Voyage to the Southern Ocean: The Letters of William Reynolds from the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988. Edited by Anne Hoffman Cleaver and E. Jeffrey Stann. With an Introduction and Epilogue by Herman J. Viola. These letters home to Pennsylvania from an exuberant young participant in the nation’s and the U.S. Navy’s first major exploring enterprise chronicle a historic 19th century voyage of discovery. The crew’s successful attempt to reach farther south than any other explorers and prove the existence of the Antarctic continent is presented in frank detail. The book includes some twenty letters Reynolds wrote to his sister and mother – from the time the expedition’s six ships set sail from Norfolk on August 18, 1838, until their return nearly four years later after circumnavigating the world. Reynolds’s describes the explorers’ activities surveying Pacific islands, while coping with hostile natives and scarce food supplies, the near loss of the ship Peacock in the Antarctic, and the tragic story of the murder of two young naval officers by Fiji natives. His appreciation of the wondrous new sights he encounters is contagious and his stories of the crew’s efforts to map some 800 miles of Oregon coastline are enlightening. Of special interest to naval historians is Reynolds’s depiction of the expedition’s controversial commander, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, and the gradual deterioration of his relationship with his crew. Clean, square, crisp, as new in dust wrapper and protective mylar.
Hardcover. 8vo, green cloth, map endpapers, xxxix, 325pp, frontis. portrait, 5 maps in text, 22 additional illustrations, epilogue, appendices, abbreviations, bibliography, index. Item #900788
ISBN: 0870213008
Price: $20.00