Counseling him on this and many other issues was Jane. It is clear that her influence extended well beyond mere pillow talk. Wilkes regarded her as his “assistant” and at one point suggested (only half jokingly) that she and the children might accompany him on the Expedition. “I only wish I could have you as my second in command,” he wrote from Norfolk in July, “and all would go well. What think you of rigging yourself in men’s clothes … and all our chicks as little middies [and then] embarking with me.” When on July 19, Jane gave birth to their fourth child, Eliza, it meant that, at least for a time, she must concentrate on other things besides her busy husband and his voyage.
On the day of Jane’s delivery, Wilkes sat down to draft a long and impassioned letter to Poinsett. Now, more than ever before, Wilkes realized that if he was to bear the full weight of his command throughout the long, arduous voyage that lay ahead, he needed an acting appointment to captain. He understood why Poinsett was reluctant to give him the acting appointment he deserved. The secretary had already suffered the wrath of nearly the entire department by appointing him to lead the Expedition. But a promise was a promise. “[O]n this I did rely,” Wilkes wrote. If he had suspected he would not be awarded an acting appointment, he would have never agreed to command the Expedition. The following week, President Van Buren was scheduled to travel to Norfolk with Poinsett and Paulding to review the fleet. Wilkes felt it would be only appropriate if the acting appointments were made official during that ceremony.
On July 26 President Van Buren and his retinue arrived at Norfolk. Colorful signal flags fluttered from the rigging. All the officers, the full marine detachment, and the marine band were lined up on the quarterdeck of each vessel. Aloft, the enlisted men, in white duck trousers and blue jackets, stood on the yards and booms, facing the president. Since the chronometers had not yet been brought aboard, Wilkes allowed the guns to fire a salute.
About sixty people sat down to a “bounteous lunch” in honor of the Expedition. (Although Commodore Lewis Warrington and the other officers of the navy yard had been invited, none of them chose to attend.) Toasts were delivered. Much wine was drunk. “It was a well timed encouragement,” Wilkes remembered, “and showed that, however the officers [of the navy yard] might feel themselves opposed to it, the Gov[ernment]t gave me its full Sanction.”
But instead of elation, Wilkes felt a gloom settling over him. Apparently, the acting appointments were not forthcoming – at least not that day. When Poinsett praised the progress that had been made so far, Wilkes responded “that I was not deceived or to be humbugged by such things.”
By the beginning of August, Jeremiah Reynolds, the Expedition’s original promoter, realized that he was about to be left behind. Dozens of letters, many of them from his supporters in Ohio, had been written insisting that he be included, but Jeremiah’s most articulate defender was the writer Edgar Allan Poe. Poe had become so fascinated with Symmes’s and Jeremiah’s earlier claims about the holes in the poles that he had written several short stories and even a novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, that referred to a mysterious opening at the bottom of the earth. Poe would later pay tribute to Jeremiah’s role in instigating the Expedition: “Take from the enterprise the original impulse which he gave – the laborious preliminary investigation which he undertook – the unflinching courage and the great ability … by which he ensured its consummation – let the Expedition have wanted all this, and what would the world have had of it but the shadow of a shade?” In the years ahead, Jeremiah would insist that Wilkes – that “cunning little Jacob” – had schemed along with Dickerson to deny him his due. But long before Wilkes was named to the command, Jeremiah had been foolish enough to take on the secretary of the navy in the pages of The New York Times. As Jeremiah knew better than anyone, the politics of the Ex. Ex. had been part chess game, part internecine warfare, and the only man left standing after a decade of struggle was Charles Wilkes.
In the meantime, the other Reynolds was busy preparing for the voyage of his dreams. In early July, Passed Midshipman William Reynolds had briefly visited his family in Lancaster. After picking up his clothing and other supplies, he traveled to Norfolk to join the squadron. By August, the departure date had been pushed back to the middle of the month.
Reynolds was in charge of purchasing food for his mess, the group of officers with whom he would be sharing meals for the foreseeable future. On August 12, he wrote Lydia telling her he had been “most busily and arduously engaged in Expending $1000 for the Mess & $600 for myself: we have a great many stores, and I flatter myself that the mess over which I preside will be the most respectable, tasty, and somewhat stylish.” He would be sharing a stateroom with his best friend May on the Expedition’s flagship, the Vincennes. May, who had been assisting Wilkes, had not yet arrived from Washington, leaving Reynolds to prepare their living quarters. Although it was not yet finished, he claimed the room “will be carpeted, cushioned, curtained (one set crimson damask, one white), mirrored, silver candlesticks, etc. etc. – a little boudoir, most exquisitely luxurious in its arrangements.”
The squadron was now, for the first time, fully assembled, and Reynolds was delighted by the addition of the two schooners, just delivered from New York. “Passed Midshipmen will command them,” he enthused to Lydia. “I wish my rank would entitle me to one. ’[T]is something to be a Captain [the title applied by courtesy to any commander of a vessel], and those Boats are large, beautiful & swift – perhaps I may return Captain Reynolds.”
He was also fascinated by the most unusual passengers who would be accompanying them on the voyage: the “Scientifics.” “I like the associates we shall have during the cruise, these enthusiastic artists, and those headlong, indefatigable pursuers & slayers of birds, beasts & fishes & gatherers of shells, rocks, insects, etc. etc.” What particularly interested Reynolds about these men was that it was not the promise of glory or wealth that had inspired them to sail on a voyage around the world, but their thirst for knowledge: “They are leaving their comfortable homes to follow the strong bent of their minds, to garner up strange things of strange lands, which proves that the ruling passion is strong in life.… We, the ignoramuses, will no doubt take great interest in learning the origin, nature & history of many things, which we have before regarded with curious and admiring eyes.” To make sure he had an adequate record of his experiences, he purchased two large journals. “[T]f I fill them,” he told Lydia, “I trust I shall make a perusal interesting.”
In a hasty addendum written the following evening, his enthusiasm was even greater than the day before. “I am perfectly charmed with everything on board,” he gushed, “& have the most glorious hopes of a most glorious cruise. [N]othing could tempt me to withdraw. I am wedded to the Expedition and its fate, sink or swim.”
On August 10, it was time for Wilkes to head to Norfolk. “I will not soon forget the scene at the Breakfast table,” he wrote Jane the next day, “with your dear self and little Eliza at your breast & those other children around. It was enough to have halted any man [even] if his heart had been made of stone and [has] made me cry a dozen times since. How much comfort & happiness I have left behind.” He was leaving not only his wife, but his best and perhaps only true friend, a person with whom he had lived and worked for most of his adult life. Wilkes knew that when he returned in three to four years, his youngest daughter Eliza would have no memory of her father.
By Sunday, August 12, he was in his freshly painted cabin aboard the Vincennes, awaiting the sailing orders he had already drafted but which needed to be formally issued by the secretary of the navy. Wilkes would not have been faulted if he had taken time that evening to bask in the glory of his achievement. He had done all that he had promised he would do. Despite almost every kind of opposition, Wilkes had assembled a squadron of six vessels and 346 men. Almost miraculously, he had succeeded in turning around the Expedition’s morale. Instead of the nest of intrigue and mistrust it had been just a few months before, the squadron was now characterized by an extraordinary eagerness and zeal.