Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 222 - The Wilkes Expedition

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Once upon a time the US Navy went on a scientific expedition based upon the theory of a hollow earth. They murdered swaths of innocent people and the commander went insane, beating and kidnapping most of his own crew. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: https://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/usexex/ https://archive.org/details/seaofgloryameric00phil https://www.chimuadventures.com/blog/2016/08/charles-wilkes/

🎵 Hello and welcome to the Lions of Baduckies podcast. It's us, Liam and Joe. I'm Joe, he's Liam. Yay, top billing! Top billing! The coup is complete, I'm Joe. He's Liam. Yay, top billing. Top billing. The coup is complete. I'm officially the co-host.

Sorry about it. It's all right. It's been a good four years. You know, I had a solid term. I was going to run for re-election. Oh, that's a shame. Unfortunately, Shox is standing by to depose him. Unfortunately, due to the scandal of it being

a gun being held to my back i will retire to an unnamed island only to return in like five years when the donkey color revolution comes triumphantly um somehow i i probably own casabian now casabian tomorrow casabian always oh god it sounds grim yeah That sounds grim. Yeah, yeah. I know. I know, bud. But, you know, this whole thing is kind of grim. So what are we going to do? You know what I mean? You know, Liam, speaking of grim, how do you feel about adventurers?

I'm going to tell you, as someone who has done a fair bit of adventuring in my life, which basically means I get really hammered and then i sober up and i'm like let's drive somewhere dumb that's that's pretty much the same thing at lewis and clark yeah i i just i don't want to do spoilers but i don't usually end up at disappointment bay antarctica oh boy if that is a that is a hell of a name i will say that yeah uh and uh i think there's a i think there's a disappointment being the pacific northwest if i if i remember correctly too um or something similarly named and to be fair if you sailed across the world to discover antarctica and it was like yep that's a lot of ice you'd probably be disappointed oh boy seals

in arctica and it was like yep that's a lot of ice you'd probably be disappointed oh boy seals millions we did it boys we found cold we we are soon we will meet with the seals and in time their women will fall in love with ours and we'll be ready to go oh no uh somehow that's worse than clubbing them don't do seal fucking is my advice hot podcast take do not fuck the seals don't fuck the seals now liam what if i told you once upon a time america launched a military expedition to discover what if the world was hollow only for it to be canceled and then re-greenlit because of political favors and also to explore the concept of the flat earth only for it to dissolve into the ravings of an abusive paranoid man man who refused to allow his crew to go home kind of out of hospital words actually layers to this there's layers to this one yeah i'm gonna need some sort of flow chart here uh it's gonna

require you to i don't i don't know huff a lot of mercury or something to get you in the level all right let's do it let's do it i'm mad as a hatter to get you in the level. I'm way ahead of you. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. I'm mad as a hatter. Let's go. To get on the level of like half the people involved here, you have to remember that they are riddled with parasites and mercury. We've all been huffing glue.

And they're off that piss whiskey. Yeah. They're gone off that piss whiskey. They've graduated to just piss. Uh, they've weaned themselves off the whiskey. Hmm. Fermented.

It's like methadone. Um, now first we, all right. Admittedly, this one is very weird. Um, and it requires a bit of backstory to get going.

So bear with me. So just one second. I, uh, so I have the Wikipedia article up as I always do because joe never sends me scripts i refuse this is called this is called the united states exploring expedition yes and it is euphemistically referred to as the usxx which sounds like an extreme name it twice it's like the goo goo dolls uh well i feel like if you have to specify that you're exploring on your next expedition

we're gonna get into some like weird shit like nazi hollow moon iron iron sky i counter with the fact that if you named your band the goo dolls it sounds disgusting goo goo dolls yeah but if you if you just called it the goo dolls it it makes it so much worse. Coming soon to LionsLipByDonkeysStore.com, the Goo Doll featuring Joe's face and my body. You can do whatever you want to it. Just don't tell us about it. You know what? Get the Patreon up.

We'll see what I can do. I am sorry to inform you, the Goo Doll is canceled. The Goo Doll is now banned by American import importation laws and i don't know why yeah thank god um it's full of asbestos uh i cut a lot of corners on it we shot we we really packed it full of asbestos to talk about the us xx we have to jump back in time to the uh a little bit after the american revolution to an age where american merchants for tradesmen dudes who sold various kinds of weird pelts whatever were passing through

the atlantic and john astor you son of a bitch the pacific oceans like swarms of locusts doing their best to kill off animals for that sweet succulent skin now it was the 1820s times are good uh your body is riddled with parasites. Your teeth have fallen out only to replace with slave teeth. And a guy wrote a paper championing the concept of a hollow earth. Also, you are probably fucking your sister. Cousin, probably. But yeah.

Joe, this is a safe. No. If you're nobility, sister, probably. Oh, you're fucking your sister. Cousin, very normal. Not first cousins. That was weird even for them. Oh, you're fucking your sister. Cousin, very normal. Not first cousins. That was weird even for them. Yeah, and some SEALs.

And some SEALs. We told you not to fuck the SEALs, Liam. We were actually very explicit about that. We're ahead of the curve. We really are. This Hollow Earth shit was written by John Cleves Sims Jr., who was not a scientist. He was a war veteran of the War of 1812,

a former army officer, and notably a crazy person in 1818 uh can't stress enough though uh by other veterans books just not this guy honestly his book probably pretty well he didn't write a book he read a single paper uh and by paper i mean a single page paper he was not a deep thinker. Are you telling me we funded this shit just based on like a, hey, guys, what if shit post, basically? Kind of. I mean, it's a crazy snowball flying downhill at a rapid speed. Joe, we have to get federal funding. Ugh.

Yeah, I'm going to cash the NED checks to explore the hollow earth. Yeah, take me with you, man. To be fair fair research papers back then were not what they are today like i remember seeing someone point out that like a phd dissertation from like even the early 1900s is only like 10 pages now it's like a book so times have changed my mom's is not that long her phd dissertation yeah yeah now there are hundreds of that was that was 92 93 that was 30 years ago now i'm jealous i have to write 60 pages just for my master's so in 1818 john cleaves sims

jr wrote a single page proclamation stating quote i declare the earth is hollow and habitable within containing a number of solid concentric spheres one within the other and that is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees i pledge my life in support of this truth and i am ready to explore the hollow if the world will support and aid me in this undertaking yeah he was not a scientist uh he didn't have any explorations under his belt he was just a guy at the paper just a guy um he did from what i can tell do a research here um and i need to point out i feel like it's better if you if you don't right like if you're just like fuck it i want some i want i want that federal uh slush money you're just like yeah give it to me like more details is worse right because then they

can poke holes with it fair enough and i mean this isn't much different from the people who were like drinking your piss will cure covid like yeah you researched that did you uh give me 50 million us dollars just throwing enough shit to the wall to see what sticks and not to mention he was a war of 1812 veteran he maybe maybe he had a you know a close call the cannonball and he's i don't know not all their slow term lead poison watching his friend's face get atomized by chain shot changed him and i know we often joke about how dumb people were in the past this was not mainstream in any functional way i need to i need to point this was crazy for

