Sea of Glory

sudden influx of power he associated with his self-propelled rise to commodore of the U.S. Ex. Ex. Proper obeisance must be paid. In a letter to Jane he bragged about keeping the American consul in Sydney waiting for two hours while he finished up some experiments. “I am now a great man,” he wrote, “and others will wait patiently.”
    In amiable contrast to the Expedition’s leader was second-in-command William Hudson. In addition to being an excellent seaman, he had shown no interest in maintaining rigid discipline in this nonmilitary operation. His officers were not required to move to the leeward side of the quarterdeck when he came up from below. His cabin was frequented by his officers, who always seemed to be in excellent spirits. The Peacock might be in terrible structural condition, but as William Reynolds could attest, she was a “happy ship.” With full confidence in their captain’s ability to get them out of the toughest scrape, the Peacock ’s officers looked with anticipation to the adventures that awaited them. “Antarctic Stock was high!” Reynolds effused in a letter to his mother.
    Morale was not so good aboard the Porpoise. In Sydney her commander, Lieutenant Cadwalader Ringgold, had become embroiled in a petty feud with a member of his medical staff, Charles Guillou, and the popular surgeon had been transferred to the Peacock. Ringgold was also at loggerheads with his first lieutenant Robert Johnson, who along with several other officers had done his best to embarrass Ringgold at a social event prior to the squadron’s departure.
    For sheer bad feeling, however, nothing could compare to the crew of the Flying Fish. Just a few days before, the schooner had lost five of ten men to desertion. Her commander, Robert Pinkney, was able to scare up a few dubious characters from the Sydney waterfront, but the schooner was still down by several men, and Wilkes claimed he had none to spare from the Vincennes. “I do not suppose that a vessel ever sailed under the U.S. Pendant with such a miserable crew as we have now,” wrote Pinkney’s second-in-command, George Sinclair. “It will be a great wonder to me if we return from the southern cruise.”
    Once the squadron was clear of Sydney, Wilkes insisted that all four vessels sail abreast; every now and then they would be ordered to heave to so that Wilkes could communicate by boat with his commanders. In the event that any of them should become separated, he had designated a rendezvous point: Macquarie Island, a wave-washed, penguin-infested pile of rocks 2,100 miles to the south. For the officers and men of the Peacock, who felt that they had the best chance of success, it all seemed like an exasperating waste of time. “Lt. Wilkes evidently did not intend to afford either of his subordinates an opportunity to get ahead of him in sailing to the Southward,” Reynolds wrote. “For this reason most likely, he orders them to keep in company with him.” For six days the four vessels succeeded in staying together. Then on January 1 it began to blow. Soon the Flying Fish was in trouble.
    Scudding before the wind in the gale, Pinkney didn’t have the manpower required to shorten sail. The schooner’s foresail began jibing back and forth uncontrollably, finally carrying away the jaws of the gaff. Soon the forestay, upon which the vessel’s entire rig depended, was broken, and the square yard was in pieces. Giant waves were breaking across the deck. Incredibly, the signal to “make sail” was raised on the Vincennes. Sinclair was outraged. Instead of helping them, the flagship “kept her course and deliberately left us to whatever fate the Gods of the winds might have in store for us; a few deep toned curses accompanied her.”
    From the safety of the Vincennes ’s quarterdeck, Wilkes glanced aft and commented to Reynolds’s good friend Lieutenant James Alden that the officers of the Flying Fish were clearly “afraid.” “[I]t is impossible to describe the disgust with which [Alden] heard such an insinuation,” Reynolds later wrote, “from a man who in all times of difficulty and danger was as humble about the decks as a whipped puppy, and as incapable as he was humble.” As night came on, the Flying Fish disappeared in the darkness. More than a few sailors speculated that the schooner had joined the Sea Gull at the bottom of the Southern Ocean.
    Three days later the Vincennes and the Porpoise lost contact with the Peacock. Four days