Charles Wilkes

Charles Wilkes (* 3. April 1798 in New York; † 8. February 1877 in Washington) was an US-American naval officer and polar researcher.

Wilkes led the U.S. Exploring expedition, an American expedition of 1838 - 42, which widens parts Pacific and the “unknown country in the south” ( the Antarctic) investigate should. It recognized the Antarctic as independent continent. The region discovered by him was called Wilkesland.

Wilkes was not undisputed as directors/conductors of this expedition. At the beginning of the journey he dressed the rank of a second lieutenant, appointed themselves however arbitrarily the captain and Kommodore. After it gave itself during the sea voyage as a the-poetic officer and on Fiji - islands a massacre among the natives arranged, it was placed after its return before a court-martial, which examined these incidents. It was acquitted in most charges, only its punishment methods within the crew were put to it to the load. Therefore it was shifted for some time to the coast guard. But already soon it had to do with the elaboration of the expedition reports, what employed it from 1844 to 1861.

In the American civil war it was as an admiral for the union in use. As a commander of the San Jacinto it attacked to 8. November 1861 in international waters the post office steamer Trent, which was on the way from Havanna to England. From its feeler gauges it had experienced that two envoys of the Southern States on this ship were, it let which arrest. It was praised by the American congress first for this procedure, Abraham Lincoln, which was afraid the confusion possible thereby dissociated themselves however. In opinion of some commentators this incident would have led almost to the fact that Europe would have intervened in the American civil war (see in addition Trent affair). Later Wilkes was used against the blockade runners in the Karibik.

Wilkes is to have served Herman Melville for the novel Moby thick as model for the figure of the captain Ahab.

literature

• Nathaniel Philbrick: Dämonen the lake, 2004

Web on the left of

• http://www.morgenwelt.de/187.html incident of the San Jacinto
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| | * Literature of and over Charles Wilkes in the catalog of the DDB

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