the 1800s people were like now when i say, I mean like actually educated people, which wasn't that many, were like, what in the fuck is this guy talking about? Now, he had done absolutely zero research in attempting to prove this theory because, folks, that's what we call science. Now, this wasn't a popular theory, nor was it really ever. popular theory, nor was it really ever. It had been popular within folklore, legends, and things of that nature going back to virtually as early as humans began carving shit onto walls. Every society has their own flavor of this hollow earth mythology in some way, from the Greeks to various native tribes, to Indians, to Armenians, to far-flung islands, thousands of miles away from everybody else. At some point, we all kind of centralized on the idea like, hey, bro, what if

the dirt under us was hollow? They're like, bro. And that's as far as it goes. It works its way into folklore. It's not science. However, when it comes to scientific belief within a Christian context like we're talking about, devoid of mythology in the 1800s? No, absolutely not. However, it's entertaining as fuck. Oh, yeah. None of this stopped Sims from going on what is effectively a roadshow. He did a live podcast tour where he stood on a box and lectured people to huge crowds of this idea now this was generally just lay people who had no idea about any of this shit

and they're like wow that's really cool and he was entertaining he was he was very good showman and life so he's like a salesman yeah life is boring as fuck back then. What else are you going to do? I actually do have a question, though. What? Is he just trying to get government funding, or is he trying to sort of crowdsource this, some mixture of both? A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B, but Sims isn't the one that actually gets this funded.

Sims is the gene seed of this expedition. Oh, got it. Okay. Because he eventually does meet the guy who has the right touch to get this funded. And that is a guy named Jeremiah Reynolds. Um, Reynolds was a journalist who dropped literally his entire life and job to go

on tour with Sims in this hollow worth journey. Uh, he also really wanted to be a Naval officer. Um, but that will come up later. Uh, the two eventually had a falling out and it's we're not entirely sure why though it seems to be that sims believed this

concept of life-swapping oh sims wanted to colonize the inside of the planet like he thought that it was 100 a human habit habitat that needed to be uh colonized while Reynolds is like, well, we should probably explore it first. And I'm not saying that Reynolds is more sane. He's certainly more practical. And this idea that like of colonization or exploration and he and Reynolds wasn't only about this hollow earth thing. He believed in exploration in general. He wanted to go to the area where he believed that there would be portals to the

center of the earth, but he also wanted to explore the cultures and language and customs of everybody along the way, mostly in the Pacific. Also, all wrapped up into the concept of his exploration idea, which was we need to go to the South Pacific so we could find this entrance.

And that was like a moderation, right? Reynolds continued on his own speaking tour where he did talk about the concept of a hollow earth, but he tempered the insanity of Sims somewhat with very practical ideas of exploration, which, of course, if you're an American in the 1800s, or really any white person in the 1800s, or any white person in the history of ever, exploration means we're going to take the sofa. Give us your spices. Yes. And nothing else besides that.

Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Please ignore the genocide. Reynolds believed a lot of that stuff. He was mostly a layman, a gentleman scientist would be like the term. Yeah, this dude just sounds like a kind of like fun, goofy lunatic. Yeah, exactly. And this is how a very, I don't know, I don't want to call him normal, but a very benign kind of guy gets co-opted into the outright uh uh insanity because he didn't have

the nationalism tilt of taking shit over or turning pacific islands into coal deposits which is super common for fleets of the day is like pull up on you know samoa or whatever like hey what's up we're gonna dump a fuckload of coal here for our ships and if you say anything we're gonna clap you um which was you know one of the things i believe it was in alfred thayer mahan's book uh that was really popular turning an empire into various different outposts for the navy right he didn't really believe in that because he wasn't in government he was just a weirdo with a hollow worth idea he's just a weirdo he's just a weirdo for sure and that is when president john quincy adams started paying

attention oh come on man now it turned out that little bit of moderation to make it seem normal was all it really needed and according to the smithsonian adams wrote about reynolds in his diary in 1826 saying quote we got to do a quincy adams episode at some point that dude's a fascinating he's a weird guy adams said quote His lectures are said to have been well attended and much approved as expositions in this genius of science. But the theory itself has been much ridiculed. And in his truth, very visionary. And that now Reynolds is now varied in purpose and his proposition in fitting up a voyage of circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean. When people see this, they believe that John Quincy Adams is a hollow earther. Because he says the southern ocean when people see this they believe that john

quincy adams is a hollow earther because he says the word visionary and i looked it up visionary meant something much different back then it meant that he was fucking nuts it meant that he was unwell or unsteady and having visions however oh boy no no no however adams notes that you know the idea of exploration and circumnavigation of the southern ocean is a very very good idea for science and the concept of american expansionism as well as you know exploration etc etc there's no way this is funded in congress is something that he points out right he was wrong until now the reason why is not because of john quincy adams but because reynolds was good at something that sims was not and that is marketing because while reynolds was doing his his speaking

tours he urged people that came to his lectures to bother the shit out of representatives. That was my question. In a letter writing campaign to get funding and approval for his ideas. And, you know, his concept of the hollow earth was pretty well known. And that was kind of shaved away because, you know, when the House of Representatives gets effectively a green light from their constituents to set fire to a ton of money to expand America, possibly. They're like, okay. Sure. Great. Now, in 1828, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution requesting President John Quincy Adams send a single vessel on this proposed expedition.

Adams ordered the U.S. Navy to prepare a 500-ton sloop of war named the USS Peacock. We weren't very good at naming ships back then. Real intimidating, boys. Careful, it's going to dance at you. While the house was... Real nasty like, though. It's a twerking warship.

And the house was authorizing funding for the expedition to start in December 1828. And by all accounts, it looked like this was going to be passed. And then Adams lost re-election in 1828. He lost to noted fucking madman, Andrew Jackson. Oh, yeah. Now, we're not going to go too hard on Andrew Jackson in this particular episode. I feel like he earns his own series at a later date. But Jackson was a lot of fucking things. None of them good, but one of them was a cheap bastard.

And after winning his election, his allies in Congress shit can the Reynolds plan for expedition for this, uh, for being a massive waste of money on top of like, he fucking hated Adams. So it wasn't like Jack Jackson's green light, something that Adams proposed. It was like, no, fuck him. Um,

cause he had lost in 1824, uh, the corrupt bargain. Jackson hated most people. Honestly, like it seemed that he hated every single person that he worked with in government. Oh, yeah. That's the one thing Andrew Jackson was right about, right?

Like, you know. Yeah. If I were in government, I'd hate everybody I worked with, too. Yeah, if you were the president and you looked at Congress and you said, all of you are fucking monsters, like, you would be right. However, you probably wouldn't hate them for the reason that Jackson did, which is always a bad reason yeah you pettiness he was the pettiest motherfucker that's ever lived i don't i honestly i think ulessi's s grant was almost as petty as him as president i don't know man i'm i'm pretty petty but like who i think you might be right though i will give i mean jackson only only was petty for

one term while grant had two so vote is your shot joe yeah he didn't have to pack so many into such a short amount of time but yeah jackson shit can the reynolds plan and then politics happened and as politics that jackson enjoys which is violence shooting yes yeah dueling probably in 1831 the american merchant ship the friendship under the command of charles endicott landed what a stupid name it's a bit of a spoiler here not a lot of friendship happening on this boat uh because charles endicott's boat crash landed on sumatra in a particular area under the command of a chief named Kalawa Batu. Now, this chief and the United States had a relationship when it came to

trading, and this is a routine run to trade pepper. Now, when Endicott went to shore in a small boat, for some reason, a different chief raided his boat, killed several of his men and stole cargo. There's no evidence that Batu had any idea this is going to happen and

this is just the u.s does fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics of of tribal leadership and when batu's like i can't fucking tell that guy what to do they're like ah you're a two-faced swindler sir uh so it was probably just a case of good old-fashioned piracy and the low and and racism yeah well when it when it comes to what the u.s does next sure yeah that's what i was saying yeah yeah it was just a case of falling into local politics chief is out here just saying haha white man can't jump if you're going to do a trade with the united states why would you invite them to shore and then trade pepper with them and then like you know what's to happen if you attack this fucking ship.

