Into the Imperial Whirlpool: Poe’s “MS. Found in a Bottle” and the United States South Seas Exploration Expedition

Abstract

In the 1830s, Americans eager for their nation to join the great exploratory and commercial powers of Europe encouraged Congress to send an expedition to the South Pacific, the South Pole, and the Pacific coast of North America. Since the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803-6), the United States had increasingly devoted financial and military resources to expanding its commercial interests, scientific knowledge, and national boundaries. The United States South Seas Exploration Expedition of 183842 helped the young nation emerge as an economic, scientific, and naval power, and, as David Tyler asserts, it played a major role in the development of the United States’ new Manifest Destiny philosophy. * However, advocates for the expedition, particularly Jeremiah Reynolds, found that convincing Congress to approve it, in 1828, was easier than obtaining funds, which Congress did not appropriate until 1836. During the time Reynolds was conducting his most impassioned lobbying, Edgar Allan Poe published, and republished, his “MS. Found in a Bottle” and publicly supported both Reynolds and the expedition. The timing of repub lication suggests that Poe intended the story itself to support the venture: after the original came into print in 1833, Poe republished it twice in 1835, a pivotal year of speeches by Reynolds to Congress: once in 1 8 4 , just months after Lieutenant Charles Wdkes finaUy launched the expedition; and once in 1845, just months after Wilkes’s popular Narrative, describing the events of the expedition, was first published. Many literary scholars have interpreted “MS. Found in a Bottle” as a fantastic tale about the human soul, but in light of Poe’s public support for the South Seas Exploration Expedition, it also can be read as a dramatization of his excitement about America’s embarkation into imperialism-and at the same time his apparent concerns about the possible dangers of such an endeavor.*