HMS Resolute (1850)

HMS Resolute adalah sebuah kapal layar jenis barque pertengahan kurun ke-19 yang dioperasikan oleh Tentera Laut Diraja. Kapal ini dibuat khas bagi tujuan penjelajahan di Artik.  Resolute telah terperangkap di dalam ais dan ditinggalkan pada tahun 1854. Ia kemudian ditemui oleh nelayan ikan paus Amerika dan dikembalikan kepada Ratu Victoria pada tahun 1856. Kayu daripada kapal ini kemudian digunakan untuk membina sebuah meja yang mana kemudian dihadiahkan kepada Presiden Amerika Syarikat.

Sejarah
Ekoran kebimbangan akan nasib ekspedisi Artik yang dilakukan oleh Sir John Franklin, yang mana telah belayar daripada Britain pada tahun 1845 bagi mencari Laluan Barat Laut dan tiada sebarang berita diterima, menjelang tahun 1848 kerajaan Britian mula menghantar ekspedisi mencarinya. Beberapa kapal perang sedia ada adalah sesuai digunakan, enam buah kapal dagang dibeli antara tahun 1848 dan 1850 dan ditukarkan menjadi kapal ekspedisi: dua buah kapal stim, HMS Pioneer dan HMS Intrepid, manakala empat buah lagi (Resolute, Assistance, Enterprise dan Investigator) menjadi kapal layar yang mampu belayar di laut. Kapal pertama yang dihantar untuk membantu Franklin adalah HMS Herald, Kapten Henry Kellett. Herald menggunakan Selat Bering untuk mencari di pesisiran barat di Artik Kanada. Pada tahun 1850, HMS Investigator, Kapten McClure, dan HMS Enterprise, Kapten Collinson dihantar ke Artik dari arah barat.

Resolute dahulunya adalah sebuah kapal barque bernama Ptarmigan yang telah dibeli pada 21 Februari 1850 dan dinamakan semula sebagai HMS Resolute sebulan kemudian. Kapal ini disediakan untuk perkhidmatan Artik oleh limbungan kapal awam Blackwall, Limbungan Blackwall, dengan kayu keras, sistem pemanas dalaman, dan sebuah kepala beruang kutub di haluannya.

Pada tahun 1850-51 Resolute (kapal armada), Assistance, Pioneer dan Intrepid, membuat pencarian di timur Artik di bawah arahan Horatio Thomas Austin. Satu-satunya jejak positif dari Franklin yang ditemui oleh mereka adalah tinggalan kem musim sejuk pertama mereka di Pulau Beechey.

Semasa bulan-bulan musim sejuk, bermula Oktober 1850-Mac 1851, Second Master George F. McDougall, dari Resolute dan Leftenan Sherard Osborn dari Intrepid menyiarkan sekurang-kurangnya lima buah akhbar bertulisan tangan, The Illustrated Arctic News, yang mana para penyunting mengenalpasti sebagai "Selat Barrow". Selepas kembalinya Resolute ke pelabuhan asal di England, kertas manuskrip ini telah dicetak di London pada tahun 1852. Atwood (1997) merujuk salinan manuskrip ini di kedua-dua Muzium British dan Institut Penyelidikan Kutub Scott, Cambridge.

Ekspedisi Belcher
After returning to England all four of Austin's vessels were re-provisioned and put under the command of Sir Edward Belcher. The Belcher Expedition was augmented by the addition of a fifth ship: North Star, which was to stay at Beechey Island as a depot ship. Belcher's orders had two objectives: to find Franklin, or evidence about what happened to him by broadening the search in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, and to split this expedition at Beechey Island so that Resolute and Intrepid could head West to search for Franklin there, as well as to find and resupply Investigator and Enterprise. The expedition left England in April 1852, crossed Baffin Bay westward in August 1852. After the rendezvous of the five ships at Beechey Island the squadron was split. The flagship Assistance and her steam tender, Pioneer, headed north up Wellington Channel. Resolute, then under Captain Kellett, and her steam tender, Intrepid, headed west. North Star stayed at Beechy Island. Of the seven Royal Navy ships in the Arctic in 1852, only Enterprise found any trace of Franklin, his officers and men, or his two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror: they found a small quantity of timber on the eastern coast of Victoria Island.

