William Reynolds - The Private Journal of William Reynolds: United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842

Table of Contents

THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF WILLIAM REYNOLDS

Grandson of Scotch-Irish immigrants, WILLIAM REYNOLDS was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1815, the second of thirteen children. After receiving the equivalent of a high school education at a local private academy, he obtained an appointment as a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1831. For the next five years he served his naval apprenticeship on board a succession of vessels that carried him to Africa, South America, Sumatra, and the Mediterranean. In 1836 he returned to the United States to take the examination that qualified him for appointment as a lieutenant. In the absence of any vacancies in that rank, he was warranted as a passed midshipman and assigned to the Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington. There, in early 1838, he met Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, the newly appointed commander of the United States Exploring Expedition. Full of admiration for Wilkes and eager for adventure, Reynolds joined the expedition, which for the next four years was to range across the Pacific, from Tahiti to the Antarctic, from Australia to the American Northwest coast. That long voyage, with all its delights and terrors, furnished the material for the running chronicle which makes up the Private Journal. When Reynolds at last returned to the United States, worn and embittered, he joined the other junior officers of the expedition in the vain hope that the now-hated Wilkes would be punished by court-martial for his abusive treatment of his subordinates. Although Wilkes survived his trial relatively unscathed, Reynolds had other satisfactions: he had received his lieutenants commission and was able to marry and look forward to a secure and honorable career in the navy. In 1851, however, he was forced by poor health to secure a prolonged leave of absence, but with the outbreak of the Civil War, he insisted on returning to the navy. Recovering his strength by an apparent act of will, he not only served throughout the war but remained on active duty in the ensuing years, rising through the ranks to rear admiral in 1873. In 1879, after suffering two years of illness, he died.

NATHANIEL PHILBRICK is the author of the New York Times bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, which won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the national bestseller Sea of Glory. He is founding director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a leading authority on the history of Nantucket, where he lives with his wife and two children.

THOMAS PHILBRICK is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a lifelong small boat sailor. He is the author of James Fenimore Cooper and the Development of American Sea Fiction and the study St. John de Crvecoeur. He has edited five of Coopers novels and travel books for the Cooper Edition, as well as Danas Two Years Before the Mast for Penguin Classics.

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,
Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia), Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,
Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue
Rosebank, Johannesberg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Penguin Books 2004

Introduction and notes copyright Nathaniel Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick, 2004

All rights reserved

The journals of William Reynolds are published by arrangement with Franklin and Marshall College.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Reynolds, William, 1815-1879.
The private journal of William Reynolds : United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 / edited with
an introduction and notes by Nathaniel Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN : 978-1-440-64935-6

1. Reynolds, William, 1815-1879Diaries. 2. SailorsUnited StatesDiaries. 3. ExplorersUnited
StatesDiaries. 4. United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842) 5. Wilkes, Charles, 1798-1877
6. Seafaring life. 7. Voyages around the world. 8. Scientific expeditionsHistory19th century
9. Ethnological expeditionsHistory19th century. I. Philbrick, Nathaniel II. Philbrick, Thomas.
III. United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842) IV. Title.
Q115 .R35
508.3dc22 2004044725

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means
without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only
authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage elecronic piracy
of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

Introduction

Passed Midshipman William Reynolds was just twenty-two years old when the six vessels of the U.S. Exploring Expedition set sail from Hampton Roads, embarking on Americas first oceangoing voyage of discovery. The second oldest of eight surviving children, Reynolds had long made a habit of keeping a journal of his experiences for his parents and siblings back in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This meant that when the commander of the expedition, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, ordered the squadrons officers to begin keeping detailed journals that were to be turned over to him at the completion of the voyage, Reynolds was already three pages into his own, very personal account of the expedition. I cannot think of letting this go before any ones eyes but those few at home, he wrote. Instead, on September 13, 1838, almost a month into the voyage, he began keeping a second, official log of the cruise.

It would prove to be a momentous decision. While his official journal would grow to nearly 86,000 words and provide a workmanlike account of the expedition, Reynoldss personal journal would ultimately take up three notebooks and comprise some 250,000 words. Of the dozens of journals that have survived from the U.S. Exploring Expedition (known as the Ex. Ex. for short), only Reynoldss personal journal begins to tell the full, uncensored story of how a group of young and idealistic officers gradually lost faith in the leader who they had once dared to believe was, in Reynoldss words, every thing pure and honorable.

But Reynoldss journal is much more than a story of disillusionment and frustration. In spite of being what we would call today a bad boss, Wilkes managed to lead the U.S. Ex. Ex. to some extraordinary accomplishmentscovering more than eighty-seven thousand miles in what turned into a four-year circuit of the globe. Over the course of the voyage, Reynolds would come of age amid the bleak, wave-lashed rocks of Cape Horn, the beckoning paradises of the South Pacific, the gigantic icebergs of Antarctica, and the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest. By the time he returned to the United States in the summer of 1842, Reynolds had developed into a writer of remarkable power and range, and his journal contains some of the best descriptions of the sea to come from a nineteenth-century American pen.