Tag: US Exploring Expedition

Lt. Charles Wilkes – the Commander of the US Exploring Expedition.

Lt. Charles Wilkes – the Commander of the US Exploring Expedition.
Lt. Charles Wilkes, by Edward M. Stevenson, CDR USNR-R
Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command

Today’s post is the fourth in this series detailing my 2024 voyage to the South Pacific (click to see posts 1, 2 and 3). It will give you a little insight into Lt. Charles Wilkes, the complicated leader of US Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 1842. You’ll also get a glimpse of what life must have been like for Alfred Agate on this four-year voyage to edge of the world with a leader like this.

Joye Leonhard’s biography of Wilkes in Magnificent Voyagers, sums him up as “conceited, domineering and arrogant.”   Richard J. King, in his book Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby Dick, describes him as “an enormously capable, prolific, pompous prick.”  Nathaniel Philbrick notes that Wilkes’ nickname among his officers and crew was “the Stormy Petrel,” a bird so called because its appearance portends stormy, rough weather.  

You get the picture.  However, without Wilkes’ ambition and determination, the USXX likely would never have left the dock.  He was both the best and the worst person to put in charge.

There is a theory, one I can thoroughly get behind, that Charles Wilkes was the model for Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab. Wilkes’ blind intensity, his single-minded drive, and his numerous abuses of power (for which he faced several courts martial upon his return) certainly can be seen in the fictional Ahab’s obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick.  We know that in 1847 Melville purchased the entire five-volume Narrative of the US Exploring Expedition (illustrated in part by Alfred Agate!) and quoted from it extensively in Moby Dick.

But let’s dig a little deeper . . .

Charles Wilkes was well-educated, and a talented surveyor/navigator.  Born in New York City in 1798, his mother died when he was very young and he and his siblings were initially raised by his aunt Elizabeth Ann Seton.  (Yes, THAT Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American saint, sanctified in 1974!)

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton by Amabilia Fillichi
Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia

However, young Wilkes would get sent to boarding school at the tender age of 5, and by the age of 17 he had joined the US Navy as a midshipman. In between voyages, he would come back to New York City and study math, art and engineering at Columbia University, as well as Hydrology (the measurement and charting of oceans) with Ferdinand Hassler, the first Superintendent of the Coast Guard Survey.  Wilkes also befriended the legendary Nathaniel Bowditch, mathematician, astronomer and author of the essential New American Practical Navigator.  (Often considered the father of modern maritime navigation, Bowditch’s influence is still felt today, as it is said that every US navy vessel still carries a copy of his book.)

Promoted to Lieutenant in 1826, Wilkes would receive accolades for his excellent work helping to survey and chart Narragansett Bay in 1832 (no doubt in part due to his informal studies with Bowditch.)  

Chart of Narraganset Bay Surveyed in 1832 by Capt. Alex. L. Wadsworth, Lieut. Thos. R. Gedney, Charles Wilkes Jr. & Geo. S. Blake Of the U.S. Navy . By order of the Honr. Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Navy

I would be remiss if I didn’t include a shout-out here to his wife, Jane Renwick Wilkes.  They married in 1826, just before Wilkes was promoted.  By most accounts, she was intelligent, savvy, and skilled at diplomacy.   The love of his life (it is said,) they had known each other since they were children. She moderated his moods and smoothed the social path for him.  Moreover, she was his most trusted confidante, and her absence from his life during his most challenging assignment no doubt contributed to many of his difficulties during the USXX.  

Jane Jefferies Renwick Wilkes c. 1826
Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command

In 1833, Wilkes would be put in charge of the US Navy Department of Charts and Instruments (later to evolve into the Naval Observatory and Hydrographic Office.)  Because of his skill and knowledge, in 1836 he was tapped to help outfit the US XX.  He traveled to Europe to purchase the latest in navigational instruments for the Expedition.  It wasn’t until March of 1838 that he was given the command – and this only after several others (of higher rank) had been appointed but quickly resigned.

When Wilkes finally left Hampton Roads, Virginia on August 18, 1838, leading the most ambitious exploring expedition ever sent out by the US Government, he was the commander of the USS Vincennes, the flagship of the Expedition.  He left behind his beloved Jane, their 4-week old daughter, and three other children.  Though communication was extremely uncertain and unpredictable throughout the four-year voyage, Jane and Charles Wilkes would maintain a prolific correspondence. You can read many of these letters held at the Library of Congress here.

The Expedition would test Wilkes in numerous ways – he’d lose two ships, over two dozen sailors and officers to death and desertion, and massacre a village of native people on Malolo Island, Fiji, just to name a few disasters. (Oh yes, more on this Massacre at Malolo to come.)  His officers would turn on him, and he would bring charges against at least four of them. They, in turn, filed charges against him and Wilkes returned to the US in 1842 not as a triumphant explorer, but under the shadow of several courts martial. (He was only convicted of one charge, though – illegally punishing his crew through excessive flogging.)

