On August 18, 1838, Charles Wilkes, commanding the USS Vincennes along with other ships and over 300 crewmen, departed Virginia and began their journey to explore the Pacific. The expedition took nearly four years to complete. The departure of the United States South Sea Surveying and Exploring Expedition from Hampton Roads was a bold leap that announced the global scientific ambitions of the young American republic.
Commissioned by Congress to chart the hazardous waters of the Pacific Ocean and verify the existence of landmasses in the extreme southern hemisphere, the massive fleet carried an elite corps of civilian scientists, botanists, and artists. Wilkes managed the expedition with an iron-fisted, highly controversial naval discipline, navigating his wooden hulls through uncharted coral reefs, hostile encounters with island tribes, and treacherous fields of Antarctic ice.
The scientific yield of the four-year voyage was staggering, resulting in the mapping of hundreds of islands and the collection of thousands of biological specimens that laid the structural foundation for the newborn Smithsonian Institution. Most significantly, Wilkes’s surveys along the frozen southern ice shelves provided the first definitive geographic proof that Antarctica was a distinct continent rather than a mere accumulation of pack ice. The historic journey successfully placed American maritime science on equal footing with the older empires of Europe.
Image: Portrait of Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes, officer of the Federal Navy about 20 years after his expedition to the Pacific at the time of the American Civil War via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
