himself.
    Reynolds was not surprised when Wilkes informed him that he “entirely approved” of Carr’s actions. Wilkes insisted that the orders of the ship required that all stray clothes be thrown in the lucky bag. Reynolds pointed out that no such written order existed. “Well, it was my order,” Wilkes blustered, “and if my own coat was found it would share the same fate!” When Reynolds explained that he had been away from the ship when the jacket appeared on