CAPTAIN CHARLES WILKES, COMMANDER 



Francis H. Gregory (1789-1866) was then thought of, 

 a man of wide experience and great bravery, whose later 

 days were spent in New Haven. Captain (afterward 

 Commodore) Lawrence Kearney (1789-1868) had the 

 subject under consideration. He was subsequently in 

 command of the East India Squadron, and visited the 

 Hawaiian Islands in 1843. 



The final choice was Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, 

 U. S. N. (1798-1877), a native of New York, then forty 

 years old, the age at which Captain Cook set sail on the 

 first of his great voyages, three years less than the age 

 of Bougainville when he left St. Malo. Wilkes was a 

 brave and resolute man, studious, severe, upright, with- 

 out conciliation, inclined to be arbitrary in minor matters 

 as well as in those that were important, often at variance 

 with some of his officers, and yet, as Dana wrote, on the 

 whole " an excellent commander." " Perhaps no bet- 

 ter could have been found in the navy at that time." 

 He was sincerely desirous of promoting the scientific 

 objects of the expedition, and by taste and education was 

 particularly interested in nautical astronomy and hydro- 

 graphy, much more than in natural history or anthropol- 

 ogy. The hope of discovering an Antarctic continent 

 fascinated him, and the distinction which was won by the 

 expedition in that discovery and in the survey of islands 

 and shores unknown was due chiefly to his skill, patience, 

 energy, and thoroughness. During his previous residence 

 in Washington he had maintained a private observatory in 

 his garden, and it is said that this apparently laudable 

 proceeding was stopped by some higher authority on the 

 ground that a naval observatory was unconstitutional. 



In the civil war, nearly twenty years after the return 

 of the expedition, Wilkes acquired a popular reputation 

 while in command of the San Jacinto (in 1861), by his 

 seizure of Mason and Slidell from the British packet-boat 

 Trent, when they were crossing the Atlantic as diplomatic 



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