The Vincennes prowled along the edge of the Antarctic Continent as far as 97 degrees east, when Lieutenant Wilkes headed northward and arrived at Sydney in March, 1840, and found the Peacock at anchor. The Porpoise reached 100 degrees east and 64 degrees 65 minutes south when she turned her prow away from the inhospitable solitude and in March arrived at Auckland Isle.
The following summer was spent in exploring the islands of the Southern Archipelago. A party was engaged in a launch and cutter, when a tempest compelled them to run into a bay of the Fiji group for shelter. While working its way back the cutter ran upon a reef and was attacked by the natives. The ammunition of the Americans was wet and they abandoned the cutter and returned to the Vincennes.
Since these natives needed a lesson, Lieutenant Wilkes landed a force and burned the native village. A few days later an exploring party was again attacked while trying to trade with the natives. The men were forced to retreat to their boats, under a hot fire, many of the savages using muskets with no little skill. Reinforcements were landed and the savages put to flight, but in the fighting Midshipman Underwood and Henry Wilkes were mortally hurt and a seaman dangerously wounded.
Matters had now assumed so serious a shape that a detachment of seventy officers and men landed at another point on the island and marched upon the nearest village, laying waste the crops as they advanced. When the village was reached it was found to be defended by a strong stockade, with a trench inside, from which the crouching natives could fire through loopholes, while outside of the stockade was a deep ditch of water. Feeling their position impregnable, the savages flourished their weapons and uttered tantalizing whoops at the white men. The whoops quickly changed when the cabins within the stockade were set on fire by a rocket. The natives fled, leaving the village to be burned to ashes. The Americans pushed hostilities so aggressively that on the following day the islanders sued for peace.
The squadron next sailed to the Hawaiian Islands, where several months were spent in exploration. Then the coast of Oregon was visited and the Peacock suffered wreck at the mouth of the Columbia. Doubling the Cape of Good Hope, the expedition reached New York in June, 1842, having been gone nearly four years and having sailed more than 30,000 miles.