Yes, you're going to get caught. A whole bunch of angry white people with cannons are going to show up. Anyway, that happened. A lot of sailors were killed, and Endicott eventually was scoppered away by friendly tribes and other European powers and got back to the U.S. powers and got back to the US. However, when word of this incident got to the US, Andrew Jackson dealt with the problem literally the only way he ever knew how to deal with any problem, by ordering it to be killed. He sent the USS Potomac to blow the chiefdom up, which was exactly what they did. Potomac wheeled up outside the coast, indiscriminately bombed Sumatra, and then sent a whole bunch of Marines ashore. The whole village

was burnt to the ground. Marines looted everything that wasn't burnt. And they seemed to shoot men, women, and children quite freely. In the end, about 450 people were murdered. Now, there was no attempt to make peace with this chief or explain, hey, we're displeased with what happened. Explain yourself. Like diplomacy, perhaps. They just rolled up and just murdered people. And this was not a popular thing. This was considered beyond the pale for a lot of people. I mean, good, but that's kind of shocking to me.

Like I shouldn't be surprised. You know what I mean? I'll say it was probably quite popular amongst uh normal late late type americans however in government it was unpopular oh okay because okay diplomatically it's a fuck up uh and not for and i should point out that the slaughter of non-white people is now what people were mad at um sumatra was all but officially a dutch possession it would have been dutch yeah um and it was well within their sphere of influence so it was considered a bit of a diplomatic faux pas to roll up on someone's colony and bomb it uh i will say to that uh usa usa suck it back to back

world war champs well that hadn't happened yet liam but yeah i know that that was effectively jackson's argument um like fuck the dutch we'll do what we want which which hey hey hey you know he was wrong about many things andrew jackson was under no circumstances got a hand to andrew jackson but yeah fuck and i'm not saying that kneeling to dutch colonial power over sumatra is a good idea either point out that i lost 500 us dollars on the 2010 world cup it's your fault so uh fuck them it's your fault for betting on the orange shut up i was the orange right hey let's move swift yeah they're they lost it fucking was it spain they lost diplomatically uh it was considered a bit of a problem uh which meant within you know the foreign policy circles of dc people like yo what are you doing andrew josh is just firing flitlock pistols into the air screaming yeehaw fuck the dutch pretty much i mean like i said i'm not saying that consulting

with the dutch so the dutch would have bombed them is better because that's like the uh opposition opinion is let them deal with punishments um like just don't do that don't don't bomb colony don't have colonies actually anyway don't have colonies really is what we're saying but also it's it's never a bad time to fuck over the Dutch. At this point, I'm honestly curious. $500, Joe. Is there a country in Europe you donate? France. You know that.

Love the French. Oh, God. You like Napoleon. We're not so different, you and I. Hey, my grandpa lived in France and got exiled from there. I'm not a fan of France. Yeah, people I'm related and got exiled from there all right i'm not a fan of france yeah people i've related to got exiled too i still like in france's defense i'd exile him too he's an asshole uh however is there anyone in your family who isn't in your mom my mom's side

is pretty good yeah my dad's side 100 trash yeah we like your mom all right dead side all trash all the way down foundationally garbage people on my dead side yeah all right plus one vote for joe's mom joe's mom stands all around especially the people i played xbox live with uh back in the day she seemed to be very popular um now there was one very loud unapologetic supporter for jack Jackson's punitive expedition to Sumatra. Oh, it's gotta be somewhat racist. Jeremiah Reynolds. Remember he, like he was a practical and to be fair, he almost certainly would support bombing any Brown people.

It doesn't matter. He was also on board the Potomac as a civilian. He had worked his way in with other government connections onto getting aboard the ship because he also wanted to be a naval officer he was sweetening the deal here um now jackson pointed to reynolds writing and be like see this is fine it's popular everything's fine and again fuck the dutch like this there's's those also effectively Reynolds opinion. Um, and that wasn't enough. Uh, something else happened.

Maritime interests, which were one of the many interests that Jackson truly hated, um, began to petition Congress to deal with the Fiji islands, uh, after an American whaling ship named the Charles Daggett crashed there and reportedly had its entire crew eaten. Uh,

yeah, to me, that's about specifically by a chief name of vidovi uh it's spelled multiple different ways now normally when you see stuff like this it's a bit of historical racism like ah yes the cannibalistic people of such and such place and that cannibalism tends to be more of an editorial flourish and historical fact however in this case those dudes got eaten um and the oh okay oh for real like they were harvested for sustenance yes okay now the evidence for this is that cannibalism was very common in Fiji during this time. And it was not only something that occurred. It was fucking expected if white people showed up. There was a reason why these islands were known as literally the cannibal islands at the time.

This is for a lot of different reasons namely for spiritual and ritual purposes they didn't treat people like livestock or anything but it's not mostly just the fact that it's inhabited by cannibals which is fine whatever man they ate people they considered their enemies and they considered people who floated in uninvited their fucking enemies

so you know yeah if a whaling ship crashes there you might get some fucking bacon cut off your back no I get it i get it i get it i get it this continued all the way until the late 1800s excuse a lot of immoral behavior i mean it was moral for them who who am i to judge them as unmoral yeah oh don't yeah no you're right i mean i'll buy it every time they ate a guy it was well they ate men women and children they didn't really seem to discriminate you gotta not eat the don't eat kids it's like it's human veal all right if you're eating people why draw a line why draw a line you're already

eating people don't yeah i know but like okay uh we found something on this show that i can't approve of morally apparently that's eating people i'm not saying i'd eat a guy but like no i would eat a guy i mean well you know if i have to survive i might eat a guy i don't fucking know oh yeah no uh if i'm like if i'm in the andes and you're dead all bets are fucking off but yeah i don't mind i'm dead why the fuck do i get dead already all butts are off all bets are off i'm eating you if i'm dead i legitimately don't care what anybody does to my body load me into a cave and fire me across the parade eat me i don't care yeah no hard save just make sure i'm dead first don't wait until i'm like in a deep sleep kind of sick like all right you're like yo still alive over here as you're gnawing on my calf or whatever oh yeah we're no i wouldn't eat you if you were still alive dude i'd give you

that thing today yeah it's not like uh that that episode about japanese military cannibalism we talked to we're talked about where they were still keeping the guys live so it's fresh uh i uh hey joe you ever heard my joke about the donner party i i don't think i have donner party of four oh no thanks we We already ate. Boo. Well done. Thank you. It's very off topic, but one of the things I thought of whenever I heard Donner Party, I was like, well, they're already named after kebabs.

