Sea of Glory

call “Termination Land,” for on February 21, when the weather once again began to deteriorate, he decided it was time to conclude a cruise that had traced a 1,500-mile section of the newly christened Antarctic Continent—an incredible achievement in any vessel but made all the more remarkable by having been accomplished in a naval sloop-of-war without any significant structural reinforcement. Although he couldn’t claim to have reached the magnetic South Pole, he had assembled enough information that, along with data accumulated by the other ships, he had an excellent chance of establishing its location.
    Wilkes called the officers and men aft and thanked them for their efforts and informed them that it was time to head north. “I have seldom seen so many happy faces or such rejoicing,” he remembered. “For myself, I indeed felt worse for the fatigues and anxieties I had undergone; but I was able to attend to all my duties, and considered myself amply repaid . . . by the important discoveries we had made.”
     
    Soon after separating from the Vincennes on January 27, Lieutenant Ringgold made an unfortunate decision. Incorrectly assuming that the prevailing winds were from the west, he chose to take advantage of an easterly breeze and sail west and north to 105° east, where he planned to then sail east along the pack ice. The result of this misbegotten strategy was that the Porpoise would spend most of her time too far north for her crew to see land. Ringgold’s unorthodox course had one benefit, however. He stumbled across the competition.
    Out of the haze on January 30 emerged two vessels. At first Ringgold assumed them to be the Vincennes and the Peacock, but he soon realized that these ships were much smaller than the American vessels. Knowing that Captain James Ross was due to lead an expedition south, Ringgold hoisted his colors and steered for the two ships, “preparing to cheer the discoverer of the North Magnetic Pole.”
    But it wasn’t the English; these vessels were French. When he saw that the leeward ship was flying a broad pennant, he knew that this must be Captain Dumont d’Urville’s expedition. Ringgold resolved to pass close astern of d’Urville’s ship and exhange “the usual and customary compliments incidental to naval life.” Ringgold had all his sails set and was barreling in toward the French when he saw the men aboard d’Urville’s ship start to make sail. D’Urville was well aware of the historic nature of this extraordinary encounter, and seeing how fast the American brig was moving, thought it prudent to make sail so that he could keep up with the Porpoise. Ringgold, however, convinced himself that the Frenchman intended to leave him behind. Outraged by what he interpreted to be “a cold repulse” and too stubborn to attempt further contact with the French captain, Ringgold hauled down his colors and bore up before the wind. Baffled and somewhat piqued himself, d’Urville and his officers watched the brig sail off into the haze, all of them wondering what the Americans had been thinking.
    If Ringgold had been able to contain his overly sensitive notion of “proper feeling,” he would have learned that the French had sailed from Hobart Town in Tasmania on January 1. On the afternoon of January 19, they had sighted land. But most important of all, on January 21, they had done what Wilkes had failed to do: they had set foot on a rocky islet in Piner Bay. Opening a bottle of Bordeaux, they had claimed it “in the name of France.”
    As it was, both Ringgold and d’Urville left their brief encounter none the wiser as to what the other country’s expedition had so far accomplished. But all would be revealed soon enough.
    The squadron was to rendezvous at the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, but as the Vincennes sailed north, Wilkes decided to stop first at Sydney. In the meantime, Lieutenant Alden set to work constructing a chart of their discoveries, with Wilkes doing the topographical shading in pencil.
    During this long, almost three-thousand-mile sail north, Wilkes began to suffer the inevitable effects of two months of intense emotional and physical hardship. “I had a feeling of exhaustion and lassitude that I could not account for,” he wrote, “and the least exertion caused me much fatigue.” He began a letter to Jane, in which he characteristically proclaimed that “it has been through my wisdom and perseverance that we have achieved so much in such a