History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents: Vol. 24 Wilkes Expedition, 1839-1845
Levesque, Rodrigue (2004). History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents: Vol. 24 Wilkes Expedition, 1839-1845. 24. Gatineau, Québec: Lévesque Publications. ISBN 978-0-920201-24-4.
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Abstract: HOM.24 documents the period 1839–1845, combining extensive material from the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes with a large body of logbooks, travel narratives, missionary correspondence, and colonial reports produced during the continuing expansion of the Pacific whaling industry. The sources include journals of American, British, and French naval officers and whaling captains, as well as accounts from travelers, missionaries, and colonial administrators. Geographic coverage is broad, with particular attention to Pohnpei (Bonabe/Ascension Island), Kosrae (Strong’s Island), Ngatik, Nukuoro, and other islands of the Caroline Islands, alongside references to the Marshall Islands, Gilbert Islands, and the Mariana Islands, especially Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. The volume contains numerous ship log excerpts documenting visits by vessels such as the Ohio, Gideon Howland, Courier, Charles Drew, and other American and British whalers operating throughout Micronesia and the central Pacific. The volume also includes accounts of maritime incidents, shipwrecks, and encounters between island communities and visiting crews during the height of nineteenth-century Pacific navigation.
A major portion of the volume concerns the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842) and related scientific surveys conducted in Micronesia and the central Pacific. Accounts by officers including Charles Wilkes, William L. Hudson, William Reynolds, and ethnologist Horatio Hale describe exploration across the Gilbert Islands (Kingsmill Group) and surrounding regions, with observations on navigation, language, and local societies. The expedition also recorded vocabularies of Tarawan (Gilbertese), Pohnpeian, Yapese, and Palauan, contributing early linguistic documentation for Micronesian languages. Complementing these reports are detailed hydrographic and geographic descriptions, including surveys of Pohnpei conducted by officers of the French naval ship Danaide, as well as charts of harbors, reefs, and anchorages used by visiting ships navigating the Caroline and Marshall Islands.
The volume also contains extensive documentation of maritime contact and island societies during the peak of the Pacific whaling era, including trade encounters, shipwreck accounts, and descriptions of European beachcombers living among island communities. Documents describe interactions with local chiefs and communities, the exchange of goods such as tortoiseshell, trepang (bêche-de-mer), coconuts, fish, and pigs, and the movement of seamen, traders, and missionaries throughout the region. Spanish colonial administration in the Mariana Islands, including officials and missionaries in Agaña, Umatac, and Saipan, appears frequently in reports concerning population statistics, missionary activity, and Carolinian migration to the Marianas. Together these records illustrate the increasingly dense network of exploration, commerce, missionary activity, and maritime travel linking Micronesia with Manila, Sydney, Honolulu, Canton, and New England whaling ports during the early 1840s.
