United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842
From Freepedia
The United States Exploring Expedition was an exploring and surveying expedition of the Pacific Ocean ("the Southern Seas") conducted by the United States Navy from 1838-1842. The voyage, authorized by Congress in 1836, is commonly called the Wilkes Expedition in honor of its commanding officer, Navy Lt. Charles Wilkes (1798-1877). The expedition was of major importance to the growth of science in the United States.
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Preparations
Personnel included naturalists, botanists, a mineralogist, taxidermists and a philologist, and was carried by the sloops-of-war Vincennes (780 tons) and Peacock (650 tons), the brig Porpoise (230 tons), the store-ship Relief, and two tenders, Sea Gull (110 tons) and Flying Fish (96 tons).
Route of the expedition
Leaving Hampton Roads on August 18, 1838, the expedition stopped at the Madeira Islands and Rio de Janeiro; visited Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Peru, the Tuamotu Archipelago, Samoa, and New South Wales; from Sydney sailed into the Antarctic Ocean in December 1839 and reported the discovery "of an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny Islands"; visited Fiji and the Hawaiian Islands in 1840, explored the west coast of the United States, including the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound, the Columbia River, San Francisco Bay, the Siskiyou Trail, the Sacramento River, and Wake Island, in 1841, and returned by way of the Philippines, the Sulu Archipelago, Borneo, Singapore, Polynesia and the Cape of Good Hope, reaching New York on June 10, 1842.
Wilkes was court-martialled on his return, but was acquitted on all charges except that of illegally punishing men in his squadron.
The publication program
For a short time Wilkes was attached to the Coast Survey, but from 1844 to 1861 he was chiefly engaged in preparing the report of the expedition. Twenty-eight volumes were planned but only nineteen were published. Of these Wilkes wrote the Narrative (1845) and the volumes Hydrography and Meteorology (1851). The Narrative contains much interesting material concerning the manners and customs and political and economic conditions in many places then little known. Other valuable contributions were the three reports of James Dwight Dana on Zoophytes (1846), Geology (1849) and Crustacea (1852-1854).
In addition to many shorter articles and reports, Wilkes published the major scientific works Western America, including California and Oregon (1849) and Theory of the Winds (1856).
Significance of the expedition
The Wilkes Expedition played a major role in development of 19th-century science, particularly in the growth of the U.S. scientific establishment. Many of the species and other items found by the expedition helped formed the basis of collections at the new Smithsonian Institution.
External links
- The United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 - from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Collections
- Material from the Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
