The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1883-01-05
THE JEANETTE STORY.
Heroic Utterances of De Long, Recorded In
HI. journal, Now Made Public.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29.-De Longs re-
port, found beside his dead body, has been
made public. 1t makes $4,000 words. 1t
details incidents of the cruise from the de-
parture from San Francisco, 1879, to Janua'
~, 1881. Its principal feature is the elabo-
rate account of De Longs views In regard to
the expedition. He considered II good
judgment to head for Wrangle Land. His
idea was to adopt that Land as a support OF
the first winters campaign. He emoodies
tie story Of how land was first sighted, and
how he expected to reach 1t; graphically de-
scribes how, on the next day, the Jeanette
became beset in ice never again to be re-
lieved, and says the "party was compelled to
make virtue of necessity and stay where
we were." Sometimes all hight, and some
times day and night, from January 10th to
February 4th, Swsetman and Ninderman
stayed down in the fsrepeak, icy water flow
ing around them nearly to their knees,
working faithfully until their work was &C.
complished, and the good results of that
work evident in the gradually reduced
amount Of water coming into the ship, and
our ability to control the leak without such
a ruinous expenditure of fuel as had been
necessary heretofore. For these reasons l
have had the honor to recommend these two
men to you for medals of honor, as a recog-
milton of their heroic conduct under the
NEST trying circumstances. Captain De-
Longs report Of the remainder of the winter
and summer Of 1880 is for the most part q
monotonous record of storms, ice movement,
constant anxiety and almost unbroken dis
drew to close without setting the Jeanette
free, and another dreary winter approached,
Captain belong evidently began to revolve
in his mind the question whether it would
not be better to abandon the ship and make
for the northern coast of Siberia over the ice
than run the risk of a second winter in the
pack. Under date of Sept. 10, 1880, he says:
81 dislike naturally to dwell on the idea of
the abandonment of the ship. We have
come through so much 1t gives me hopes Of
surviving more. As long as enough of the
ship remains to shelter us, sticking by that is
preferable to camping on the ice, and ! can
conceive of no greater forloIn hope than an
attempt to reach Siberia, say 240 miles dis
tant, over the ice that surrounds us, and with
a winters cold sapping ones life at every
step. OF course, if we were to lose our ship,
we would make the effort to get there, but
our chances of success would be extremely
problemat;cal." The last entry on record is
dated December 81, 1880, as follows: "Min-
strels are ringing in the new year, in latitude
70 degrees As minutes north, longitude 1T
degrees 32 minutes east. During the past
sixteen months we have drifted 1900 miles,
far enough, if it had been in a straight line,
to carry us to and beyond the Pole, but we
are yet only 220 miles northwest of where
we were first beset. We have suffered inju-
ry, and danger often confronted us; we have
been squeezed and jammed, tossed and tum.
bled; we pumped the leaking ship for a year,
but are not yet daunted, and as ready to
dare everything as ever, and we face the new
year, firmly hoping to do something worthy
of ourselves, Of Benefits enterprise, and Of
the flag above u.s."
In less than ten months after these words
were written, the Jeanette was at the bot
tom of the ocean and belong lay dead on
the Lena Delta.