It was authorized by congress to explore the Pacific Ocean and consisted of Navy ships and people. It started in 1838 and lasted until 1842. They expedition explored Pacific sites as far away as Fiji, Hawaii, the Phillipines, and Wake Island. You Navy ring customers may already know the history of this expedition but this is an education to many of the rest of us custom military ring folks.

The greatest significance of this expedition is the amount of data that it collected and the number of places explored. In all they explored over 280 islands, mapped 800 miles of present day Oregon, collected over 60,000 plant and bird specimens and the seeds of 648 different plants along with 254 live plants. You can see that the work which they accomplished was significant indeed. Lieutenant Wilkes was known for some of the personal quirks that he had and he did not get along with his people very well but on the surface it seems that he was effective in the mission.

Now even some of the brightest of you military ring customers out there may not know this but many of the specimens that they collected remain in the Smithsonian to date.