The Jeannette expedition of 1879–1881, officially called the U.S. Arctic Expedition, was an attempt led by George W. De Long to reach the North Pole by pioneering a route from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait. The premise was that a temperate current, the Kuro Siwo, flowed northwards into the strait, providing a gateway to the hypothesized Open Polar Sea and thus to the pole.
This theory proved illusory; the expedition's ship, USS Jeannette and its crew of thirty-three men, was trapped by ice and drifted for nearly two years before she was crushed and sunk north of the Siberian coast. De Long then led his men on a perilous journey by sled, dragging the Jeannette's whaleboat and two cutters, eventually switching to these small boats to sail for the Lena Delta in Siberia. During this journey, and in the subsequent weeks of wandering in Siberia before rescue, twenty of the ship's complement died, including De Long.
The chief exponent of the theory of a warm-water gateway to the North Pole was the German cartographer August Petermann. He encouraged James Gordon Bennett Jr., the proprietor of The New York Herald, to finance a polar expedition based on the untried Pacific route. Bennett acquired a former Royal Navy gunboat, Pandora, and changed her name to Jeannette. De Long, whom Bennett chose to lead the expedition, was a serving United States Navy officer with previous Arctic experience. Although essentially a private venture, in which Bennett paid all the bills, the expedition had the full support of the U.S. government. Before departure the ship was commissioned into the U.S. Navy as USS Jeannette, and sailed under navy laws and discipline.
Before its demise, the expedition discovered new islands—the De Long Islands—and collected valuable meteorological and oceanographic data. Although Jeannette's fate demolished the widely believed Open Polar Sea theory, the appearance in 1884 of debris from the wreck on the south-west coast of Greenland indicated the existence of an ocean current moving the permanent Arctic ice from east to west. This discovery inspired Fridtjof Nansen to mount his Fram expedition nine years later. A monument to the Jeannette's dead was erected at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1890.
Background
Early Arctic exploration
European exploration of the Arctic regions began in the 16th century, with searches for new routes to the Pacific via the Northeast and Northwest passages. The English sea explorer Henry Hudson, namesake of the Hudson River, is presumed to have died in Hudson Bay in 1611 while trying to find the Northwest Passage. The possibility of a third route, directly across the North Pole, was raised by early geographer Richard Hakluyt. The early explorers had little success in finding these routes, but made important geographical discoveries. In time, the search for trade routes became secondary to the prestige objective of reaching the North Pole itself, or at least of registering a "Farthest North". In 1773, a British naval expedition under captain Constantine Phipps sought a route to the pole from the Seven Islands, but found the way impassably blocked by ice. On May 28, 1806, whaling captain William Scoresby achieved a new record northern latitude of 81°30' to the north of Svalbard before being stopped by ice.
The prevalent theory of polar geography throughout this period was that of a temperate "Open Polar Sea" surrounding the North Pole. The observable southward drift of Arctic ice was thought to result from the "pushing" effect of this warmer water. According to the historian Hampton Sides, despite the lack of scientific evidence the theory "gathered a logic of its own ... No amount of contrary evidence could dislodge it from the collective imagination". The fact that all northbound voyages had, sooner or later, been stopped by ice was rationalized through a belief that the undiscovered sea was encircled in a ring or "annulus" of ice which, it was thought, could be penetrated via one of several warm-water gateways or portals. The initial quest for the North Pole thus became a search for one of these portals.
After British naval expeditions in 1818 and 1827–1828 had probed north of Spitsbergen and found no sign of the supposed polar sea, the quest was in abeyance for twenty-five years. In the 1850s, the search for the lost Franklin expedition generated a rash of incursions into the Canadian Arctic. From these forays, particularly that of Edward Augustus Inglefield in 1852, emerged the theory that Smith Sound, a northerly channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, was one of the fabled gateways to the polar sea. This brought a succession of expeditions to this area: Elisha Kane in 1853–1855, Isaac Israel Hayes in 1860–1861, Charles Francis Hall in 1872–1874, and George Nares in 1875–1876. No gateway was found, although both Kane and Hayes claimed, mistakenly, to have seen the Open Polar Sea from a distance.
