Jeannette expedition

This theory proved illusory; the expedition's ship, USS Jeannette and its crew of thirty-three men, was trapped by ice and drifted for nearly two years before she was crushed and sunk north of the Siberian coast.

De Long then led his men on a perilous journey by sled, dragging the Jeannette's whaleboat and two cutters, eventually switching to these small boats to sail for the Lena Delta in Siberia.

Although Jeannette's fate demolished the widely believed Open Polar Sea theory, the appearance in 1884 of debris from the wreck on the south-west coast of Greenland indicated the existence of an ocean current moving the permanent Arctic ice from east to west.

From these forays, particularly that of Edward Augustus Inglefield in 1852, emerged the theory that Smith Sound, a northerly channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, was one of the fabled gateways to the polar sea.

[24] In July 1873, the United States Navy dispatched USS Juniata to Greenland, to search for survivors from the Polaris expedition, which had disintegrated after the death of its leader, Charles Francis Hall.

[27] De Long returned to Juniata in mid-August, having found no trace of the Polaris crew—who had meanwhile been rescued by the Scottish whaler SS Ravenscraig[28]—but the experience had profoundly affected his outlook.

Grinnell was not prepared to offer financial support, instead advising De Long to approach James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner and publisher of The New York Herald and a known sponsor of bold schemes.

[24][37] He theorized that this land formed part of a transpolar continent, connected to Greenland; if so, it might provide an alternative, land-based route to the pole should the expedition fail to find a portal to the polar sea.

On his return from Gotha, he cabled De Long requesting him to seek leave of absence from the Navy, and to begin the search for a ship suitable for Arctic exploration using Petermann's Bering Strait route.

[44] De Long spent much of the early part of 1879 in Washington, D.C., promoting the expedition among officials, searching for appropriate crew members, and harrying Navy Secretary Richard W. Thompson for practical support.

[45] Among the less standard equipment acquired by De Long was an experimental arc lamp system devised by Thomas Edison which would supposedly provide light equivalent to 3,000 candles and thus transform the Arctic winter darkness.

De Long quickly found himself at odds with the naval engineers at Mare Island, whose estimates of the work required to prepare Jeannette for the Arctic greatly exceeded his own judgement of what was necessary.

[60] Late in his preparations, De Long received orders from Secretary Thompson that, before proceeding with his own Arctic mission he should enquire along the Siberian coast for news of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and his ship Vega.

[63][64] De Long was unaware, as he prepared to sail, that the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey was studying the latest hydrographical and meteorological data obtained from its research ships in the Bering Sea.

[66] The army at Fort Point provided an eleven-gun salute;[67] in contrast, De Long noted that none of the naval vessels in and around San Francisco made any formal acknowledgement of their sister-ship's departure, "[not even] the blast of a steam whistle.

On August 3, Jeannette reached Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands where De Long sought information on Nordenskiöld from the crew of a revenue cutter newly returned from the Bering Strait.

[78][73] Jeannette initially made good speed northward;[78] on September 2 she was about 100 nautical miles (190 km; 120 mi) from the charted position of Wrangel's Land, but with ice thickening all around, movement became slow and erratic.

[80] Herald Island was still about 15 nautical miles (28 km; 17 mi) away; a sled party under Chipp set off across the ice to investigate the possibility of a winter harbor should Jeannette regain maneuverability.

At the same time, analyses of sea currents, salinity and temperature provided data confirming the Geodetic Survey's findings, by then known in Washington, that the Kuro Siwo had no effect north of the Bering Strait.

[86] Amid the boredom of the largely eventless drift, the crew ate well; ship's stores were boosted by regular hunting parties which brought a harvest of seal and polar bear meat.

De Long prepared to abandon ship, but she was saved by the actions of Nindemann and Sweetman, who waded into the freezing water in the hold and staunched the inflow by stuffing whatever materials were available into the breaches.

[125] De Long instructed that the boats should each aim for a point indicated as "Cape Barkin" on the Petermann map; if they became separated, and landed in different areas, the parties should rendezvous at Bulun, a sizeable settlement about 100 miles (160 km) from the coast.

[146] The pair had endured a harrowing experience since leaving De Long nearly a month previously: they had struggled for ten days, sleeping in improvised shelters and eating what they could catch or shoot.

[152] In January 1882, while most of the survivors began their long journey home, Melville, Nindemann and James Bartlett prepared to head a new search in the Lena Delta when weather allowed.

[156][157] Of the total expedition party of thirty-three men, thirteen returned alive to the U.S.[158] The first group of survivors landed in New York in May 1882, but celebrations were deferred until the arrival, on September 13, of Melville, Nindemann, and Noros.

In his zeal for a story, Jackson had opened the tomb to search for papers or other records,[160] an act of desecration that Emma De Long described to Bennett as "the bitterest potion I had to swallow in my whole life".

In February 1883, the board announced its findings: Jeannette was a fit vessel for Arctic service; difficulties such as the late start and the diversion to search for news of Vega were not De Long's fault, nor was he to blame for the ship's loss.

[166][167] In February 1882, Secretary Thompson had dispatched naval Lieutenants Giles Harber and William Henry Schuetze to the Lena Delta to search for any traces of the lost explorers, particularly of Chipp's party.

Weather and bureaucracy delayed them for a year; in November 1883 the bodies were taken from Yakutsk by train to Moscow, Berlin, and finally Hamburg, from where they were transported to New York City by SS Frisia in February 1884.

[170][171] The sculpture Serenity by Josep Clarà i Ayats was placed in 1924 in Washington, D.C.'s Meridian Hill Park in memory of Schuetze by his friend and Naval Academy classmate Charles Deering.