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The
expedition was authorized by Congress in response to popular
demand. Investigations were carried on in widely separated
areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans including Brazil,
Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, Chile, Australia, New Zealand,
the west coast of North America, the Philippines and the
East Indies. The two voyages into Antarctic waters were in
February and March 1839, and January and February of 1840.
Even though the Antarctic portion of the expedition was part
of a larger plan in the Pacific, major accomplishments were
gained. Wilkes sighted land on several occasions as he
sailed along the edge of the ice pack south of Australia for
some 1500 miles. Thus, Wilkes was the first to provide proof
of the existence of an Antarctic continent. Simultaneous to
the Wilkes expedition were expeditions from two of the
dominant players in Antarctic exploration, Great Britain and
France. The French expedition, commanded by Dumont
d'Urville, explored the
Antarctic Peninsula from January to March 1838, and landed
on the Adélie Coast, on the other side of Antarctica,
in January 1840. The British Expedition under
Sir James
Clark Ross explored the Ross
Sea in 1840-41 and returned there again the following year.
The 1842-43 season was spent on the edge of the Weddell
Sea. During
the early 1800's American sealing and whaling ships were
getting huge rewards for their efforts. Demand for furs and
whale bone, oil for lamps and ambergris for use in perfumes
was rapidly growing. Unfortunately, the hunting grounds off
Chile and Peru were quickly running out and by the 1820's
the New England sailors were forced more and more to the
south in search of new game. As a result, penetration into
Antarctic seas created diverse problems for the sailors as
captains were reluctant to proclaim to other expeditions
where their new hunting grounds were located. Ships suddenly
found themselves in raging weather among unreported islets.
A number of vessels foundered or wrecked on these islets and
submerged reefs. Demands grew from the New England whalers
and sealers for the US Government to sponsor exploring
expeditions to the Antarctic in hopes of finding, and
subsequently charting, new hunting grounds. The indifferent
success of the private expedition led by Benjamin Pendleton
and Nathaniel Palmer in 1829-31 could not fulfill their
hopes. Upon their return, Pendleton actually asked Congress
to reimburse him for his losses! On May
18, 1836, Congress authorized the President to "send out a
surveying and exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean and
the South Seas," and a total of $300,000 was given for the
expedition. The amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 26
to 3 while in the House there was considerable opposition
where the final vote was 79 to 65. The
primary purpose of the expedition was to aid commerce and
navigation, but it was also supposed "to extend the bounds
of science and to promote knowledge". In April 1838, four
naval vessels were assigned to the expedition, with the
Vincennes, a sloop of war of 780 tons, designated as
the flagship. Other vessels were the Peacock, a sloop
of war of 650 tons, the Porpoise, a brig of 230 tons,
and the store ship Relief. Two New York pilot boats,
the 110-ton schooner Sea Gull and the 96-ton schooner
Flying Fish were purchased for the expedition to be
used as survey vessels close in to shore. Wilkes
was not the navy's first choice to lead the expedition.
Thomas Ap Catesby Jones was originally placed in command but
resigned in disgust due to delays coming from the Secretary
of the Navy. The command was then offered to Commodore
Shubrick, who declined. Captains Kearney and Gregory were
asked and they thought it politically incorrect and so
stepped aside. The next man chosen was Charles Wilkes. With
little experience in sea duty, he more than made up for it
in vision, intelligence and determination. His sense of
mission and national pride demanded high standards of
performance from himself and his crew. Unfortunately, he was
not without flaws. A strict disciplinarian, he ran a taut
ship..too taut for much of his crew. Many of the crew
disliked him but, on the other hand, praised him for driving
himself even harder. At final count, Wilkes would take with
him 82 officers, nine naturalists, scientists and artists,
and 342 sailors. Of the latter, only 223 would return to the
United States with the expedition, or aboard other American
vessels. During the voyage 62 would be discharged as
unsuitable, 42 would desert, and 15 would die of disease,
injury or be drowned. On August 18, 1838 Wilkes led his
squadron to sea to begin the great United States Exploring
Expedition. The
Vincennes The four departing vessels took aboard
a 10 month's supply of foodstuffs from the Relief as
they anticipated a winter trapped in ice. Ten days after the
Porpoise and Sea Gull set sail from Orange
Harbour, they found themselves shrouded in fog and coated
with ice. Wilkes abandoned the expedition and sent the
Sea Gull to Deception Island where her captain was to
land and collect a self-registering thermometer that was
left on the island in 1829. The instrument was never located
and the Sea Gull found itself in a fierce storm. The
Porpoise, while on her way back to Tierra del Fuego,
very nearly ran aground on Elephant Island due to the soupy
fog. Meanwhile, the Peacock and Flying Fish
had troubles of their own. Two days out from Orange Harbour
the Flying Fish disappeared in the fog. The Flying
Fish was hit with a strong storm that ripped away some
of her sails, crushed her boats and injured the helmsman and
lookout. Incredibly, she still managed to fight her way
through and on March 22 reached within one degree of Cook's
furthest penetration. Then, on March the 25th the Flying
Fish was sighted among the ice floes. It had been a
month since she had first disappeared in the fog and while
the captains were jubilant over their meeting, they
nonetheless hurried to get underway as they agreed the days
were growing shorter and their ships were in poor condition.