Just go for it. Just shaving a guy's leg off the... You didn't want to be eaten. Don't have a name that's after a succulent meal. Going to Fogo to chow and then presenting you with some guy's shit bone medium rare. Oh, I never would have been eaten if my last name wasn't flank steak. But, you know, the Fiji Islands.

That's why I changed my last name to Toxoplasmosis. That's why my original last name is Prion. toxoplasmosis that's why my my original last name is prion um now the fiji islands at the time were not exactly welcoming as you can imagine they they weren't doing trade with people it was a fuck off energy um as you know obviously they didn't want people to hang out there called the goddamn cannibal islands yeah it's it's like the, I hate Carlos Mencia, but he has a joke like, no shit. You got hit with a tornado. You live in tornado alley.

Like, yeah, like it's called tornado alley. I'm sure he stole that joke from someone else. Cause that's what he does. But like, if you crash on cannibal Island, don't be too shocked.

And someone starts fucking not on your hand. What is surprising to you? Some guy shows up and cracks your fucking ribcage open like a crab leg. Like, yep, should have saw this coming. But yeah, at this point, it was mostly due to uncharted reefs. Like five American boats had crashed in there. A fair amount of people had been eaten. So they were like, hey, Mr. President, can you do something about this?

It's becoming a thing. It's getting out of hand. Yeah. So, of course, Jackson got the idea where it's like, okay, well, we could chart these reefs that were not on any map. And also bomb these shit of the Fijians for eating Americans, which, you know, maybe just don't go there. Whatever. However, Jackson was still kind of against it,

mostly because of the cost. And this led... Oh, that dude hated spending money. Yeah, I mean, he didn't... Even when it came to killing people, he pinched pennies, which is kind of impressive for him. This led Reynolds to lobby his friend and representative Samuel Southford, or Southard of New Jersey, who is the head of the Naval Affairs Committee. He was the head of the Naval Affairs Committee.

And he spoke on the issue citing reynolds exploration concept and uh in 1836 reynolds addressed the house of representatives about why this was so important remember this all started with the concept of the hollow earth really big glow up here to like ranting like a madman on the street corner to addressing the House of Representatives. I mean, that's effectively what Marjorie Taylor Greene did, so, you know, same energy. I'm not going to say any actionable threats. I'm not going to say any actionable threats. He mostly,

of course, stuck to his guns about this being exploration-based, not like, oh, if we go to this particular part of the South Pacific, we'll find the Hollow Earth portal. And he talked about the scientific importance of charting reefs, but also studying nature, language,

and culture in these areas. And he, his crew would involve Naval officers, but as well as huge amounts of, of civilian experts. Oh, and also a blow up Fiji. You know that we'll do that on the way back.

Yeah, we, we, we will blow up Fiji. Jackson didn't that on the way back. We will blow up Fiji. Jackson didn't give a single fuck about any of the science shit. However, Reynolds, who had supported him in the past, was now also saying we'll blow up brown people for the government. So he was interested. There's also a very pervasive rumor that Jackson was a flat earther and he wanted to use this expedition to prove it.

As much as I want this to be true about this desk now, as much as I want this to be true, because how incredibly funny that would be. This is mostly sourced from a single book back in 1963, who cites it to all the way back in the 1800s, which was written once upon a time by a Jackson political opponent who mostly just wanted him to sound stupid. He also said other things like

Jackson didn't even know how to spell Europe, which isn't true. You can read his letters. There's no truth behind it. Although it's weird because every time he did spell Europe, he spat on the page. Much like Liam whenever he speaks of any country in Europe not named

for him. I hate the goddamn Dutch. The Flat Earth Theory was virtually non-existent in this time of any country in Europe not named I hate the goddamn Dutch. And the flat earth theory was virtually non-existent in this time and age. What we know today as the flat earther conspiracy theory or whatever is a modern invention. Mostly from the mid

1950s, but even newer than that as conspiracy thought has rapidly taken over people's brains. If you go far enough back back the first thing that you can really find is from what you would consider the modern western conception of the flat earth 1849 but that's mostly not cited um it's it's a new invention because people are gradually becoming dumber from the internet. I'm not fighting you on that.

Anyway, Jackson sold this as a nationalist expedition to claim more lands for the United States, and he picked his old war buddy, Thomas Apt Capsby Jones, to command it. Because names were a little bit cooler back then. A little bit now this ran smack dab into a problem named the secretary of the navy malon dickerson um who was even cheaper than jackson to the point that he believed that even building a naval academy was too expensive and pointless um which i'm not gonna argue there somewhat hilariously this opposition that dickerson seemed to have to anything to do with the navy might have to do with the fact that he didn't even want this job. He had moved to DC under the impression that just showed up. Well, he moved to DC

under the impression that Jackson had picked him to be the minister to Russia, which is what he'd been told. But when he showed up, he's like, actually, you're gonna be secretary of the Navy. And he's like, God damn it. So he probably didn't want the job. All right. Jones and Dickerson constantly complained about how much the expedition was going to

cost to the point Jones began to violently coughing up blood. Oh shit. Okay. He blamed it. He was diagnosed with stomach ulcers, which he blamed on having to deal with Dickerson and the stress with having to deal with the asshole. But because of the

ulcers, he couldn't be in command anymore. So the Secretary of War kicked the can down't be in command anymore so the secretary of war kicked the can down the road and command fell to lieutenant charles wilkes a man so pure he effectively quakered himself out of naval command um now wilkes was known for being incredibly straight laced and deeply religious even for the time and he complained about his fellow officers habits of doing shit people in the Navy tend to do namely drinking and sodomy drinking and fucking shit

I knew we were gonna end up he considered it all like deeply ungentlemanly he never drank he never smoked shit like that it's like fucking butts is uh unbecoming of a naval officer.

It was like, go away, nerd. There's nothing else to do. What else do you want from us? And this made him so deeply unpopular with the naval brass. He was thrown on a land based command for 13 years. He mostly spent this time doing shit that is very important to naval work, like learning cartography, mathematics, um, being really good at navigation and stuff like that. But he never actually commanded a ship for over a decade, which I've talked to multiple people in the Navy. That means he's lucky.

Um, like I have never, never be on a ship yeah um okay however because it sucks it's like 1830 i mean being on a ship now is awful being on a ship back that is indescribably miserable you kill yourself yeah um not to mention like people were on ship for years at a time back then uh however dickerson still wanted to sign off on the plan, and it wasn't until the US got another president, Martin Van Buren, in 1837 and a whole other secretary of Navy a year after that that the mission finally got approved. The mission was given a three-year window to be completed, and this is mostly because the crews only had a three-year enlistment. There's like 500 people involved in this,

a lot of them Marines, some sailors. All of them only had three years left onyear enlistment on these. There's like 500 people involved in this. A lot of them Marines, some sailors. All of them only had three years left on their enlistment for the most part. So the Navy's like, well, you got to be back so they could leave the military. The ships that would become made up of the expedition were the USS Vincennes. No, not the one you're thinking of. The Peacock, the Flying Fish, the Porpoise. Oh, our favorite, the Peacock. And the Seagull.

And they would all be supported by a supply ship named the Relief. A crew that would become the luckiest of them all for reasons that will become quickly aware. Oh, boy. When Wilkes tried to get a promotion to captain for himself and the other lieutenants that were commanding these ships, he was promptly shot down by the Navy.

