Sea of Glory

scientists remained skeptical of these accounts. Then, as now, there were those who insisted that rumors of cannibalism were nothing more than the white man’s worst nightmare projected onto an innocent native people. Having heard Captain Pollard’s firsthand account of the Essex disaster, Wilkes knew better than most that a mariner’s obsessive fear of cannibalism began not with the natives of the South Pacific but with the sensational yarns told in the forecastle of a ship. To their credit, the officers and scientists of the Ex. Ex. would delay judgment until they were presented with incontrovertible proof of the practice.
    When Tanoa, dressed only in a large turban of white tapa and a small maro tied around his loins, appeared on the deck of the Vincennes, he hardly seemed capable of the many disturbing acts that had been attributed to him. Thin, with a long gray beard and a high-pitched voice, the king was so unsettled by the gigantic size of the sloop-of-war that he insisted on hugging the ship’s taffrail as he made his way to Wilkes on the quarterdeck. With Whippy serving as an interpreter, Wilkes was able to persuade Tanoa to sign a trade agreement similar to one that had been adopted at Samoa. Afterward, several of the Vincennes ’s cannons were fired for the chief’s benefit, followed by a demonstration of the marines’ marching skills—performed to the tune of “The King of the Cannibal Islands.”
     
    Just a few days later, Wilkes was in the midst of his observations and experiments at Levuka when he was interrupted by a man whom he at first took to be a Fijian, but who turned out to be a deeply tanned former sailor named Paddy O’Connell. Originally from County Clare, Ireland, Paddy had been living in Fiji for more than forty years. He proudly told Wilkes that he had fathered forty-eight children and hoped to reach an even fifty before he died. For reasons Paddy did not want to go into, he had been banished from the community of white residents at Levuka, but was now offering his services to Wilkes and the Expedition.
    Upon hearing Paddy’s account of some of his adventures, Wilkes informed him that he “did not believe a word of it.” But when Paddy claimed he had been an eyewitness to the massacre of the mate and crewmembers of the American bêche-de-mer trader Charles Doggett in 1834, the beachcomber soon had Wilkes’s attention. It was an incident that had been documented in petitions to the U.S. government, and even though the murders had occurred six years before, Wilkes resolved to bring the perpetrator, a chief named Veidovi, to justice. Veidovi lived at Rewa, a region in Viti Levu to which Wilkes had already dispatched the Peacock, and Wilkes instructed O’Connell to set out immediately with a packet of sealed orders for Captain Hudson.
    It wasn’t long before Hudson had laid his trap. On May 21, he invited the current king of Rewa, along with his three brothers (one of whom was Veidovi), to a special reception aboard the Peacock. More than a hundred natives were crowded aboard the warship, but Veidovi was not one of them. Hudson ushered the three chiefs into his cabin for a feast. The natives were in high spirits until Hudson ordered the drum beat to quarters. Sentries suddenly appeared at the cabin door, and the members of the royal party were separated from their attendants. Hudson explained that he had no quarrel with any of them, but that he had been ordered to secure Veidovi for the murder of the white men aboard the Charles Doggett.
    The king was outraged. “His blood was up,” Reynolds wrote, “and it was as much as he could do to keep his passions from breaking out.” “Why had he been thus trapped like a bird?” the king asked. “Why had not the Captain asked him for his Brother, when he was free?” Hudson firmly insisted that they would all be released once Veidovi had been delivered to the Peacock. Reluctantly the king ordered one of his brothers “to go to the Town & take Veidovi, alive if he could, but if he resisted, to kill him & bring the body.”
    Early the next morning a canoe was sighted sailing toward the Peacock. Realizing that it was the only way to free his brothers and their wives, Veidovi had agreed to accompany his brother back to the Peacock. As soon as he stepped aboard, Veidovi impressed everyone with his regal and solemn bearing. “[H]e was very much dejected,” Reynolds wrote, “and this additional gloom threw a more mournful cast over