Wilkes would then take over the writing and publishing of the expedition Narrative, with Alfred Agate in charge of the illustrations for the first two volumes. Its first printing was preposterously expensive and only 100 copies were published.    However, Wilkes somehow managed to get the US Government to agree to give him the copyright for it, while still getting them pay for the entire endeavor.

Unfortunately, writing was not one of his talents and he mostly cribbed the Narrative from the logbooks of his officers, so the choppy style takes away from the overall excitement of the story.   The initial printing of the five portentous tomes were mostly relegated to libraries.  Despite this, the Narrative slowly caught the imagination of the public, and went through fifteen printings over the next decade and a half. Should you be interested, you can read the entire thing online here.

At the same time, Wilkes was preparing the Expedition’s vast collections for display, first at the US Patent Office Building and then as the opening exhibit for the new Smithsonian Museum. It’s thanks to him that many of the live plants brought back survived, and to this day, descendants of this flora can still, remarkably, be found in the US Botanic Garden in Washington, DC.

In 1857, the United States Exploring Expedition or Wilkes Expedition collections had been transferred from the US Patent Office to the Smithsonian Museum
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution

Wilkes embarked on extensive lecture tours as well, drumming up interest and support for further publications.  (In all, there were over 10 books relating to the Expedition and the scientific discoveries it contributed to.)

Wilkes would remain on active duty in the Navy, serving in the Civil War as commander of the USS San Jacinto.  In 1861, he almost started a war between the US and Great Britain when he captured two British commissioners from the RMS Trent who had been sent to meet with the Confederates and were on their way back to England.  Long story short, President Lincoln had to discipline Wilkes for this (though privately he had been thrilled at the capture and Wilkes had been officially thanked by Congress for his actions.) You can read more about it here.

Unbowed, Wilkes was court martialed a few more times before he was finally retired in 1866, and was at long last promoted to rear Admiral.  

He wrote an autobiography (that wasn’t published until 1978,) and died in 1877.  He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery and on the reverse of his headstone it says “He discovered the Antarctic Continent. January 19, 1840.”

Next post will find us in the islands of Tahiti!

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A Brief History of the US Exploring Expedition

A Brief History of the US Exploring Expedition

This is the third of the series documenting my Summer 2024 voyage to the South Pacific. See here for my previous post.

Today’s post will give a blog-length history of the US Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 1842 (aka the US XX).  However, if you really want an excellent, in-depth study, I highly recommend reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s Sea of Glory.  He does a magnificent job of synthesizing previous histories and making a corking good story of it all:

Known by numerous names – South Seas Surveying and Exploring Expedition, the US South Seas Exploring Expedition, the Charles Wilkes Expedition, it took over 10 years for this expedition to come to fruition.

Its inspiration is often laid at the feet of Captain John Cleves Symmes, Jr, a curious veteran of the War of 1812 (and nephew of a Revolutionary War Colonel of the same name).  Somehow, Symmes came to believe that the world was hollow and that the entrance to this undiscovered realm could be accessed through the South Pole.

I include John James Audubon’s rough sketch of Captain Symmes here only because Audubon is intimately connected to Ossining, having engaged our own Robert Havell to produce the engravings for his Birds of America in the 1820s & ‘30s.  And I love finding these connections!

In 1818, Symmes boldly mailed out 500 copies of his “Circular No. 1” in which he stated:

“I declare the earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking.”

This “Holes in the Poles” theory was not met with great enthusiasm, but it did attract some attention, perhaps most importantly that of New England merchants and whalers.  They loved the idea of an expedition that would explore the South Seas, possibly find them undiscovered whaling and sealing grounds, create accurate charts and maps of the area, and maybe even enter into treaties with the islanders.  Thanks to President John Quincy Adams, who believed that “The object of government is the improvement of the condition of those who are parties to the social compact,” Congress passed a resolution in 1828 to send a ship to the Southern Ocean.  Congress did not, however, appropriate any funds for it.

President John Quincy Adams by Mathew Brady, c. 1843

[Sidebar on President J. Q. Adams, a president that I only know as a whiny politician from the musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.”  He had remarkably big ideas and believed that America would be doomed to “perpetual inferiority” if she did not step up and contribute to the world of discovery and knowledge.  To that end, he tried to establish universities, museums and observatories.  An exploration of this magnitude fit in nicely with his worldview.]

Now, no doubt Adams’ desire to sponsor an expedition to the South Seas was also influenced by the fact that many of his Massachusetts friends included the aforementioned whalers and merchants.

But there was still such distrust in leaders and government left over from America’s colonial experiences that it was hard to get Congress to act on anything “frivolous” like science or exploration.  Adams was a one-term President and couldn’t get the US XX together before President Andrew Jackson took over.  And as we all know, Andrew Jackson was not at all interested in exploration (unless it was in the US and involved massacring indigenous people,) nor was he interested in education or broadening world knowledge.  However, by the end of his second term, Jackson started to think that such an ocean expedition seemed very cool and so got the US Navy involved and encouraged Congress to make it happen.