And his reasoning was legit. Like, well, we're all captains. We should have captaincy because there's other lieutenants on the ship and you need to have superiority. I need to be in charge. I mean, and he had a point. However, the Navy just refused. They decided we can't afford it. Fuck you!

Fuck you, figure it out. The officers were also split into very defined factions between regular naval men, people who had spent their career out at sea, and people like Wilkes who had spent their time on land learning about science and shit.

And the two did not like each other at all. This is mostly because Wilkes was in charge, and he expected his naval-going subordinates to learn how to do science, which is not really something you can do on the fly. which is not really something you can do on the fly. And the naval-going subordinates assumed that their land-based superiors would be able commanders, or at least know how to command a ship. And neither of them were able to hold up the rest of the bargain. Their goal was to sail through South America's southern tip, turn for Australia, make an attempted run towards Antarctica, then head

towards Samoa, Fiji, blow up Fiji in revenge, head towards Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest, down the coast of California, and then circumnavigate the globe back to New York City. Everything's going to be fine. As soon as they got to Brazil, it became clear to everybody that Wilkes

was maybe not the best guy for this job. Yeah. In Rio, he met with Commodore Nicholson who commanded the U.S. squadron that was based out of Brazil. Wilkes assumed he'd be greeted as a captain because

effectively he was, rather than the rank that he actually wore. When Commodore Nicholson treated him like a lieutenant, he had a temper tantrum and passed out. He was in bedridden for three months. He got so bad, he just went to sleep? He got the vapors.

I don't fucking know. I gotta tell you, Joe. I've been pretty pissed off in my life. I don't think I've ever just gone to sleep i got all tuckered out yeah no i i can i can fight man well he should have just been i mean the guy had been the navy for well over a decade at that point he should have known how the rank structure worked like of course this commodore's gonna treat me like a lieutenant i'm wearing lieutenant's rank uh but yeah he was bedridden for three fucking months remember they have a time frame for this entire mission three months is now gone uh with the which stalled the entire mission and by the

time he was ready to go again it was february which was storm season in the area now his experienced naval officers are like oh these, these storms are really going to suck. We should probably skip a few stops to get through the storms. Wilkes refused. So he smashed through several storms, which nearly sank pretty much the entire fleet, got to the tip of Argentina, and he ordered the porpoise and the flying fish to go 500 miles south,

which would have put them smack dab into a field of icebergs. He was warned about this. Like, this is going to be hard. We should probably all go to help navigate this mess. He was ignored. And he said, no, I'm going to go have another temper tantrum. Well, he was good when it came to his support because he would just ignore them.

He told them to go anyway. Both ships nearly sank, and they had to turn around because of terrible weather, his supportants because he would just ignore them. He told them to go anyway. Both ships nearly sank and they had to turn around because of terrible weather, at which point he lost his shit on the commanders for turning around. After that, they went about 1,600 more miles to Valparaiso, Chile, and the seagull sank.

It was just lost. Nobody knows where it went. It was vanished, probably lost and won the storm. She was warned about, killed everybody on board. And of course, any little bit of good faith or whatever belief that the other officers in the fleet had towards Wilkes was immediately gone. Because during a meeting like, hey, we're going to get the shit kicked out of us by a storm. And that happened and it killed an entire crew and they blamed him for it at this point wilkes decided well you know what is truly to blame for

our slow going and then getting punched in the face by storms is this supply ship relief which was slower it was bigger and carrying supplies so it's going to move also trying to help you it's trying to help it's also your lifeline because it's a supply ship so he sent it back home and then anybody who disagreed with any of his commands or people he had bad vibes with or whatever were then stashed onto the relief and sent home with them that seems short-sighted people were like uh this seems like a bad idea you know we're going through routes that are very, very long that we might not be able to get food from. Um,

we should probably keep the supply ship. They were packed onto the relief. I'm going to pass out again. And then to make matters even better, he declared himself Commodore. Oh boy. Oh, this thing,

this included having ranks sewn onto his uniform and flying a Commodore's flag, which he brought with him. So he was going to do this shit the whole time. Yes. Now, somehow things managed to go fine for at least a little bit after this. They passed through the Tahitian Islands without too many problems. And then they made for Pago Pago, Samoa. And luckily for them, Samoans were very, very friendly to outsiders. They had a pretty deep trade connection with missionaries and everything, with white people.

So they're more than happy to trade them fresh water, food, whatever. And they even wanted to help because the harbor is a bitch. When there's swells coming in, it's surrounded by rocks. So it will just smash you directly into the rocks. So the Samoans are like, you guys might want to wait um we've seen this happen a hundred times you're gonna get your shit beat up out there um and then when wilks insisted that they had to leave they're like okay fine follow us we'll teach you how to get through here one of the simone guys who spoke fluent english uh got on wilks's flagship which was the Vincennes, and was yelling at him at what to do to get through the swells and dodge all these rocks.

Under this kind of stress, Wilkes simply froze up, leading to the Samoan guy to take command of the Vincennes, ordering his crew of American sailors of what to do. And it worked. They all made it out of the harbor. Wow. And then Wilkes got very mad at the samoan guy and kicked him off the ship what did i ask he's a bit of a dick now another part of this story is this race to antarctica which wilkes didn't actually know this but um this mission actually would have been completed already uh he's when he sent the flying fish and the porpoise into

iceberg land, they'd actually reached 150 miles of the Antarctic coast. But they didn't know it was there. So they simply turned around with the storm. However, the expedition was around Samoa. Wilkes began to hear that there were French

and British ships that were planning on trying to chart the same part of Antarctica that he was. There was this idea that Antarctica wasn't a continent yet. Like it was only a theory. And a lot of what they were trying to do was prove that it was. Sometimes you see this written as Wilkes discovered Antarctica. And that's absolutely not true. That actually happened about 20 years before, give or take.

But yeah. But he heard that there were other crews doing the same thing. So they made a 3000 mile long trip to Australia where they make preparations for their final push into Antarctica, which required the fleet to split in half. Now there's his second in command who was on the Peacock and was pointing out like, hey, my ship is literally falling apart from all of those storms. We shouldn't go until this is fixed, or at least we should hold the Peacock back. Of course, that was ignored. Now, Wilkes wrote in his diary, after dodging

icebergs and heavy fog on January 16th, 1840, crewmen aboard the Vincennes and other vessels spotted what they believed to be land, and he declared that they had discovered the continent of Antarctica. He's not the first person to discover Antarctica for sure. That was a guy named Fabian von Mellinghausen on a mission from Russia, I think, in 1820. Wilkes was even the first American to find it.

There was already an American who had walked on it. It was a seal hunter named John Davis. He did, however, claim to be the first person to discover it, at least in his diary. And he named a huge chunk after himself, Wilkes Land, which still exists today. Of course it did. Yep. Now, where credit is due, however, he did discover the continental margin of Antarctica, which helps prove the theory that Antarctica is a continent, not a big floating ice cube or whatever. However, ignoring all the warnings from his other officers, everybody almost died.

Antarctica is a hard fucking place to sail through when you're good at your job. Everybody got stuck in ice, battered by storms, and they almost lost the peacock. They've barely escaped, and somehow only a couple of crewmen died. His officers Not bad, I guess you'd call that. This will not be the only people he gets killed, trust me.

