page_title: USS Jeannette (1878)
section_title: Polar expedition
hierarchical_section_title: USS Jeannette (1878) / Service history / Polar expedition
caption_attribution_description: English: Abandoning the Arctic Exploration Ship Jeanette on June 12th 1891, by James Gale Tyler. A time-line of the expedition illustrates the enormity of the challenge the men faced. Publisher James Gordon Bennett, Jr. purchased the ship, previously the HMS Pandora, and allied with the U.S. Government to fund the expedition. The Jeanette left San Francisco on July 8, 1879 and was held fast in ice east of Wrangell Island by September. The ship drifted northwest in the ice for the rest of 1879, all of 1880 and landed at an island they named Henrietta Island, in honor of Bennett, on May 9, 1881. This was more than 600 miles from where they first became stuck. While trapped, the men led by Lieut. Commander George W. DeLong, Assistant Surgeon James Ambler, Lieut. Charles Chipp and Chief Engineer George W. Melville battled hunger and fierce atmospheric conditions, all while conducting their scientific assignments, hunting, and maintaining their ship. In June 1881 the ice began to part, and hope surfaced that they might steam clear, but on June 12th the flows closed in with force and crushed the Jeanette, sinking her in less than one day. Shown here, the men pulled their meager supplies and three boats off the ship and prepared to make a 700-mile trek toward open water on the north Siberian Coast near the Lena River Delta. After almost three months, they reached the ocean and set out in the boats. Separated soon after by a storm, Chipp’s boat was lost, DeLong’s went off course and only one boat led by Melville found safety with local inhabitants. Two of DeLong’s group, Seamen Noros and Nindemann, managed to survive by setting out to find help for them all. Melville later returned to the Siberian Arctic to search for his lost captain, and found their last camp and the written journals DeLong had kept the entire trip, along with many sketches. Provenance: India House, New York
context_page_description: USS Jeannette was a naval exploration vessel which, commanded by George W. De Long, undertook the Jeannette expedition of 1879–1881 to the Arctic. After being trapped in the ice and drifting for almost two years, the ship and her crew of 33 were released from the ice, then trapped again, crushed and sunk some 300 nautical miles north of the Siberian coast. The entire crew survived the sinking, but 11 died while sailing towards land in a small cutter. The others reached Siberia, but nine subsequently perished in the Lena Delta, including De Long.
  The vessel had begun her active career in 1861 as HMS Pandora, a Royal Navy gunboat. After more than a decade's service off the West African coast and in the Mediterranean, Pandora was retired from duty and sold as a private yacht to a British explorer, Allen Young. Young took her on two voyages to the Arctic, in 1875 and 1876, before selling her to James Gordon Bennett Jr., proprietor of The New York Herald, who changed her name to Jeannette. Although she sailed to the Arctic under the U.S. flag as USS Jeannette, subject to naval laws and discipline, Bennett remained responsible for the costs of the expedition.
context_section_description: Bennett's plan was to sail a vessel through the Bering Strait, on the theory that the warm Pacific Ocean current known as the Kuro Siwo would provide a "thermometric gateway" whereby a suitable ship might reach the North Pole. This was the primary objective, but the ship was also equipped for scientific observation. By agreement with the U.S. Department of the Navy, Bennett would finance the expedition, but would sail under naval laws and discipline, and would be commanded by a naval officer, George W. De Long. Pandora was renamed Jeannette, after Bennett's sister, and in January 1879 arrived at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, to be fitted for Arctic service.
  Jeannette departed San Francisco on 8 July 1879. She sent her last communication to Washington from Saint Lawrence Bay, Chukotka, on 27 August. Shortly afterwards she encountered ice, of increasing severity as she pushed her way forward to Herald Island. On 7 September, she was caught fast in the ice at 71°35′N 175°6′E. For the next 21 months, Jeannette drifted in an erratic fashion, generally to the northwest but frequently doubling back on herself.
  In May 1881, two islands were discovered, which De Long named Henrietta Island—after Bennett's mother—and Jeannette Island. On the night of 12 June, when they had reached 77°15′N 155°0′E, the pressure of the ice finally began to crush the Jeannette. De Long and his men unloaded provisions and equipment onto the ice, and watched as the ship continued moaning through the night and finally disappeared beneath the water in the early morning of June 13.
  The expedition began the long trek to the Siberian coast, hauling their sledges with boats and supplies. On their way they discovered a further island which they named Bennett Island in honor of the expedition's sponsor. After reaching the New Siberian Islands and gaining some food and rest, the party took to their three boats on September 12 for the last stage of their journey to the Lena Delta, their planned landfall. As a violent storm blew up, one of the boats—with lieutenant Charles W. Chipp and seven men—capsized and sank. The other two craft, commanded by De Long and chief engineer George W. Melville with 14 and 11 men respectively, survived the severe weather but landed at widely separated points on the delta.
  The party headed by De Long began the long march inland over the marshy, half-frozen delta to hoped-for native settlements. After much hardship, with many of his men severely weakened, De Long sent the two strongest, William F. C. Nindemann and Louis P. Noros, ahead for help; they eventually found a settlement and survived. De Long and his 11 companions died of cold and starvation. In the meantime, on the other side of the delta, Melville and his party had found a native village and were rescued. Melville persuaded a group of locals to help him search for his commander. He succeeded in finding their landing place on the delta, and recovered De Long's logbook and other important records but returned without locating the De Long group. In the following spring, Melville set out again, and found the bodies of De Long and his companions on 23 March 1882.
  On 18 June 1884, wreckage from Jeannette was found on an ice floe near Julianehåb, near the south-western corner of Greenland. This indicated that an ocean current flowed from east to west across the polar sea. It gave the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen the idea that a properly-constructed ship could enter the ice in the east, survive the pressure during the drift, and emerge in the Atlantic, perhaps having traversed the pole itself. This theory was the basis of Nansen's Fram expedition of 1893–1896.
  Although the open Polar Sea theory ended with Jeannette's voyage, the ship's meteorological and oceanographic records have provided 21st-century climatologists with valuable data relating to climate change and the shrinking of the polar icecap.
caption: Abandoning Jeannette
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