Sea of Glory

this was done as an act of propitiation wherever a man had been clubbed to death. “Judging from the number of places in which these atonements were made,” Wilkes wrote, “many victims have suffered in this way.”
    By noon they had reached the summit. To the west the interior valleys of Ovalau were dotted with villages and patches of cultivated land, along with groves of coconut and breadfruit trees. In the distance to the north, they could see the “fantastic needle-shaped peaks” of Vanua Levu, almost sixty miles away. Directly below them to the east, the Vincennes and the Peacock sat quietly at anchor. Wilkes and his officers turned their attention to the sea surrounding the island, where they could easily identify the pattern of reefs extending for miles in every direction. The officers went to work with their instruments, creating a group of preliminary sketches that would prove invaluable in the weeks ahead. Darkness was already approaching when they began the descent, and the natives created torches made of dried coconut leaves to light the way.
    Wilkes spent much of the next day organizing two surveying parties, each comprising two boats. The first, led by James Alden, would follow the north shore of Viti Levu, while the second, led by George Emmons, would take the south shore, with the two parties eventually meeting at the island of Malolo to the west of Viti Levu. Word had just reached the squadron that a crewmember aboard the Salem bêche-de-mer vessel Leonidas had recently been killed by natives. Adding to Wilkes’s concerns for his men’s safety was the Fijian custom of taking any vessel that had been driven on shore and killing all on board. Wilkes issued written orders prohibiting the survey crews from landing and requiring that the two boat-crews always remain within signaling distance.
    Much to Wilkes’s relief, the Flying Fish finally arrived at Levuka. The schooner had grounded on a reef and lost part of her false keel but sustained no serious damage. Given that Wilkes had virtually abandoned the vessel in the middle of a gale in the middle of the Fijis, it was remarkable that her commander, George Sinclair, had managed to find his way to Ovalau. This did not prevent Wilkes from giving him “a severe rebuke.” Sinclair could only shake his head. “[V]erily I do not know what to make of the man,” he wrote; “he can’t be pleased.”
    The next day, Wilkes learned that his diplomatic gamble had paid off. Even though Whippy had doubted that Tanoa, “King of Bau,” would accept Wilkes’s invitation to call upon him, it was reported that the chief’s magnificent, hundred-foot outrigger canoe had been sighted rounding the southern point of Ovalau. With a huge sail made of white mats, the canoe traveled at speeds that were, according to Wilkes, “almost inconceivable.” The two hulls were ornamented with thousands of white shells; pennants streamed from the tips of the masts as Tanoa’s crew of forty Tongans, renowned for their sailing abilities, maneuvered the canoe through the harbor and landed on the beach.
    In becoming Fiji’s most powerful leader, Tanoa had gained a reputation for violence and brutality that was matched only by his ambitious son Seru. Several years after a coup temporarily forced his father into exile, Seru had orchestrated the bloody uprising that brought Tanoa back to power in 1837. Just a few months before, Tanoa and Seru had led an attack on the rival town of Verata, killing an estimated 260 men, women, and children. During their return to Bau, the chiefs had ordered that thirty captured children (all of them still alive) be placed in baskets and hoisted to the mastheads of their fleet of war canoes to serve as grim victory pennants. As the canoes tossed in the lumpy seas, the children were slammed repeatedly against the vessels’ masts. By the time the fleet reached Bau, the children were dead.
    But it wasn’t just the acts of violence that had established Tanoa’s and Seru’s reputations; there were also the inevitable claims of cannibalism. Several of the white residents insisted that they had witnessed these terrifying rituals. Some of the more graphic accounts of cannibalism came from the handful of missionaries who had recently established themselves in Fiji. One of them told how Seru had lopped off and roasted the arms and legs of two captive warriors, then forced them to eat their own body parts.
    Many of the Expedition’s officers and