USS Jeannette ( 1878 ) The first USS " Jeannette was originally HMS " Pandora , a " Philomel " - class gunvessel of the Royal Navy , and was purchased in 1875 by Sir Allen Young for his arctic voyages in 1875 - 1876 . 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 to the expedition , and Lieutenant Commander George W . DeLong — a veteran Arctic explorer — accompanied Bennett to Europe to select a ship . After " 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 the Arctic icepack . Although privately owned , " Jeannette " was to sail under orders of the Navy , subject to naval laws and discipline . The crew consisted of 30 officers and men , and three civilians . The ship contained the latest in scientific equipment ; 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 on 8 July 1879 , the Secretary of the Navy having added to her original instructions the task of searching for the long - overdue Swedish polar expedition of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld ( whose ship " Vega " had successfully traversed the Northeast Passage ) . " Jeannette " pushed northward to Alaska ' s Norton Sound and sent her last communication to Washington before starting north from St . Lawrence Bay , Siberia on 27 August . Under Lt . Cdr . DeLong ' s direction the ship sailed across the Chukchi Sea and sighted Herald Island on 4 September . Soon afterward she was caught fast in the ice pack near Wrangel Island at . For the next 21 months , " 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 " when they had reached . 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 sledges with boats and supplies . After reaching several small islands in the Siberian group and gaining some food and rest , they took to their three boats on 12 September in hope of reaching the mainland . As a violent storm blew up , one of the boats ( with Lt . Charles W . Chipp and seven men ) capsized and sank . The other two , commanded by DeLong and Chief Engineer George W . Melville with respectively 14 and 11 men , 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 , William F . C . Nindemann and Louis P . Noros , ahead for help ; they eventually found a settlement and survived . DeLong and his 11 other 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 , Nindemann and Noros , 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 on 27 November without locating the DeLong group . Keeping only two of his party , Melville then turned northward once more , and finally found the bodies of DeLong and two of his companions on 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 on 5 July 1882 , almost three 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 . Search and rescue efforts included those with the revenue cutter " Thomas Corwin " and former steam whaler , . They established that the " Jeannette " had been seen , in good condition and steaming west ; that she had not landed parties on Herald or Wrangell Island ; and that no survivors had come ashore within reach of their shore searches . A party from the " Rodgers " , upon reaching Srednekolymsk received word of the landing of the " Jeannette " survivors in the Lena delta ; this party then traveled to join the " Jeannette " survivors . On June 18 , 1884 , wreckage from " Jeannette " was found on an ice floe near Julianehåb ( now Qaqortoq ) near the southern tip of Greenland ( ) . This suggested to Fridtjof Nansen the hypothesis that the ice of the Arctic Ocean was in constant motion from the Siberian coast to the American coast . To prove this , Nansen planned and executed the " Fram " expedition 1893 - 1896 , which confirmed the motion of the Arctic sea - ice .