Resolute set up her first winter camp, cutting a dock into the stationary land ice of Dealy Island near the north shore of Viscount Melville Sound.  During the spring and summer of 1853, Resolute and Intrepid sledged far and wide searching for clues to Franklin's whereabouts and to hopefully locate Investigator and Enterprise. They found neither Franklin or Enterprise, but did succeed in finding and rescuing Captain McClure and the officers and men of her crew in April 1853, upon their ice-bound ship, HMS Investigator. Captain Kellett ordered McClure to abandon Investigator because she had been and continued to be hopelessly frozen in ice since 1850, without any spring or summer thaw releasing her, and this had caused severe hardship for the men because they had been on reduced rations for over a year.  Before winter set in, and while the ice was still open at Dealy Island, The 1852-3 winter camp was broken up, and Resolute and Intrepid sailed eastward. In August 1853, a cold front caused the open passage to freeze up, and Resolute became encased in the floe ice. Since the flow direction of the water, and therefore the ice was from the west to the east, Resolute moved east at about 1.5 knots per day. They prepared Resolute for the winter, stowing all her sails, and upper rigging below. Resolute was still beset by this floe ice in the spring of 1854. In April, Belcher ordered Captain Kellett to abandon Resolute. Only under protest did Kellett do so. He prepared the ship the way he would for winter: taking all her rigging down below except for the very lowest sections of the mast, shipping the rudder, and caulking all the hatches. In May, Captain Kellett left Resolute locked in the slowly moving floe ice, and led his men in a hard march across the ice to reach other ships of the expedition at Beechy Island.  Their number included the officers and crew of Investigator who had been rescued by Kellett in the spring of 1853, and the men from Intrepid, as well as Resolute.

Two of the other main vessels of Belcher's fleet were also abandoned, the flagship Assistance and her steam tender, Pioneer. Belcher, and the Assistances and Pioneers arrived at Beechey Island from May–August 1854. The men were divided between North Star and two relief ships: HMS Phoenix and HMS Talbot, which arrived at Beechey Island just as the overcrowded North Star was about to sail. They all left Beechy Island on 29 August 1854.

The British Government announced in The London Gazette that the ships, including Resolute, were still Her Majesty's property, but no salvage was attempted.

On 10 September 1855, the abandoned Resolute was found adrift by the American whaler George Henry, captained by James Buddington of Groton, Connecticut. in an ice floe off Cape Walsingham of Baffin Island, some  from where she had been abandoned. An October 1856 New York Journal relates Captain Buddington and crew's encounter:  
 Buddington split his crew, and took 13 men with him on Resolute. He arrived home in New London Connecticut, on Christmas Eve.

Although most of the expeditions seeking the lost Franklin expedition before 1856 were funded by either the British government or by public subscription from within the British Empire, two expeditions were funded by Henry Grinnell, a New York merchant and shipowner who had grown up in New Bedford, with additional United States government assistance. Senator James Mason, Virginia, presented Congress with the bill to restore Resolute and return her to England as a gesture of "national courtesy". Grinnell wrote in support of this bill. The United States Congress bought her for $40,000 and then had her refitted and sailed to England under the command of Commander Henry J. Hartstene, where she was presented to Queen Victoria on 13 December 1856 as a token of comity.

Both Grinnell and Lady Jane Franklin had hoped that the restored Resolute would be employed for a further search for the Franklin expedition, but evidence found by John Rae having proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the men were all dead, the British government declined. Instead, Lady Franklin organised another private expedition under Francis Leopold McClintock, which in 1859 located the only written account of the fate of Franklin.

Resolute served in the Royal Navy from 1856, never leaving home waters, until she was retired and broken up in 1879. The Canadian settlement of Resolute, Nunavut, is named for Resolute. In March 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented US President Barack Obama with the framed commission of Resolute, and a pen holder made from the wood of another Royal Navy ship, .