President Andrew Jackson by Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl c. 1835

However, it took New Yorker President Martin Van Buren to push it across the start.  But by the time things were falling in place for the USXX in the mid-1830s, there had been so much chaos surrounding the expedition, and so many commanders had come and gone, that no Navy man worth his grog wanted command of what began to be called the “Deplorable Expedition.”  

President Martin Van Buren by Mathew Brady, c. 1855

Enter Jr. Lt. Charles Wilkes to organize and command the expedition. (Note that Wilkes was a mere Lieutenant though in command of an expedition with six ships. Pretty unheard of in the world of the US Navy, but there was no one else willing to take on this command.  His lowly rank would become a great bone of contention for him, since most of the captains of his expedition’s six ships outranked him.  This, combined with his inflexible personality and inexperience as a leader would create numerous problems going forward. But more on this in another post.)

Admiral Charles Wilkes (he eventually got promoted!) Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution

By the time the Expedition shoved off from Hampton Roads, VA on August 18, 1838 its price tag had swelled to over $300,000 (around $10 million in today’s dollars), an astonishing amount for the nation at the time.  

In a celebratory speech at the Expedition’s departure, Secretary of the Navy James Paulding would proclaim that the Expedition’s goal was “Not for conquest but for discovery.”

As a reminder, here’s a map of where the Expedition went:

The accomplishments of the Expedition are quite impressive:

  • Over 280 islands were surveyed
  • Over 180 charts created (some were still being used during WWII!)
  • Some 800 miles of Oregon coast and its interior were explored and mapped
  • Around 1500 miles of Antarctic coast were charted, and the USXX was the likely the first to discover that Antarctica was a separate land mass (there’s still some question on this point) but Charles Wilkes had this factoid chiseled onto his tombstone.
  • Contributed to the rise of science in America, the evolution of navigation, and the development of the fields of botany and anthropology
  • The 40-tons worth of plants, animals and artifacts collected becomes the core of the Smithsonian Museum.  See more on that here.

Just as a reminder of how large this expedition was, here are the details of six ships that originally comprised it:

Now, for an expedition whose purported purpose was “To extend the bounds of science and promote knowledge,” out of the 400-plus crew, only nine were considered “scientifics.”  And our Alfred was considered one of this nine.

These gentlemen were:

James Dwight Dana              Minerologist/geologist/Volcanologist/zoologist

Horatio Hale                           Philologist(precursor to Anthropologist)/linguist

Titian R. Peale                        Naturalist

Charles Pickering                   Naturalist/Doctor

William D. Brackenridge        Botanist/Horticulturalist

William Rich                           Botanist

Joseph Couthouy                   Conchologist (Study of molluscs)/linguist/paleontologist

Alfred T. Agate                        Artist

Joseph Drayton                       Artist

Many of them went on to important careers in their chosen fields, adding greatly to the store of knowledge on the natural world.  And, thanks to their US XX work, many new species of birds, plants and animals were discovered, collected and studied. Further, thanks to Alfred Agate, records of the unique cultural patterns of dress, tattoos and rituals of the different South Pacific Island nations was documented.

The perils facing the Expedition were great: there were few accurate charts or maps to navigate through the shoals and coral reefs of the islands.  The indigenous people were, for the most part, often and understandably hostile towards Europeans coming to their islands and demanding food, water and other supplies. There was no way to communicate between ships except by cannon, lights and flags, meaning that sometimes days or even weeks would go by before they resumed contact.  One ship, the Sea Gull, was lost at sea somewhere between Tierra Del Fuego and Valparaiso, Chile during the first year, never to be heard of again.  Another ship was wrecked and lost at the mouth of the Columbia River.  About 20 of the crew died during the four-year voyage from disease, injury or attacks.

But the Expedition accomplished its mission and put America on the world stage, though perhaps not as spectacularly as President Adams had hoped.

Stay tuned for more about Lt. Charles Wilkes, and stories about the Expedition’s encounters on Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji.

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Upcoming Presentation on Alfred Agate and the US Exploring Expedition! Monday, 1/22/2024

Here’s a shameless plug for a presentation I’m doing in Tarrytown at the Shames JCC on Monday, January 22, 2024 @ 10am. 

Alfred Agate, believed to have been painted by his brother Frederick Agate c. 1838
Courtesy of the New York Historical Society

From the Shames JCC website:

Alfred Agate was the illustrator for one of the most ambitious and largest scientific exploratory expeditions that you‘ve never heard of the US South Seas Exploring Expedition from 1838 – 1842 – an epic voyage that sailed to South America, the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, the West Coast of North America, the Philippines, and Indonesia. He was born in Sparta, now part of Ossining, and was a very successful portrait and miniature painter before he went to sea. In this image-packed talk, Ossining Town Historian Caroline Curvan presents a fascinating piece of little-known local history.

The Shames JCC is located at 371 S. Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591.