The Flying Fish would return to Orange Harbour while
the Peacock would sail on to
Valparaíso. Upon
reaching Orange Harbour, the Flying Fish encountered
the Porpoise, Sea Gull and Vincennes
already at anchor. The Relief was away having taken
the scientists into the Straits of Magellan for a survey.
Charles Wilkes was not aware of the fact that the
Relief nearly wrecked at the entrance to the straits
and that she, like the Peacock, had decided to sail
directly to Valparaíso. Wilkes waited until April 20
for the return of the Relief but finally gave up and
sailed the Porpoise and Vincennes north. Alone
in Orange Harbour, the Flying Fish and the Sea
Gull awaited the return of the store ship Relief.
On April 28, with no sign of the Relief, they set
sail for Valparaíso. At midnight they lost contact as
the Flying Fish struggled to ride out a nine-day
gale. As for the Sea Gull, she was never seen again,
lost with all hands somewhere off the long Chilean
coast. As with
other exploratory expeditions, the Americans made use of the
Antarctic winter to extend their knowledge of the Pacific
island groups. The waters and coastlines of the Paumoto
Islands, Tahiti, Samoa, the Marshalls and Hawaii were
charted as the scientists collected botanical and geological
specimens. Wilkes, once again in command of the
Vincennes, sailed from Sydney, Australia on December
26, 1839. With the Porpoise, Peacock and
Flying Fish close behind, their first rendezvous was
to be at Macquarie Island, 800 miles southeast of Tasmania.
Seven days of good weather ushered the vessels southward but
on the night of January 1, 1840 the Flying Fish lost
sight of the others. She went on, as planned, to Macquarie
Island. Two days later, amid worsening weather, the
Peacock also became separated from the group. She too
reached Macquarie Island but anchored out of sight of the
Flying Fish. The Vincennes and
Porpoise both were blown off course and subsequently
passed east of the island. Wilkes decided too much time would be
lost trying to fight his way back to Macquarie Island so the
Vincennes and Porpoise continued on to their
second rendezvous point where they would wait for the other
two ships. Unfortunately, the Flying Fish was leaking
badly with waves breaking over her. Despite the problems,
Lt. Pinkney took the ship southwards in a determined attempt
to catch the others. On January 9 the Vincennes and
Porpoise reached the second rendezvous point, Emerald
Island, but lo and behold there was nothing but open water.
They had fallen victim to inaccurate charts. With no time to
spare, they continued south. Two days later the vessels
reached what Wilkes was to refer to as "the icy barrier".
They had sailed as far south as possible so they turned
westwards in an attempt to find a passage through the pack
ice. On January 16 the Peacock came into view.
Concern was voiced over the fate of the Flying Fish.
The Flying Fish actually reached the ice barrier on
January 21 and struggled westwards from there in an attempt
to reach the others. Admitting defeat, they turned north and
arrived in New Zealand five weeks later. Reunited,
the Vincennes, Porpoise and Peacock
sailed west among the ice floes. On the day that the
Peacock arrived a view of land had been shouted by
the lookouts. All three vessels sighted the land and Wilkes
sketched what he took to be a distant range of mountains. He
named one of them Ringgold's Knoll, after the captain of the
Porpoise. Two days later, an officer aboard the
Peacock captured an emperor penguin. The bird was
found to contain 30 pebbles in it's stomach which further
confirmed evidence of land, especially since the water was
so shallow. On January 24 the Peacock was on it's
own, attempting to get closer to land. Captain Hudson took
his vessel into a bay crowded with floes. While attempting
to avoid the large blocks of ice, the ship met with
disaster. The Peacock crashed astern into an ice
floe, the force of which threw his crew to the deck.
Inspection revealed that the rudder had been torn from it's
fixings. The ice closed in, grinding against the hull.
Anchors were hooked on to the floes, only to be torn loose.