Meja Resolute

Kerajaan Britain telah memesan sekurang-kurangnya tiga buah meja yang diperbuat daripada kayu kapal ini, dan meja-meja ini telah dibina oleh pembuat kabinet dari Joiner's Shop di Limbungan Chatham. Sebuah meja pasangan yang besar telah dihadiahkan kepada Presiden A.S Rutherford B. Hayes pada tahun 1880 sebagai tanda terima kasih di atas penyelamatan dan pengembalian kapal Resolute. Sejak itu, meja ini dikenali sebagai meja Resolute - dan digunakan oleh setiap Presiden Amerika kecuali Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon dan Gerald Ford. Meskipun kebanyakan presiden menggunakannya sebagai meja rasmi di Pejabat Oval, terdapat beberapa keadaan di mana ia telah digunakan sebagai sebuah meja peribadi di Kediaman Eksekutif.  Dwight D. Eisenhower merupakan presiden pertama yang memindahkan meja ini dari Pejabat Oval, dan dikembalikan semula oleh John F. Kennedy dan kemudian oleh Jimmy Carter.

Meja kedua yang dikenali sebagai Meja Grinnell atau Meja Ratu Victoria, juga telah dibuat daripada kayu bekas kapal HMS Resolute. Meja yang lebih kecil ini diserahkan oleh janda kepada Henry Grinnell pada tahun 1880 bagi menghargai sumbangan dan kemurahan hati suami beliau dalam pencarian Franklin. Pada tahun 1983, ia telah diserahkan kepada Muzium Paus New Bedford dan kini merupakan sebahagian daripada kpleksi mereka yang terletak di New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Meja ketiga atau lebih kepada sebuah meja tulis, telah diserahkan kepada Ratu Victoria; ia kekal menjadi sebahagian daripada Koleksi Diraja dan kini berada dalam pinjaman jangka panjang kepada Muzium Tentera Laut Diraja di Portsmouth.

HMS Resolute dalam media popular 
Sebuah novel pada tahun 2007 berkenaan HMS Resolute ditulis oleh Elizabeth Matthews adalah berkenaan dengan penemuan Resolute oleh nelayan ikan paus bernama George Henry.
HMS Resolute merupakan sebahagian daripada plot jalan cerita dalam filem  National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Kaitan di antara dua buah meja ini menyerlahkan sebuah rahsia yang disembunyikan dalam versi Patung Liberty di Île aux Cygnes, Paris, Perancis. Anekdot "These twins stand resolute to preserve what we are looking for" merujuk kepada kembar meja Resolute yang diperbuat daripada kayu kayan kapal, di mana sebuah darinya terletak di Rumah Putih manakala sebuah lagi di Muzium Tentera Laut Diraja di Portsmouth (meskipun di dalam filem ini meja ini terletak di Istana Buckingham).
Buku berjudul Resolute, ditulis oleh Martin Sandler dilengkapi dengan fakta-fakta sejarah kesemua penjelajahan berbeza yang dilakukan oleh John Franklin, dengan Resolute adalah satu di antaranya.

Rujukan

Bacaan lanjut
Roderic Owen (1978). The Fate of Franklin, Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-131190-X.
John Brown, F.R.G.S. (1860). The North-West Passage and the Plans for the Search for Sir John Franklin: A Review with maps, &c., Second Edition with a Sequel Including the Voyage of the “Fox” London, E. Stanford, 1860.
Sherard Osborn and George F. McDougall, eds. (1852) Facsimile of the Illustrated Arctic News, Published on Board H.M.S. Resolute, Captain Horatio T. Austin, C.B., In Search of the Expedition Under Sir John Franklin (London, Ackerman, 1852).
Sandler, Martin W. (2006). Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship. ISBN 9781402758614

Pautan luar

Kapal Tentera Laut Diraja
Kapal laut era Victoria di United Kingdom
Kapal penjelajahan dari United Kingdom
Pulau Baffin
Kapal buatan Tyne
Kapal penjelajahan Artik
Kemalangan maritim pada tahun 1854
Kapal hantu