Information about Uss Jeannette (1878)

USS Jeannette
Career
Launched:	1861
Purchased:	1878
Fate:	sunk, 13 June 1881
General Characteristics
Displacement:
Length:	142 ft (43 m)
Beam:	25 ft (7.6 m)
Draft:	13 ft (4.0 m)
Propulsion:
Speed:
Complement:	28 officers and men

USS Jeannette was originally HMS Pandora, a gunboat in the Royal Navy, and was purchased in 1875 by Sir Allan Young for his arctic voyages. The ship was purchased in 1878 by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald; and renamed Jeannette. Bennett was an arctic enthusiast, and he obtained the cooperation and assistance of the government in fitting out an expedition to the North Pole through the Bering Strait.

Detailing and Fitting

In March Congress authorized the detailing of naval officers on the voyage, and Lt. George W. DeLong, a veteran arctic explorer, accompanied Bennett to Europe to select a ship. When Jeannette was chosen and named, DeLong sailed her from Le Havre to San Francisco, California during the summer and fall of 1878.

At Mare Island Naval Shipyard Jeannette was fitted with new boilers and other equipment. Her hull was massively reinforced to allow her to navigate in the Arctic icepack. Jeannette was to sail under the orders of the Navy and subject to naval laws and discipline, even though privately owned. The crew consisted of 30 officers and men and 3 civilians. The ship contained the latest in scientific equipment; and, in addition to reaching the Pole through Bering Strait, scientific observation ranked high among the expedition's list of goals.

Arctic Voyage

Jeannette departed San Francisco 8 July 1879, the Secretary of the Navy having added to her original instructions the task of searching for another polar expedition long overdue in Vega. She pushed northward to Alaska's Norton Sound and sent her last communication to Washington before starting north from St. Lawrence Bay, Siberia, 27 August.

The ship sighted Herald Island 4 September and soon afterward was caught fast in the ice pack near Wrangel Island. For the next 21 months the sturdy Jeannette drifted to the northwest, ever-closer to DeLong's goal, the North Pole itself. He described in his journal the important scientific records kept by the party: "A full meteorological record is kept, soundings are taken, astronomical observations made and positions computed, dip and declination of the needle observed and recorded… everything we can do is done as faithfully, as strictly, as mathematically as if we were at the Pole itself, or the lives of millions depended on our adherence to routine." In May 1881 two islands were discovered and named Jeannette and Henrietta. In June, Bennett Island was discovered and claimed for the U.S. On the night of 12 June the pressure of the ice finally began to crush Jeannette. DeLong and his men unloaded provisions and equipment onto the ice pack and the ship sank the following morning.

Abandonment and Trek to Siberia

The expedition now faced a long trek to the Siberian coast, with little hope even then of rescue. Nonetheless they started off for the Lena Delta hauling their boats and supplies. After reaching several small islands in the Siberian group and gaining some food and rest, they took to their boats 12 September in hope of reaching the mainland. As a violent storm blew up, one of the boats capsized and sank. The other two, commanded by DeLong and Chief Engineer George W. Melville, survived the severe weather but landed at widely separated points on the delta.

The party headed by DeLong began the long march inland over the marshy, half-frozen delta to hoped-for native settlements, and one by one the men died from starvation and exposure. Finally DeLong sent the two strongest ahead for help; and, though they eventually found a settlement, DeLong and his companions died on the Siberian tundra.

In the meantime, the intrepid Melville and his party had found a native village on the other side of the delta and were rescued. Melville then started for Belun, a Russian outpost, where he found the two survivors of DeLong's boat and induced a group of natives to go with him in search of his commander. He succeeded in finding their landing place on the Lena and recovered Jeannette's log and other important records, but returned to Belun 27 November without locating DeLong. Keeping only two of his party, Melville then turned northward once more, and finally found the bodies of DeLong and his two companions 23 March 1882. He built a large cairn over the grave of his friends, a monument which has been reproduced in granite and marble at the United States Naval Academy.

Aftermath

Before leaving Siberia, Melville made an attempt to find the remains of Jeannette's third boat, even though the chance of survivors was slim. He returned disappointed to Irkutsk, the capital of Siberia, 5 July 1882, almost 3 years since his departure from San Francisco in Jeannette. The results of the expedition, both meteorological and geographic, were important. Melville was rightly honored for his courage and tenacity, and the name of George Washington DeLong is considered among the ranks of the Navy's explorer heroes.

A number of search and rescue efforts were attempted, including those with the cutter, Corwin, and steam whaler, Rodgers.

Long after the event, wreckage from the Jeannette was found on the American side of the Arctic Ocean. The prompted Fridtjof Nansen to hypothesize that the ice of the Arctic Ocean was in constant motion from the Siberian coast to the American coast. To prove this hypothesis, Nansen planned and executed the Fram expedition, which confirmed the motion of the Arctic sea-ice.

See USS Jeannette for other ships of the same name.

Sketches from the expedition

Jeannette Island

Henrietta Island

Bennett Island

References

Edward Ellsberg, Hell on Ice; The Saga of the Jeannette (New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1938).

George Melville, In the Lena Delta: a narrative of the search for Lieut.-Commander De Long and his companions, followed by an account of the Greely relief expedition and a proposed method of reaching the North Pole (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885).

William Henry Arnoux, The Jeannette investigation - argument of Wm. H. Arnoux, in defense of Capt. De Long and the other officers of the Jeannette Exploring Expedition, and of the court of inquiry for the House Naval Committee. (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1884).

Raymond Lee Newcomb, Our lost explorers: the narrative of the Jeannette Arctic expedition as related by the survivors, and in the records and last journals of Lieutenant De Long (Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1883, c1882).

United States Navy. Court of Inquiry (Jeannette (Ship) : 1882) Proceedings of a court of inquiry convened at the Navy Department, Washington D.C., October 5, 1885, in pursuance of a joint resolution of Congress approved August 8, 1882 to investigate the circumstances of the loss in the Arctic seas of the exploring steamer "Jeannette," etc. (Washington : G. P. O., 1883)

George W. De Long, The voyage of the Jeannette: the ship and ice journals of George W. De Long, Lieutenant-commander U.S.N., and commander of the Polar expedition of 1879-1881 / edited by his wife, Emma De Long (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883).

Clive Holland (ed.), Farthest North: the quest for the North Pole (London: Robinson, 1994).

Richard C. Davis (ed.), Lobsticks and stone cairns: human landmarks in the Arctic (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1996).

External links

• history.navy.mil/danfs: USS Jeannette
• history.navy.mil/photos: USS Jeannette
• "A Lengthy Deployment: The Jeannette Expedition in Arctic Waters"

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