Yeah, yeah. His officers warned him they needed to get the hell out of there. He ignored them again. This happened a few more times until people seemed to just ignore him and start heading back towards Australia. And he caught up with them. Once back in Australia, they began to head towards Fiji on the long-awaited revenge mission. They got to Fiji without much of a problem. And storming ashore, they found americans who were living side by sides

of the fiji and they're like what's up guys hey guess who guess who's about to get massacred uh and they demanded effectively at gunpoint to tell him where chief vaidovi was the guy who was reportedly at fault for the mass amount of cannibalism right on this particular island uh now when that didn't work, because the Americans are like, nah, you seem a bit murdery. We don't really want to do that. Yes. Yes, we are. He captured a bunch of civilians

and threatened and told the Americans who spoke the local language, go tell the chief if he doesn't surrender himself to us, we'll kill all these people. That worked. The chief turned himself in. What the fuck?

A group of civilians did resist being kidnapped. And when that happened, their village was burned to the ground. Used as hostages? Their village was burned to the ground. That got the chief to surrender. And part of the plan was to bring him back to the u.s where he was almost certainly going to be executed now this is where getting rid of his supply ship finally caught up to wilkes because as they were leaving towards hawaii it became pretty clear that wow we don't have enough

food or water for this ship imagine that and that is when a passing fiji and fisherman on a canoe was like hey over on the island of Malolo, I think it was called, we have pigs and water. We'll trade you. Now, it turned out that these guys on this particular island were very, very aware of the bullshit

that the Americans had just pulled and decided they wanted some revenge. Understandable. Yeah, of course. These fucking assholes just stormed ashore, burned down a village and kidnapped a guy let's fucking shoot him right i want to see what wilkes tastes like not assuming there is a trap waiting for him which is just astronomically stupid in my opinion after

what he just did wilkes sent lieutenant joseph underwood uh in command of a shore party which included uh um wilks's nephew henry wilks i want this dude to get got so bad well as soon as a shore party came and was like hey we're here for the pigs uh fijians came out of the bushes and clubbed them all to death yeah that's fair um for some reason when word got back to wilkes uh he blamed underwood for the death of his nephew and then as punishment auctioned off all of his personal belongings to the rest of the crew despite the fact he had a standing will that everybody was aware of to send all this stuff back home. So, yeah. You can't do that, man. Wilkes then ordered the

military burials of the two men that were killed and then dispatched a revenge mission ashore, which were made up of about 70 Marines and sailors, as well as some civilians, including a Hawaiian member of the crew, which went by the name, and i swear to god

a wahoo jack oh jesus um at his rum bar a wahoo jack 100 sounds like the nickname of a of a white tour guide that works in waikiki like uh paul rudd's character and forgetting sarah marshall yep spot on he was i mean what was probably why that was his nickname is that Like Paul Rudd's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Yep. Spot on. I mean, what was probably why that was his nickname is that the white people couldn't pronounce his name. It's like, fuck it, call me Jack. I don't care. But he spoke a dialect that the Fijians understood. And while they were paddling to shore, they saw canoes going out and they speedily caught up to one of them like hey

what island are you from and the Fijian's like oh we're from Malolo and then Oahu Jack murdered them all with a blunderbuss what is this they got the Shinzo Abe he deserved it dude if

you gotta cut that cut that it's not my fault that it's comical that a guy got fucking got by a homemade t-shirt cannon, okay? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I know. Now, on the island that the Americans stormed ashore, they probably assumed they'd be walking

in to burn down, like, I don't know, backward villagers or whatever that didn't have guns. But they walked into what effectively was a fortress at a village named Yarrow. Now, the Fijians knew that the Americans would respond this way. This isn't their first rodeo. So they had dug trenches and built a fortress. built a fortress and then chieftains were dancing on top of the fortress yelling at them in broken english and like swears and then telling them and daring them to attack good now the marines at this

point were not as uh well this is actually the job that they're good at landing on far-flung islands and massacring people and the commander of the ground force lieutenant ringgold was like seems like a really bad idea to attack this fort we shouldn't do that uh his idea was to hold off the attack hang back and then shell it with their navy because they have a powerful navy off the coast however other officers didn't get this message and then immediately ordered their men into a frontal assault directly into the fort. Oh, boy. Now, this happened as Ringgold passed the message to shell the fort. So, as the charge is taking place,

naval gunfire and Congreve rockets are flying at the Marines as well. That does not sound like a fun time. No, it's just a storm clusterfuck of like that scene from Braveheart. We're like, sir. Yeah, just getting got. Sir, our men will be hit by those arrows. Like, well, their men will be hit by them, too. But just flinging Congreve rockets in every direction, which, of course, sets the fort on fire.

And the fort is also surrounding a village which also catches on fire so all of these people in a swirling mass of hand-to-hand combat well everything is burning around them the fire quickly swept through the village because it's mostly made out of you know kindling effectively sure uh this forced the surviving population out of the village and for it where they were shot uh at the same time another marine offensive attacked the village nearby driving the entire population into the ocean where they died oh jesus survivors that were left on the island that were not murdered immediately were forced at gunpoint to give the american fleet whatever bits of food and water they had left effectively leaving them to

die when you read about this now it'll often be said that wilkes attempted to get the marines to not to do this which is like but wilkes didn't land he stayed on the boat so he's like okay marines pinky promise that you won't slaughter innocent people and wink wink lieutenant ringle is like why would you have brought us if you didn't want us to do that? Right. So I don't really buy that excuse and it's not like he got anybody in trouble for doing this afterwards. The

entire island is reduced to ruin and it's not like he punished them. Now upon leaving Fiji, Wilkes was having a problem. He hadn't accomplished about half of his goals and his three-year mark was running out.

So he simply extended the expedition for another year despite having the authorization funding or power to do so. Okay. You're probably wondering, well, that makes this a four-year long expedition. This is a kidnapping, boys and girls kidnapping

um everybody's enlistments were running out or would run out before the end of the expedition so wilkes simply decided that he would order his officers and ncos to beat the ever-living shit out of every man whose contract was running out until they re-enlisted oh my god the beatings will continue until morale improves. When someone refused, he punished them in a way called round the fleet, which meant they would be flogged on one boat, be forced to get on a rowboat,

paddle over to the next boat, get flogged again, get on the rowboat, paddle over to the next boat. Guess what? I'm joining the cannibals. And this would occur until they've been flogged a total of 110 times. I'm a cann cannibals. And this would occur until they've been flogged a total of 110 times. I'm a cannibal now. When that didn't work, he ordered them arrested and thrown in the brig where they would stay for the rest of the voyage and simply not be paid as their contract ran out.

Yep, that's fun. Recruiters nowadays like, fuck, why can't we do that? nowadays like fuck why can't we do that now by this point the expedition had gone completely buck fucking wild and had been one giant rolling international incident slash war crime cluster fuck slash bad slash worse word had gotten back to the united states at this point he like because one of the problems with firing so many naval officers and sending them back home is you're supplying the Secretary of the Navy with like a grip of dudes who are like, Wilkes has lost his fucking mind.

