Exhibition Marks Voyage That Mapped Oregon, Antarctica : Early U.S. Scientific Expedition Recalled

In this era of spaceflight, the thrill of sailing fragile wooden ships into the unknown is distant history, but it’s history with an impact still being felt.

A century and a half ago, less was known about many parts of Earth than is now understood about the moon and other planets, and seafaring nations launched sailors and scientists to learn about this planet.

A pioneer among those efforts was the United States Exploring Expedition--known as the “Ex Ex”--which left Hampton Roads, Va., on Aug. 18, 1838, on a four-year trip that, among other things:

--Established that Antarctica is a continent.

--Developed charts, some still in use in World War II, of hundreds of previously unexplored islands in the Pacific.

--Explored much of the new Oregon Territory.

--Brought back massive scientific collections that eventually formed the basis of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History.

It is the Smithsonian that is now recalling that trip with its “Ex Ex Ex,” a yearlong Exploring Expedition Exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

After a year in Washington, the exhibit will go on tour for two years, visiting museums in Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Tacoma, Wash., Anchorage, Alaska, and New York.

The show, entitled “Magnificent Voyagers: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842,” will display more than 1,400 objects from among the thousands brought back by Lt. Charles Wilkes and his sailors and scientists.

Wilkes, a strong and colorful character, ramrodded the the expedition to a successful conclusion but subsequently received little credit--perhaps because of a controversial personality that eventually led to court-martial and public censure.

Although he had been refused the rank of captain, Wilkes assumed it anyway once under way and led his naval vessels and nine civilian scientists around the world, covering 87,000 miles. Two of the six ships were lost on the voyage.

Wilkes produced the first accurate charts of hundreds of islands, including Hawaii. He mapped Oregon and 1,500 miles of Antarctica and established the United States as a naval and scientific force in the world, historians say.

The vast collections of plants, animals, shells, rocks, fossils and other items brought back by the scientists were given to the Smithsonian Institution in 1857, permanently altering the character of the institution, which was then transformed from a research institute to a museum.

“The expedition was a scientific declaration of independence,” according to Herman Viola of the Smithsonian, who organized the new exhibit.

That this first major American expedition has lacked wide historical notice stems from a variety of reasons, including Wilkes’ personality and eventual conviction for excessive punishment of servicemen, as well as controversy surrounding some of the scientific findings.

“Although it was the first scientific expedition of its kind mounted by the United States government, it was by no means the last, and pioneering ventures can easily come to seem mundane, ill-planned, or even unsuccessful when compared to subsequent ventures that profit by earlier experience,” C. Ian Jackson observed in a report on the trip in American Scientist magazine.

The “Ex Ex” was followed by a flurry of exploration and scientific investigation that may have seemed to overshadow it, Jackson commented. However, he writes, the “Ex Ex” can be regarded “as a very successful beginning to a program of scientific exploration by the United States government that has been maintained ever since and that is exemplified today in the space program.”