August Petermann
The Smith Sound route was not favored by everyone; among those who rejected it was leading cartographer August Petermann from Germany, widely known as the "Sage of Gotha." A firm believer in the Open Polar Sea theory, Petermann believed that the most likely portal would be found by following the Gulf Stream, which swept up the coast of Norway to the unexplored Arctic regions. He thought the current would weaken or even penetrate the protective ice ring, and that a sturdily-built steamer following the course of the stream might thus be able to break through into the supposed polar sea.
After two expeditions sponsored by Petermann—the German North Polar Expedition of 1869 led by Carl Koldewey, and the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1872 under Karl Weyprecht and Julius von Payer—had followed separate branches of the Gulf Stream but ultimately failed to break through the ice, Petermann grew dispirited. In the year before he took his own life in 1878 he transferred his advocacy to the Kuro Siwo, a Pacific Ocean current analyzed in the 1850s by the hydrographer Silas Bent. Petermann followed Bent in believing that a branch of the Kuro Siwo flowed through the Bering Strait and might be powerful enough to create a path to the polar sea. At the time no one had attempted to reach the polar sea by this route.
George W. De Long
In July 1873, the United States Navy dispatched USS Juniata to Greenland, to search for survivors from the Polaris expedition, which had disintegrated after the death of its leader, Charles Francis Hall. Juniata's second-in-command was George W. De Long, a 28-year-old graduate of the United States Naval Academy, making his first visit to the Arctic. Ice conditions prevented Juniata from advancing beyond Upernavik; De Long volunteered to take the ship's tender, a small steamer named Little Juniata, in the hope of finding survivors at Cape York, a further 400 nautical miles (740 km) north.
The attempt failed; Little Juniata faced extreme weather conditions and was forced to retreat a few miles from Cape York. De Long returned to Juniata in mid-August, having found no trace of the Polaris crew—who had meanwhile been rescued by the Scottish whaler SS Ravenscraig—but the experience had profoundly affected his outlook. Having earlier described the Greenland coast in a letter to his wife Emma as "a dreary land of desolation ... I hope I may never find myself cast away in such a perfectly God-forsaken place," he returned home captivated by the Arctic. Emma wrote: "The polar virus was in his blood and would not let him rest".
The abortive Little Juniata mission brought De Long to public notice, and he saw himself as a possible leader of the next U.S. Arctic expedition. He approached Henry Grinnell, a philanthropic shipping magnate who had funded several previous expeditions. Grinnell was not prepared to offer financial support, instead advising De Long to approach James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner and publisher of The New York Herald and a known sponsor of bold schemes. De Long met Bennett in New York City early in 1874; the newspaperman was impressed by De Long, and assured him that his Arctic ambitions would have the enthusiastic support of the Herald. In the meantime De Long had applied to the U.S. Department of the Navy for an Arctic command, a request that he was informed would "receive due attention."
James Gordon Bennett Jr.
James Gordon Bennett Jr. had succeeded his father as proprietor of the Herald in 1866. He had won renown in 1872, when his reporter Henry Morton Stanley, sent by Bennett to Africa in search of the British missionary-explorer David Livingstone, cabled that Livingstone had been found. Bennett knew the news value of Arctic exploration; two Herald reporters had accompanied Juniata, and in 1874 Bennett was helping to fund British sailor Allen Young and his decommissioned former gunboat Pandora, on one of the final Franklin searches.
