James A. Crutchfield
1012 Fair Street
Franklin, TN 37064
By James A. Crutchfield
Although the mission of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842 was to encircle the globe and to document the scientific findings revealed on the journey, its contributions to America’s westward expansion cannot be overstated.
Commanded by Charles Wilkes, a forty-year-old lieutenant of the U.S. Navy, the expedition brought home information about the Oregon Country that proved eminently important at a time in the nation’s history when mass migration to the Pacific Northwest via the overland trail system was still in its embryonic stages.
Charles Wilkes was born in New York City on April 3, 1798, and although his father preferred a banking career for his son, young Wilkes left home at the age of seventeen and took a job as cabin boy aboard a ship bound for France. When he was twenty, he was appointed midshipman in the navy.
By 1838, Wilkes held the rank of lieutenant and was chosen by Secretary of War Joel Poinsett over thirty-nine other lieutenants—most of them more experienced at sea duty—to command the Exploring Expedition.
The voyage departed Hampton Roads, Virginia, in August 1838, with Wilkes aboard the flagship, Vincennes. Over the next four years, the small fleet, consisting of two to six ships, visited 280 islands; collected thousands of natural history specimens from around the world andproduced 180 maritime charts, many of them still valid as World War II approached a century later.
The fleet explorations also proved the existence of the continent of Antarctica and demonstrated to the world that the U.S. Navy stood equal to the navy of any European power.
In April 1841, after sailing around the southern tip of South America, across the South Pacific Ocean to the coast of Australia, southward to the coast of Antarctica, and northward to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, the fleet reached the North American coast near Cape Disappointment in present-day Washington.
For the next six months, Wilkes and his men conducted several surveys along the Pacific coast as far north as the Strait of Juan de Fuca and as far south as San Francisco Bay, losing one of the ships, the Peacock, to the vicious tides at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Wilkes did not confine his explorations to the Pacific coast alone. He dispatched several parties inland. Among the regions visited were the Columbia River all the way to the mouth of the Snake River, the Willamette River valley and beyond to Sutter’s Fort and the Sacramento River in California, and the Cascade Mountains and the Olympic Peninsula in present-day Washington.
The monumental and highly successful United States Exploring Expedition left many legacies to the nation and to the world: its huge assemblage of botanical, zoological, geological, and ethnological specimens supplied the foundation for the present-day collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History.
The five-volume Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 provided grist for generations of future scientists and historians.
Its greatest contribution to the story of America’s westward expansion, however, was the map entitled “Mouth of the Columbia River, Oregon Territory, 1841.”
Acknowledged by the secretary of war to be worth the total expense of the four-year expedition, the map provided invaluable information about the wilderness that was Washington and Oregon, and it was consulted extensively in years to come as U.S. and British statesmen focused on the issue of the territory’s ownership.
Following the expedition, Charles Wilkes remained in the navy. When the Mexican-AmericanWar broke out, he requested active duty but was denied due to his continued involvement in post-expedition duties, including publication of its findings.
Wilkes served in the Civil War, after which he was promoted to rear admiral on the retired list. Business failings in North Carolina eventually caused him to move to Washington, D.C., where he died on February 7, 1877.
He was married twice and fathered several children. An opinionated man, stern and no-nonsense (in later years he was called “the Stormy Petrel”), he endured two courts-martial during his career, suffering little from their verdicts.
James A. Crutchfield can be reached at TNcrutch@aol.com
