There is a double interest attached to the voyage of the Jeannette, for not only is the story itself one of the most terrible tragedies in the whole history of Arctic exploration, but, as will be seen later, it was the fate of the unlucky ship which prompted Nansen to formulate his plan for reaching the Pole by forcing his ship into the ice, and allowing her to drift north with the current.

The Jeannette expedition owed its inception to Mr J. G. Bennett of the New York Herald, who had frequently shown his interest in Arctic research by equipping and sending out vessels at his own expense. He purchased the Pandora from Sir Allen Young, renamed her the Jeannette, and placed her under the command of Commander De Long, who had been a member of the relief expedition sent out to the succour of the Polaris. Admirably fitted out in every detail both for navigation and for scientific research, the Jeannette set sail from San Francisco on July 8, 1879. After a brief call at St Michael’s, where she took on board sledges, furs, dogs, and two Alaskan dog-drivers, she set sail once more and made for Behring Strait.

The plan of the expedition was to spend the winter at Wrangel Land, and then to push on northward, if possible to the Pole. Unfortunately for De Long’s arrangements, however, the Wrangel Land of the geographers of the day had no real existence, and he was destined never to reach it. For over a century it had been held, on the strength of Chukche reports, that a vast continent existed to the north of Asia, which extended right across the Pole to Greenland. No less an authority than the great Petermann himself believed in it, and the reports of the American whaler, Thomas Long, who discovered Wrangel Land in 1867, and of other whalers who followed him, tended to confirm this theory, for the newly discovered land seemed to be of considerable extent. Accordingly, De Long had every reason to suppose that here he would find comfortable quarters for the winter.

He was very soon to be disillusioned, however, for before he was within a hundred miles of the land, the Jeannette was caught in the ice, and from that time onward her story bore a painful resemblance to that of the Tegetthoff, without any of its compensations. Drifted constantly westward by the ever-moving pack, now nipped till her seams almost sprang apart, now threatened with a terrible destruction by the frozen waves of ice which rolled down upon her, she was before long reduced to a most pitiable plight. Here is the description penned by her chief engineer, G. W. Melville, of an event which was of almost daily occurrence:—

“It was observed that, during the continuance of the wind, the whole body of ice moved evenly before it; but, when it subsided, the mass that had been put in motion crowded and tumbled upon the far-off floes at rest, piling tumultuously upward in a manner terrific to behold. It was in one of these oppressive intervals succeeding a gale, when the roar and crash of the distant masses could be distinctly heard, that the floe in which the Jeannette was embedded began splitting in all directions. The placid and almost level surface of ice suddenly heaved and swelled into great hills, buzzing and wheezing dolefully. Giant blocks pitched and rolled as though controlled by invisible hands; and the vast compressing bodies shrieked a shrill and horrible song that curdled the blood. On came the frozen waves, nearer and nearer. Seams ran and rattled across them with a thundering boom, while silent and awestruck, we watched their terrible progress. Sunk in an amphitheatre about five-eighths of a mile in diameter lay the ship, the bank of moving ice puffed in places to a height of 50 feet, gradually enclosing her on all sides. Preparations were made for her abandonment; but—what then? If the mighty circle continued to decrease, escape was hopeless, death inevitable. To think of clambering up the slippery sides of the rolling mass would be equal folly with an attempt to scale the falling waters of Niagara.”

Summer came on the heels of winter, but it brought no prospect of release to the wretched crew of the Jeannette. They had already drifted past the northern coast of Wrangel Land, and had found it to be nothing but an island of moderate dimensions, and there were no signs of that mythical continent upon which De Long had been pinning his hopes. The new year found them still held in the relentless grip of the pack. Here is the comment upon his situation which De Long penned in his diary:—

“People beset in the pack before always drifted somewhere to some land; but we are drifting about like a modern Flying Dutchman, never getting anywhere, but always restless and on the move. Coals are burning up, food is being consumed, the pumps are still going, and thirty-three people are wearing out their lives and souls like men doomed to imprisonment for life. If this next summer comes and goes like the last without any result, what reasonable mind can be patient in contemplation of the future?”