Bennett was interested in Petermann's theories, and in 1877 traveled to Gotha to discuss possible Arctic routes with the geographer. Petermann thought that as well as providing the best path to the pole, passage through the Bering Strait using the Kuro Siwo would enable investigation of the unexplored, barely glimpsed land mass known since 1867 as "Wrangel's Land". He theorized that this land formed part of a transpolar continent, connected to Greenland; if so, it might provide an alternative, land-based route to the pole should the expedition fail to find a portal to the polar sea. "My idea", he told Bennett, "is that if one door will not open, try another". He offered Bennett full use of his maps and charts.
Petermann's advice convinced Bennett that a new American polar venture should go ahead. On his return from Gotha, he cabled De Long requesting him to seek leave of absence from the Navy, and to begin the search for a ship suitable for Arctic exploration using Petermann's Bering Strait route.
Preparation
Ship
As no suitable ship was available in the U.S., De Long went to England, where he found Young's Pandora on offer at $6,000. The vessel's Arctic pedigree made it seem ideal, but Young's hesitancy about selling delayed the purchase until late 1877. At Bennett's instigation, Congress passed legislation that gave the Navy Department full control over the expedition; it would fly the American flag and the crew would be engaged by the Navy and would be subject to naval discipline. Bennett remained responsible for financing the enterprise, and undertook to reimburse the government for all costs incurred. Meanwhile, De Long was released from active duty to oversee Pandora's refit in England.
In June 1878, after a thorough overhaul at Deptford on the Thames Estuary, Pandora sailed to Le Havre in France where, on July 4, she was renamed Jeannette, after Bennett's sister who performed the ceremony. On July 15, the ship, manned by De Long and a small crew, sailed from Le Havre to begin the 18,000-nautical-mile (33,000 km) voyage to San Francisco, the port from which the Arctic expedition was to sail. They arrived on December 27, 1878, and transferred Jeannette to Mare Island Naval Shipyard to undergo further work in readiness for a prolonged journey in the Arctic ice.
De Long spent much of the early part of 1879 in Washington, D.C., promoting the expedition among officials, searching for appropriate crew members, and harrying Navy Secretary Richard W. Thompson for practical support. His requests included the use of a supply ship to accompany Jeannette as far as Alaska. Among the less standard equipment acquired by De Long was an experimental arc lamp system devised by Thomas Edison which would supposedly provide light equivalent to 3,000 candles and thus transform the Arctic winter darkness. Having successfully undergone her sea trials on June 28, ten days before her scheduled departure, Jeannette was formally commissioned into the Navy as USS Jeannette.
Personnel
In selecting his crew, De Long's priority was men with Arctic experience. For his second-in-command he chose lieutenant Charles W. Chipp, who had served with him on the Little Juniata adventure. Another veteran of the Polaris rescue mission, George W. Melville, was appointed as ship's engineer. Other experienced Arctic hands were William F. C. Nindemann, a Polaris survivor, and the ice pilot William Dunbar, who had many years' experience in whalers.
The appointment of the expedition's navigating officer was problematic; John W. Danenhower, a young naval officer from a well-connected Washington family, was recommended to Bennett by former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. Such sponsorship won Danenhower his place, despite a history of depression that had seen him briefly incarcerated at the Government Hospital for the Insane. On Bennett's request, Danenhower accompanied De Long on the voyage from Le Havre to San Francisco, during which he confided details of his medical history. The navigator's competent performance persuaded De Long that such troubles were in the past.
The ship's surgeon, James Ambler, was assigned to the expedition by the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, only because he was next on the list of medical officers available for sea duty. Ambler deduced from Danenhower's medical records that a probable cause of the navigator's medical lapses was syphilis, but Danenhower's influential connections ensured that he kept his place on the expedition.
Two others from Jeannette's voyage from Le Havre, carpenter Albert Sweetman and boatswain John Cole, were enlisted, as was the Herald's meteorologist, Jerome Collins. Dubbed "chief scientist," he was in charge of the Edison apparatus and of a rudimentary telephone system that De Long hoped to utilize. The remaining places were filled from a long list of applicants; the cook and steward were recruited by Danenhower from San Francisco's Chinatown district.