acres in area and 26¼ ft. deep) is connected by means of a lock (571 ft. long) with the new harbour entrance, which was completed in 1886. On the north it is connected with the fitting-out basin (3832 ft. long, 446 ft. wide), which again is connected by a lock (158 ft. long) with the outer basin (617 ft. long, 410 ft. wide), and so with the old harbour entrance. North of this the “third entrance” has been recently constructed, with two enormous locks, one of which in an emergency could be used as an additional dock. On the west side of the fitting-out basin lies the shipbuilding basin (1237 ft. long by 742 ft. wide), with three dry-docks (of which two are each 453 ft. long, 85 ft. wide and more than 30 ft. deep, whilst the third is 394 ft. long), and also with two slips of the largest size. Further new docks (each about 617 ft. by 97 ft.), capable of containing large battle-ships, were completed in 1906. A torpedo harbour lies to the south-east of the new harbour. The three entrances to the old and new harbours are sheltered by long and massive moles; and the whole complex of docks, building slips, machine shops, &c., forms the government dockyard, which is enclosed by a lofty wall with fourteen iron gates. The establishment is defended by strong fortifications. The commercial harbour lies on the south side of the town at the east end of the Ems-Jade canal. The industries of the place are almost exclusively connected with the requirements of the dockyard, and embrace machine shops, iron foundries and boiler works. Wilhelmshaven is visited for its sea-bathing. It possesses depots for artillery and mines, a meteorological observatory and a signalling station. A battalion of marines is stationed here. Since 1900 the development of the naval establishment and of the town has been exceptionally rapid, coincident with the growth of the German navy, and with the shifting of political and naval activity from the Baltic to the North Sea.
See Eberhard, Führer durch Wilhelmshaven und seine Umgebung (Wilhelmshaven, 1906); L. v. Krohn, Vierzigjahre in einem deutschen Kriegshafen (Wilhelmshaven, 1905).
WILKES, CHARLES (1798-1877), American naval officer and explorer, was born in New York City on the 3rd of April 1798. He entered the United States Navy as a midshipman in 1818, and became a lieutenant in 1826. In 1830 he was placed in charge of the division of instruments and charts, and in 1838 was appointed to command an exploring and surveying expedition in the Southern Seas, authorized by Congress in 1836. The expedition, including naturalists, botanists, a mineralogist, taxidermists, a philologist, &c., was carried by the sloops-of-war “Vincennes” and “Peacock,” the brig “Porpoise,” the store ship “Relief” and two tenders. Leaving Hampton Roads on the 18th of August 1838, it stopped at Madeira and Rio de Janeiro; visited Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Peru, the Paumotu group of the Low Archipelago, the Samoan islands and New South Wales; from Sydney sailed into the Antarctic Ocean in December 1839 and reported the discovery of an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny islands;[1] visited the Fiji and the Hawaiian islands in 1840, explored the west coast of the United States, including the Columbia river, San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento river, in 1841, and returned by way of the Philippine islands, the Sulu archipelago, Borneo, Singapore, Polynesia and the Cape of Good Hope, reaching New York on the 10th of June 1842. He was court-martialled on his return, but was acquitted on all charges except that of illegally punishing men in his squadron. For a short time he was attached to the Coast Survey, but from 1844 to 1861 he was chiefly engaged in preparing the report of the expedition. Twenty-eight volumes were planned but only nineteen were published. Of these Wilkes wrote the Narrative (6 vols., 1845; 5 vols., 1850) and the volumes Hydrography and Meteorology (1851). The Narrative contains much interesting material concerning the manners and customs and political and economic conditions in many places then little known. Other valuable contributions were the three reports of James D. Dana on Zoophytes (1846), Geology (1849) and Crustacea (2 vols., 1852-1854). At the outbreak of the Civil War, Wilkes (who had reached the rank of commander in 1843 and that of captain in 1855) was assigned to the command of the “San Jacinto” to search for the Confederate commerce destroyer, “Sumter.” On the 8th of November 1861 he stopped the British mail packet “Trent,” and took off the Confederate commissioners to Europe, James M. Mason and John Slidell. Though he was officially thanked by Congress, his action was later disavowed by President Lincoln. His next service was in the James river flotilla, but after reaching the rank of commodore, on the 16th of July 1863, he was assigned to duty against blockade runners in the West Indies. He was disrated (becoming a captain on the retired list) in November 1862 on the ground that he had been too old to receive the rank of commodore under the act then governing promotions; and engaged in a long controversy with Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy. This controversy ended in his being court-martialled in 1864 and being found guilty on several counts and sentenced to public reprimand and suspension for three years. But on the 25th of July 1866 he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral on the retired list. He died at Washington on the 8th of February 1877.
In addition to many shorter articles, reports, &c., he published Western America, including California and Oregon (1849) and Theory of the Winds (1856).
WILKES, JOHN (1727-1797), English politician, descended from a family long connected with Leighton-Buzzard in Bedfordshire, was born at Clerkenwell, London, on the 17th of October 1727, being the second son of Israel Wilkes, a rich distiller, and the owner, through his wife Sarah, daughter of John Heaton of Hoxton, of considerable house property in its north-eastern suburbs. After some training under private tuition John Wilkes was sent to the university of Leyden, matriculating there on the 8th of September 1744. Several young men of talent from Scotland and England were studying in this Dutch university at that period, and a lively picture of their life, in which Wilkes displays the gaiety of temper which remained faithful to him all his days, is presented to us by Alexander Carlyle (Autobiog., 1860, ed. J. H. Burton). With this training he acquired an intimate knowledge of classical literature, and he enlarged his mind by travelling through Holland, Flanders and part of Germany. At the close of 1748 he returned to his native land, and in a few months (October 1749) was drawn by his relations into marrying Mary, sole daughter and heiress of John Mead, citizen and grocer of London, who was ten years his senior. The ill-assorted pair—for she was grave and staid, while he rioted in exuberant spirits and love of society—lived together at Aylesbury for some months, when, to make matters worse, they returned to town to dwell with the wife's mother. One child, a daughter, was born to them (5th of August 1750), and then Wilkes left his wife and removed to Westminster, where he kept open house for many young men about town possessing more wit than morals. In 1754 he contested the constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed, but failed to gain the seat.
Wilkes was now a well-known figure in the life of the west end, and among his associates were Thomas Potter, the son of the archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards Lord le Despencer, and Lord Sandwich, the last of whom in after years showed great animosity towards his old companion in revelry. In July 1757, by a triangular arrangement in which Potter and the first William Pitt played the other parts, Wilkes was elected for Aylesbury, and for this constituency he was again returned at the general election in March 1761. Pitt was his leader in politics; but to Pitt he applied in vain for a seat at the Board of Trade, nor was he successful in his application for the post of ambassador at Constantinople, or for that of governor of Quebec. As he attributed these failures to the opposition of Lord Bute, he established a paper called the North Briton (June 1762), in which he from the first attacked the Scotch prime minister with exceeding bitterness, and grew bolder as it
- ↑ This discovery was made on the 19th of January 1840, one day before Dumont d'Urville sighted Adelie Land about 400 m. farther W. That Wilkes discovered an Antarctic continent was long doubted, and one of the charges against him when he was court-martialled was that he had fabricated this discovery, but the expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1908-1909 corroborated Wilkes. That part of the Antarctic continent known as Wilkes Land was named in his honour.
