Abstract Naval officer and explorer. Official and family correspondence, journals and diaries, legal and financial papers, autobiography and other writings, and scientific notebooks relating to Wilkes's command of an expedition (1838-1842) to the Antarctic, Hawaii and various other Pacific islands, and the northwest coast of the United States; his capture of J. M. Mason and John Slidell in the Trent affair (1861); and his command of the James River Flotilla and West...