Time and again she was rammed by great masses of ice. The
stern boat was crushed. The carpenters worked throughout the
night to repair the rudder. By eight o'clock on the morning
of January 25, the rudder was in position again and the
sloop worked her way free of the bay. Some crewmembers
wished to continue on but Captain Hudson determined the
Peacock had served her term. She turned north,
reaching Sydney in the last week of February
1840. Peacock
driven into the iceberg The
Porpoise continued westwards reaching 100 degrees
East on February 14, 1840. Satisfied his duty was done, the
Porpoise turned eastwards and then north to reach the
Bay of Islands, New Zealand, on March 26. It is
ironic that at this time Wilkes was unaware his flagship was
the last of the squadron in the Antarctic. Pressing west,
Wilkes drove the Vincennes onward, sighting land on
February 12. He celebrated with champagne, spent three hours
taking observations, then once again sent the
Vincennes tacking west. On February 21 he confronted
a wall of ice that stretched as far as the eye could see. He
named it Termination Land which was changed later to
Termination Ice Tongue and still later changed to the
Shackleton Ice Shelf. It extends 180 miles out from the
shoreline. With a
number of sightings logged, a list of mountains and
headlands named, the tough-minded commander of The United
States Exploring Expedition took his flagship back to
Sydney. Captain Hudson, aboard the Peacock, was there
to greet him and Wilkes promptly declared discovery of the
Antarctic continent which he dated as January 19,
1840. Between
the spring of 1840 and the summer of 1842, Wilkes undertook
a lengthy survey of the North American coast, then sailed to
the Philippines and around the Cape of Good Hope. By the
time he returned to the United States in 1842, his
discoveries had been challenged along with his conduct as
commander of the expedition. Upon his return, Wilkes learned
that the English explorer Ross
had sailed across some of the land the American
claimed to have seen. Ross was correct, but so was Wilkes as
Wilkes had experienced the effect known as looming, or polar
refraction, which is a desert-like mirage that projects a
perfect image relayed by the upper atmosphere, convincing
the observer it is far closer than it really is. Wilkes made matters worse when he
attempted to retract his recorded date of discovery as
January 19, changing the date to January 16. It was his
attempt to lay sole claim to discovery of the Antarctic
continent since French explorer Dumont
d'Urville also claimed January
19 as the date of his first view of the mainland. This
matter aside, his biggest problem were charges leveled
against him by his fellow officers. A Naval Court of Inquiry
was convened, culminating in July 1842 in a sad and sordid
court martial. All but one of the charges against him fell
apart. The Court found him guilty of the illegal punishment
of seamen, based on an incident that had occurred in Callao,
aboard the Relief. Six of the crew had stolen liquor
from the stores, and Wilkes had ordered them to be punished
with more than the legal 12 lashes. The verdict left him
fuming, but he concentrated on his efforts on writing the
five-volume Narrative of his voyage. It was published in
1845, Congress allowing no more than 100 printed copies. Two
of these were offered to France, two to Great Britain, two
to Imperial Russia, two lodged in the Library of Congress.
One each was given to the States of the Union, one to 25
designated countries, one to the Naval Lyceum, Brooklyn.
Captain Hudson was given one, as was Captain Ringgold.
Wilkes was allowed a single copy. Wilkes
went on to continue his career in the navy. He returned to
active duty in 1861 during the Civil War, but his
interception of a British mail steamer almost brought
Britain into the war on the side of the Confederacy. Wilkes
went before a court martial once again, was found guilty and
placed on the retired list. It took many years before his
Antarctic accomplishments were recognized.
The United
States Exploring Expedition of 1838-42 is a milestone in
American science. Often referred to as the Wilkes
Expedition, this expedition brought back to the United
States a wealth of geological, botanical, zoological,
anthropological and other materials which created a
foundation upon which much of American science was formed.
At least three of the scientists involved with the
expedition gained international fame from their
efforts.
Their first stop was at Madeira and from there they
made their way down the South American coast where they
clustered in Orange Harbour near the southern tip of Tierra
del Fuego. It was here that Wilkes split the expedition into
three teams. Wilkes moved his command to the Porpoise
and, with the Sea Gull as tender, prepared to push as
far southwards as possible. The second group, comprised of
the Peacock and Flying Fish, would be sent
south-westwards to find, and hopefully better, James Cook's
most southerly penetration. The remaining group, comprised
of the Vincennes and Relief, were to carry out
survey work in the region of Tierra del Fuego and the
Straits of Magellan. 
On January 30 a lookout aboard the Porpoise
spotted a vessel in the distance. It was the French explorer
Dumont
d'Urville on board the
Astrolabe . As the story goes, Lt. Ringgold "closed
with the strangers, desiring to pass within hail under their
stern. But so far from any reciprocity being given, I saw
with surprise sail making by boarding the main tack on board
the Astrolabe. Without a moment's delay, I hauled
down my colours and bore up on my course before the wind".
Dumont d'Urville and Ringgold both claimed they were
insulted by the other. They had met but behaved like a pair
of touchy prima-donnas.