Free Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick Page B

inevitably threatened its dissolution. Distracted by his feuding with Dickerson, he had failed to take note of an important fact. The instruments that Wilkes had assembled more than a year ago were spread out over three cities. Some of the chronometers were at the Depot in Washington. Other instruments were at Professor Renwick’s in New York, still others in Philadelphia, and then there were all the chronometers and sextants Wilkes had taken with him to survey Georges Bank. For Jones, this was the last straw. By mid-November his health had begun to suffer from what he called “the pain, expense, and mortification, to which I have been daily subjected for the last eighteen months.” He was now regularly coughing up blood. On November 21, he resigned his command.
    Jones was the most conspicuous example of how “this great national enterprise” could destroy a person. In the absence of any proper institutional support, the Expedition had become a kind of vortex in which petty personal and professional differences, aggravated by competing political alliances, swirled in a dangerous whirlpool. In waters this fierce, only an individual of extraordinary resilience, passion, and determination had any hope of survival. In his letter of resignation, Commodore Jones complained of “the most determined and uncompromising opposition to me and to my plans up to the latest moment. . . . As regards to myself, I am but the wreck of what I was.”
    As if to mock the difficult birth of the American Expedition, word reached Washington that a new French squadron had left Toulon in August. In addition to exploring dozens of Pacific islands, the French, under the command of the veteran voyager Dumont d’Urville, planned to sail as close as possible to the South Pole.
     
    By the winter of 1838, President Martin Van Buren had come to the belated realization that his secretary of the navy, Mahlon Dickerson, was not capable of successfully organizing the Expedition. In an extraordinary move, he put his secretary of war, Joel Poinsett, in charge of finding a commander. Poinsett, a former congressman from South Carolina, was well educated and had traveled extensively. As minister to Mexico, he had been responsible for bringing the poinsettia, the flower that bears his name, to the United States. He also had a reputation for getting things done.
    But not even Poinsett could easily fix the Expedition. Over the course of the next few weeks, every navy captain he contacted ultimately refused his offer of command. The Expedition had become an embarrassment, a sure way to scuttle a promising career. On February 9, John Quincy Adams visited Poinsett at the War Department. Now a representative from Massachusetts, the former president had seen his dreams of a similar voyage dashed back in 1828. “I told him,” Adams recorded in his diary, “that all I wanted to hear about the exploring expedition was, that it had sailed.”
    Soon after, Poinsett found an officer of suitable seniority willing to consider the possibility of leading the Expedition. Captain Joseph Smith said he’d agree to it if he could have Wilkes as a surveyor. “I think it would be advisable to order Lieutenant Wilkes to report himself to your department at Washington without delay,” Poinsett wrote Dickerson on March 1.
    Little did anyone suspect that in less than a month, it would not be Captain Smith who would be appointed leader of the nation’s first exploring expedition, but a forty-year-old lieutenant who was more accustomed to a desk and an observatory than to the open sea. For Charles Wilkes, the voyage was about to begin.

CHAPTER 3
    Most Glorious Hopes
    WASHINGTON IN THE SPRING OF 1838 was full of distractions for a young naval officer. But William Reynolds (no relation to the beleaguered Jeremiah N. Reynolds) was a most bookish passed midshipman. Instead of attending the teas and dances to which he received regular invitations, he preferred the Library of Congress. When