Exactly. And telling them that like, hey, if you sneeze wrong, Wilkes beats the shit out of you. Shit like that. This prompted the Secretary of the Navy to send him a letter, which effectively... Stop kidnapping people. No, he didn't care about that it pretty much said okay what is going on out there like i mean i'm hearing a lot of shit

a lot of it bad now will explained all of these setbacks on what he called a cabal of officers that were working against him is it the jews no. I mean, probably, but also no. Thanks, Joe. When he got to Honolulu, one of the key capitals of the Western whaling world where there was an easy passage of letters and stuff, he got a letter in response from the Secretary of Navy, which effectively green-lighted him to do anything that he had to do to get rid of this whole cabal thing. What the fuck? anything that he had to do to get rid of this whole cabal thing, which is incredible that you get a letter from like a Naval officer that everybody's telling you is lost his mind telling you like, no, it's a shitty cabal of officers. That's causing this downfall.

And you're like, seems legit. It's a shitty cabal of officers. Do what you got to do. Now, before Wilkes had been pretty brutal, this gave him a green light to do anything that he wanted. Yeah, according to the book Sea of Glory, which I use mostly for a source for this episode, it described what happened next as a, quote,

a rampage. So that's not good. Oh, good. Any officer who looked at him wrong was fired and sent back to the United States. Others were arrested, brought up on bullshit charges, and thrown in the brig States. Others were arrested, brought up on bullshit charges,

and thrown in the brig. Of their own ships, sometimes for five months. In other cases, he would fire men and didn't send them back home, which would force them to remain on the ship where they were expected to work and they would not be paid. He effectively reinstituted slavery on the fly. Well, slavery is still legal at this point but not in the navy so that's bad terrific like the secretary of the navy just rubbing his temples like wait he enslaved his own crew what is what is going on any deviation from

any order that wilkes got you at minimum a flogging he was so like he was so demanding uh that he ordered all outgoing mail to be delivered to him first so he could be so it could be read to make sure you weren't sending it to the secretary of the navy to talk him now this included scientific reports which he did not fully understand now like he was insisting the guy who and then this is not hyperbole. He was insisting the guy that was in charge of collecting seashells was plotting against him. It was just like he's described as a conchologist, which is a rad title. That is sweet. I do like that. There's like this weird detail as well that flogging was still legal in the Navy. And the Marines who are Department of the Navy were forced to follow naval regulations while they were on ships.

But army regulations where flogging was illegal since 1812 while on land. So the Marines like, hey, why don't we land for a bit so nobody can legally beat us anymore? Bye. Bye. Imagine being. Short of leave all the time imagine being so psychotic the marines like we gotta get the fuck out of here we're gonna join the army fucking incredible probably one of the funnier things that happened during this day on uh honolulu

was that the ship's chaplain uh cozied up to a local missionary's wife and fucked her uh and this disgusted wilkes remembers a deep man of god and he uh fired him and sent him back to the states now eventually the expedition went from hawaii to hawaii or honolulu to hawaii island commonly known as the big island uh where wilkes stayed uh to measure the island's gravitation via a giant metal pendulum, which he had dragged up Mauna Kea volcano. No, he didn't drag it up. No, no, he did not.

Some poor son of a bitch has done that. He forced the crew and locals to do it, which is 14,000 feet, by the way. Yeah. Also, a very revered place for Hawaiians, which you should not fuck with he's just like don't worry about i'm gonna drag this giant pendulum up that motherfucker how you guys feel fuck y'all you know how i was saying fuck the dutch middle fingers up the entire time uh he then ordered the peacock and the flying fish to go to the gilbert islands which was about 1800 miles away now while they were, one of their men went missing,

probably kidnapped and murdered. And Hudson, who was the second in command and put in command this mission, went to the local chief and was like, look, I don't know what he did. Maybe he fucked one of your women and

that's a party foul, but could you give this guy back um and you know probably with a added threat like if you don't give him back we will fuck you up they were then attacked by 700 islanders armed armed with quite honestly the most metal fucking weapons in human history one of these include a club that was spiked with shark's teeth around the edges like a sword that seems that seems unnecessary there was a spear tipped with stingray barbs which i imagine is like the lance of longinus but for i don't know steve irwin sure uh like this those are the coolest fucking weapons i've ever heard of that is pretty that is pretty sweet um hudson

and his men ran the fuck away where they got back to the navy too fair enough uh they they bombed the island uh sent a shore party where a large battle took place for virtually no reason they never found the guy that went missing then they got on their boat and left at this point wilkes had packed up and gone to the pacific northwest and the peacock immediately got stuck in a sandbar in the middle of the columbia river because wilks was warned you know the peacock's kind of too big to go down a fucking river maybe don't do that you didn't listen it got stuck the local native tribes like hey you guys need some help and helped rescued the crew however they're the peacock set abandoned they they eventually uh went down to eureka and uh got a replacement named the oregon uh the after this they went

down the california coast to survey san francisco which was then called something else and it's part of the mexican empire however this is considered quite a dick move you just don't show up off the coast of someone's waters like hey we're here to poke around a bit investigate he wasn't supposed to go there uh by the time wilkes finally ordered the expedition to start making a trip back home all of the good press that he had received and he was championed quite a bit for kind of being a hero for discovering quote the continent of antarctica however good for him man ever since uh the press had been deluged with stories about how he had lost his goddamn mind remember

yeah this fleet was supposed to be home a fucking year ago. And in its place, all they're getting is like, yeah, he's beating and kidnapping people. I'm being kidnapped. He started two or three minor wars, kind of, sort of invaded Mexico. Said snacks. One of the problems of sending so many officers home is, like I said, they can go tell the Secretary of the Navy that you've lost your mind. And that was all that was being reported now. He'd lost his grip on reality. And

also someone had told the press he was sailing around calling himself a Commodore and flying a Commodore's flag, which he was. And this is actually the thing that the Navy was most upset about. Because they don't care about beating your sailors. That sounds like the Navy. There was also claims by John Otluck, who was the captain of the

USS Yorktown, that Wilkes had lied about discovering Antarctica, or the quote-unquote continent of Antarctica. Now, he claimed that he had just found some frozen chunks of ice in the south and called it good. This was seconded by a British explorer named James Ross.

Now, this seems to be a political hit job. There's no real debate that Wilkes did discover what he said he discovered. However, Outlook really fucking hated Wilkes well before he'd gotten command of the ship. And the British explorer probably didn't want to let an American claim this, so they teamed up to shit on Wilkes.

But this also did get a little bit of purchase, but they wanted to make him seem crazy and stupid. So, whatever. Sure. There's another funny side story here where they run into a Bosch, a Boston based fishing ship, uh, which brought with it like months and months of back newspapers, which is the very common for the day,

um, to get caught up on news. And they published naval news, uh, naval promotions in the newspaper at the time. And Wilkes assumed all of, you know, discovering the continent of Antarctica, he would definitely make captain.

He didn't. I thought he did. He did not. The Navy refused to promote him. But you know who did get promoted? Reynolds, who was on a ship. He made lieutenant finally. He got his commission.

