On September 13, Wilkes, in accordance with instructions from the secretary of the navy, ordered all the officers to begin keeping a daily journal. The journals were to include “all occurrences or objects of interest, which may, at the time, be considered even of the least importance.” At the end of the voyage, the journals would become the property of the U.S. government. The order was not limited to journals. Everything related to the Expedition – “memorandums, remarks, writings, drawings, sketches, and paintings, as well as all specimens of every kind” – must be turned over to Wilkes at the end of the voyage.
Reynolds had been keeping a journal since the voyage began – a habit that dated to well before the Ex. Ex. “I cannot think of letting this go before any ones eyes but those few at home,” he wrote. Even though it was in obvious violation of regulations, he decided to keep the existence of his personal journal a secret and begin keeping another for his commander.
Two days later, Reynolds had the forenoon watch. The Vincennes was charging along at ten knots in a stiff breeze. “[W]e all felt elated and excited from the speed at which we were going,” Reynolds wrote. Up ahead they spied an unknown brig, and Wilkes told Reynolds to make more sail so that they might catch up to it. After issuing the necessary orders, Reynolds glanced aloft and noticed that something was wrong with the main topgallant sail, the next-to-highest sail on the center mast. Through his speaking trumpet he called out to ease one of the control lines so that the sail would draw properly. A gust of wind blew the sail out with terrific force, causing the released rope to run so quickly that it caught the man at the yard around his neck and yanked him off his feet. “[O]ne awful cry came from his lips,” Reynolds recounted. With the rope wrapped around his neck, the sailor, George Porter, swung from the yard, his body “showing terribly distinct against the clear sky.”
It was now up to Reynolds to get Porter down. But how? “[D]id we haul on the rope, it would be to choke him instantly,” he wrote, “did we slack it, he would be dashed on deck. There he hung!” The rigging of the ship was now alive with sailors, making their way toward their helpless shipmate. The first thing to do was to take in the sail. Once the flapping canvas had been tamed, one of the men was able to catch Porter’s body, only to have it pulled from his grasp when the ship rolled to leeward. A second attempt proved successful and the rope was immediately cleared from Porter’s neck. His face was completely black. “He is dead!” the men shouted down from aloft. But by the time Porter had been brought down to the deck, he was showing signs of life. The rope had wrapped around his jaw and the back of his head, making it impossible for him to breathe but not breaking his neck. The men knew he was going to survive when Porter opened his eyes and worriedly asked the surgeon if this meant he might miss his daily ration of grog. Laughing, one of the sailors claimed that Porter “was not born to be hung, or he would not have missed so good a chance.”
By September 16, the Vincennes was anchored at Funchal on the south shore of Madeira. For a squadron attempting a quick passage to Rio de Janeiro and then on to Cape Horn, a stop at the already well-known island might seem ill advised, especially since there were not the facilities required to begin repairing the Peacock. But Wilkes felt the opportunity to provision and recruit the men would do the squadron good, and Madeira, a lush, volcanic outcropping of stunning beauty a few hundred miles west of Casablanca, was renowned for not only its fresh vegetables and fruits but also its wine.
Perhaps most important, as far as Wilkes was concerned, this 305-square-mile island, much of it devoted to jagged peaks that reached as high as a mile above the surrounding sea, had long been associated with the more than four-hundred-year-long tradition of European exploration. Madeira was first colonized by Portugal in 1434 by one of the knights of Henry the Navigator, the prince traditionally credited with spearheading his country’s pioneering voyages down the west coast of Africa and, ultimately, to the East Indies. Several decades later, Christopher Columbus lived for a time at Madeira and the neighboring island of Porto Santo. He married a member of the local lesser nobility, and his conversations with the many sailors who touched at this famous island may have led him to first consider a voyage west. Even the island’s eponymous wine was associated with voyages to distant lands. When a trading vessel returned to Madeira from the East Indies with an unopened cask in her hold, the wine was found to have a uniquely sweet, fortified flavor – a consequence of its having been repeatedly baked in the equatorial heat. Thus was born the wine that quickly became a favorite in Elizabethan England and in colonial America. In 1768, James Cook, on his way to his first voyage of discovery, stopped at Madeira, where he took on more than three thousand gallons of wine.
For the next nine days, the officers and scientists fanned out across the island. In emulation of his renowned predecessor, Wilkes secured several casks of choice Madeira, which he and, on occasion, his officers would enjoy throughout the duration of the voyage. The stop was, Wilkes claimed, “of infinite benefit to the officers and crews.”
After touching at Porto Praya in the Cape Verde Islands (also visited by Cook), the squadron headed west across the Atlantic. During the long passage to Rio de Janeiro, Reynolds ran into unexpected trouble with the vincennes’s first lieutenant Thomas Craven. Reynolds had served with Craven before and had found him to be a capable and friendly officer. But for no apparent reason during the passage to Rio, Craven accused Reynolds of neglect of duty and gave him a thorough dressing down. “If any one on shore had spoken to me in that way,” Reynolds wrote in his journal, “I should have struck him & certainly I felt very much inclined to do to Mr. Craven.”
What Reynolds didn’t realize was that ever since the Expedition’s departure from Norfolk, Craven had become the object of his commander’s intense and increasingly vindictive envy. Wilkes was suffering under a deep sense of insecurity. As so many navy captains had already pointed out, he had precious little experience at sea, while Craven was recognized as one of the best seamen in the squadron. If Wilkes hadn’t been so insecure about his own nautical ability, he might have recognized how lucky he was to have Craven for a first lieutenant. Instead, he felt threatened by him. Even as Wilkes strove to present an urbane and judicious face to Reynolds and his friends, he covertly worked to undermine Craven. By October, Wilkes’s constant harassment and fault-finding had pushed his first lieutenant to take out his frustrations on Reynolds, whom all recognized as one of the commander’s favorites.
Reynolds decided he must report the incident to Wilkes. “I understand you, Mr. Reynolds,” Wilkes assured him, “& depend upon it, such things shall not happen again.” Reynolds felt confident that his troubles with Craven were now over, adding, “Had I not known Captain Wilkes well and been fully aware that he was free from all petty notions such as that my rank will permit [Craven] to inflict insult without fear …, I never would have gone to him with my complaint against his First Lieutenant.”
“Bah!” Reynolds would later write in the margins of his journal, “he hated Craven & this was the reason he took my part – cove that I was, not to have seen through him then.”
As the squadron made its way south and west across the middle of the Atlantic, Wilkes directed a daily search for shoals, islands, and even a volcano that had been reported but had never been independently verified. Spreading out all five vessels from north to south, so that an estimated twenty miles of latitude could be continuously scanned on a clear day, they sailed over the coordinates of these “vigias,” or doubtful shoals. Invariably they found no sign of any hazard, and Wilkes would later send a list of these phantom shoals to the secretary of the navy. As the Ex. Ex. was proving, exploration was as much about discovering what did not exist as it was about finding something new.
At night during the passage to Rio de Janeiro, the sea seemed to catch fire. Bursts of light sparkled at the vessels’ bows while glowing contrails curled in their wakes – a phenomenon known as “the phosphorescence.” Referred to today as “bioluminescence,” this greenish-yellow light is believed to be caused by tiny dinoflagellates, single-celled marine organisms that undergo a light-producing oxidation process when disturbed. “Every drop that was tossed up shone from its own light,” Reynolds recorded, “and as it