The Private Journal of William Reynolds

Midshipman William Reynolds records the United States Exploring Expedition’s four-year, 87,000-mile circuit of the globe. Serving aboard vessels commanded by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, he describes storms, difficult surveys, Antarctic ice, Pacific islands, naval discipline and the physical beauty of places that many Americans had never seen described in such detail. His immediate observations give the expedition a personal scale that official reports and later histories cannot reproduce.

The journal also documents the deterioration of relations between Wilkes and his officers. Reynolds admires the expedition’s purpose but becomes increasingly critical of a commander whose punishments and suspicion erode the crew’s confidence. Edited with an introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick, the volume is both a primary source for Sea of Glory and an independent narrative of exploration, wonder, fear and contested authority aboard America’s first major ocean-going scientific expedition.