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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
From “Head's” in New York, on August 23, 1844, James Fenimore Cooper wrote Mrs. Cooper: “Charles Wilkes is in this house superintending the publication of his work. It will be a very magnificent book, and I make no doubt will do him credit.” This book is the handsome and profusely illustrated Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838-1842, a record prepared by Lieutenant Wilkes, commander of the expedition sent out by the United States Navy. In the preface to The Sea Lions (1849) and several times in the novel itself Cooper refers to Wilkes, but the extent of his indebtedness to the Narrative seems not to have been pointed out.
1 Correspondence of Cooper, edited by his grandson, James Fenimore Cooper (New Haven, 1922), ii, 525-526.
2 First published in Philadelphia in 5 vols, in 1844. According to the Library of Congress Catalogue, the several later editions differ chiefly in the quality of paper and plates. All references are to the Philadelphia edition of 1849, in 5 vols. This Charles Wilkes is not to be confused with Cooper's banker friend of the same name.
3 Although Cooper, in this preface, refers by name to six explorers besides Wilkes, only one of them, Captain Sir James Clark Ross, was really an explorer in the antarctic. His 2-vol. Voyage of Discovery … in the … Antarctic Regions (London, 1847) had no discernible influence on The Sea Lions, though Cooper probably read it. Sabine was merely the officer in charge of magnetic observations under Ross. Parry's work was in the arctic, rather than the antarctic, as was also that of Sir John Franklin, who (as Cooper was writing) was the object of a search in the arctic regions. Ringgold and Hudson were officers under Wilkes; their reports are embodied in his Narrative.
4 References are to the Townsend Edition of The Sea Lions (New York, 1860). For a consideration of the secondary search in the novel, for pirate gold, see W. H. Bonner, “Cooper and Captain Kidd”, MLN, lxi (1946), 21-2-7.
6 “Soon after his return in 1842 he [Wilkes] was tried by a Court Martial and sentenced to be publicly reprimanded for illegally punishing some of his men” (DAB). But Wilkes was promoted in 1843 and subsequent years. For a just tribute to Wilkes as the discoverer of the Antarctic Continent, see Russell Owen, The Antarctic Ocean (New York, 1941).