Good for him. And Reynolds, at this point, hated Wilkes so much that he circled the paragraph of Naval Promotions where his name was not and gave it to him. Nice. Nice. That's petty. The officially named United States Exploring Expedition, the USXX, docked back home and Wilkes, probably knowing what was going to happen next, quickly passed command over to Hudson, struck his Commodore flag from the pole, jumped in a rowboat and snuck ashore. Oh, OK. Yeah, there was a huge shore party waiting for them and he was nowhere near it now before he bailed out however he made sure to go on a fucking klepto spree through the through the entire fleet stealing all of his fellow officers journals and diaries because he wanted to make sure they had no evidence against him despite actually

accomplished accomplishing quite a bit nobody in the government fucking cared at this point remember he had been gone an entire government administration period right four years right the government of president john tyler future member of the Confederate House of Representatives, didn't exactly want to champion something ordered by someone else. Not to mention all of the stories of him being a tyrannical lunatic, calling himself a Commodore and flying the American flag while making everybody look bad. himself a Commodore and flying the American flag while making everybody look bad. Also, the Secretary of the Navy at the time was... One of his

things that he wanted to do was get rid of abusive officers in the Navy, which... Oh, thanks, guys. He was a fucking picture-perfect example of that. So he had no allies in the government when he got back. Right. Now, when he got home, he felt that he was deeply snubbed.

He had no glory. He wasn't treated like a hero. So he went on a speaking tour, doing something that commissioned officers and people in the military just shouldn't do, namely shitting on the president and the secretary of the Navy, claiming that they were spreading rumors about him.

Now, it quickly became clear that the government wouldn't be able to ignore him because they really were just hoping he'd go away. Though, the Secretary of the Navy Abel Upshore was working on charges against him for various reasons. This caused him to

accelerate it. They even got a screaming match one day, which is you're a lieutenant in the fucking Navy. You do not get in a screaming match with the Secretary of the Navy. Now, remember, the name Able Upshore might ring familiar. If you jump in a time machine, go back to our USS Monitor episode. Remember the guy that got blown up because of a faulty cannon?

That's him. Yep. Oh. Same guy. Now, one of the things that Upshhur wanted to do was normalize and streamline the Navy, making a more professional service and mostly cracking down on officers who treated their ships like petty tyrants,

because that does hurt the Navy. Though he found that building a case against Wilkes was damn near impossible due to the fact that everyone had their journals stolen by the guy. There was no actual evidence, no matter how many direct orders that Wilkes their journals stolen by the guy. There was no actual evidence. No matter how many direct orders that Wilkes got to turn the journals over, he simply refused.

At one point, he said, I found some. I had mailed some back. They must have gotten lost. Despite the fact, previous to that, he had told the Secretary of the Navy, he's like, well, I'll release them as soon as the charges are dropped. Which is like, that that's blackmail um now he was eventually court-martialed and charged with over 10 different crimes um charges included the deaths of 28 of his men systemic abuse of the men

he didn't kill and losing several of his ships with no good reason. Yeah. Throughout the trial, virtually every single one of his, uh, every single one of his men on every single one of his ships testified against him. Virtually nobody testified for him. Um,

yeah, I wonder why. Uh, now, unfortunately the, this whole case kind of went the way of the day, which is like, well, he's an officer and a gentleman. These are all problems, sure, but none of these are crimes. This is all going to happen administratively, not with a court-martial.

And even admirals in the Navy were like, this seems like a bit much, which is insane when you think about what he did, right? Yeah. He was not found guilty of a single charge other than beating his sailors a bit too many times. And with the punishment of don't do that again. A year later, Upshark got blown up. Coincidence? Yeah, but you know. Nope.

It's the cabal, Joe. It's the Wilkes-based cabal. Now, Wilkes spent the next 20 years working obsessively on his final report of the expedition, only for it to be interrupted by the Civil War, where he somehow was given another naval command. Oh, you got to stop there with that. Honestly, he committed so many goddamn crimes this time around. It almost makes the expedition look kind of like a warm-up. He was stationed in the West Indies and he created seriously like a dozen

international incidents to include accidentally blockading a Dutch colony, which again is an act of war. Don't do that. Also, he, same thing with the French. He was court-martialed again and he was suspended from the service for three years,

which is a punishment they used to give out quite commonly. And it was revised down to one by Lincoln personally. Now, he eventually retired, largely bankrupted, and returned to his property in North Carolina, where he obsessively worked on his autobiography, locking himself in a way to his point that his memoirs are a little more than the paranoid ravings of a man-band. And he died in 1877. Sounds about right in the end this insane expedition slash mass kidnapping of naval personnel killed 28 men um of at least 20 men within the american navy the vast majority of which were easily avoidable accidents and diseases very few people died in. One guy even died of alcohol withdrawals.

Though they killed literally hundreds of people throughout the Pacific Islands, and they're all monsters. Pretty much nobody remembers him for the things that he thought he'd go down in history for. However, he is immortalized for being the psychopathic inspiration for Herman Melville's Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. So congrats. Oh, there also is a school in Washington State on Bainbridge Island named after him. And maybe it shouldn't be.

Maybe rename that motherfucker. Change the name. Change the name, boys. That's the USXX. USXX. Like I said, it sounds like Vince McMahon's Football League, right? Yeah. Now, Liam, we have a thing McMahon's Football League, right? Yeah. Now, Liam, we have a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion.

If you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, donate to the show, slide into our Patreon inbox, which many people have done, ask us a question. We will get to it, hopefully, at some point. Or add it to the massive thread that we also pick from that's also on our Patreon. Today's question is, here's my question from the Legion today, but with a bit of a backstory. I was born in 1999, and the oldest person I ever spoke to was born in 1907, well over 115 years ago now. Who is the oldest person you've ever had the privilege of knowing and speaking to, and what did they get to experience over their long life?

Also, shout out from flint michigan fellow michigander apologies for being from michigan liam who's the the the the oldest person you've ever got to know the oldest person i ever knew had been born in 1900 uh they were my next door neighbor when i was a kid the shout out to the lauxes lauxes who i assume are long dead by now uh but yeah it was kind of cool to like this guy had you know grown up basically he remembered his dad coming home with a model t that's cool and then also like remembered like his grandkids buying him a laptop for his birthday at like 95.

Like that, that's sick. Um, remembered like the man on the moon, all that stuff. The oldest person I spoke to is my great grandfather. Um, very,

I mean, I don't have many memories of him. Mind you, I was very young. I'm not that old. I'm only 34. Um, right.

Is my, my dad's dad's dad on my dad's side. Um, he survived the Armenian genocide, but with the Russians against the Turks and world war one, um, I wish I had more memories of him. Um,

because I was a literal child, but yeah, I mean, just hearing about his life is like, not to mention like this guy went from running from his village, being murdered on horseback by like Janus Ares almost, to living to see the internet invented. It's a wild fucking life. Yeah, that's pretty wild. I mean, the man outlived like multiple empires, unions and the like.

It's a crazy life life it sucks that his son was such a piece of shit oh you're not that bad i meant my grandfather not me yeah i know but i love you very much um anyway liam thank you for joining me you're on this naval based episode i actually we have a bit of a theme going forward for the next couple weeks of insane naval commanders. We could not emphasize enough to not kidnap and beat your crew. Yeah, mass kidnapping is generally bad. And if you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Even a dollar gets you bonus stuff.

If you don't want to support us, cool. Do what you do with your money. But you do want to support us, cool. Do what you do with your money. But you do want to support us. Leaving a review is free. And it helps us with algorithmic-based reasons that I do not understand. Internet stuff. Anyway, leave us a review. And if it's funny, I'll talk about it.

Like the last guy who said that you wouldn't expect a show hosted by a genocide scholar to be this funny or be this lighthearted. But here we are. Everybody, thank you again. And I guess until next time, don't do anything that happened here. No, totally avoid it.