On May 16 a slight diversion was caused by the discovery of two islands, which they named Jeannette Island and Henriette Island. De Long started off on a sledging expedition to them, and, like many other Arctic explorers, had great trouble with his dogs, which, in accordance with the traditions of their race, refused to face the open water, and had to be dragged, sledges and all, through every lead that intersected their path. “There is no greater violence done the eternal cause of truth,” says the commander, “than in those pictures where the Eskimos are represented as calmly sitting in shoe-shaped sledges with the lashes of their long whips trailing gracefully behind, while the dogs dash in full cry and perfect unison across smooth expanses of snow. If depicted ‘true to nature,’ the scene changes its aspect considerably; it is quite as full of action, but not of progress. A pandemonium of horrors—dogs yelling, barking, snapping, and fighting; the leaders in the rear and the wheelers in the middle, all tied in a knot, and as hopelessly tangled up as a basketful of eels.”

On Sunday June 12 the pressure became so tremendous that the ship cracked in every part. She at once began to fill, and the men set to work to remove on to the ice everything necessary for a sledge journey to a place of safety. Towards four o’clock on the following morning the man on watch suddenly burst into the tent. “Turn out if you want to see the last of the Jeannette,” he cried. “There she goes! There she goes!” “Most of us,” writes Melville, “had barely time to arise and look out, when, amid the rattling and banging of her timbers and iron work, the ship righted and stood almost upright; the floes that had come in and crushed her slowly backed off; and as she sank with slightly accelerated velocity, the yardarms were stripped and broken upward parallel to the masts; and so, like a great gaunt skeleton, its hands clasped above its head, she plunged out of sight.”

On that day they started off with their nine sledges and five boats on their journey of 150 miles to the New Siberian Islands. They carried sixty days’ provisions with them, and had not the men been in an enfeebled condition, and had not circumstances been against them, they could easily have accomplished the distance. As it was, they were too weak to drag all their sledges and boats in a single load, so that every mile of the journey had to be covered seven times, while an unfortunate northerly drift carried them miles out of their course. At last, however, the New Siberian Islands were reached, and, after a short rest, the crew started off in their boats, with only seven days’ provisions, for the Lena Delta. The first cutter was commanded by De Long, the second cutter by Lieutenant Chipps, and the whaleboat by Melville. A storm separated the three boats soon after they had started, and of Chipps and his men nothing more was ever heard. De Long landed on September 16, 1881, near the mouth of the Lena, and he and his companions started off on a long march of ninety-five miles for the nearest settlement. They had provisions for seven days, and their chances of reaching their destination seemed good. Circumstances, however, were once more against them, for they found their way crossed by unfordable tributaries, and, as they had been obliged to abandon their boat, there was nothing for them to do but to wait until ice should bridge over the streams.

On October 6 the first death occurred, and on the following day the miserable party ate their last provisions. To press forward was impossible for most of them, so weak and ill had they become, while to stay where they were meant certain death. De Long and Ambler, the doctor of the party, however, determined to send on two men to find assistance, while they themselves heroically remained behind to take care of their dying comrades. The rest of their story cannot be better told than by quoting extracts from the commander’s diary:—

“Missed Lee. Went down a hole in the bank and camped. Sent back for Lee. He had turned back, lain down, and was ready to die. All united in saying Lord’s Prayer and Creed after supper. Horrible night.”

“October 17, Monday—one hundred and twenty-seventh day. Alexey dying. Doctor baptised him. Read prayers for sick. Mr Collins’ birthday—forty years old. About sunset Alexey died. Exhaustion from starvation.”

“October 22, Saturday—one hundred and thirty-second day. Too weak to carry bodies of Lee and Kaack out on the ice. The doctor, Collins, and I carried them round the corner, out of sight. Then my eye closed up.”

“October 30, Sunday—one hundred and fortieth day. Boyd and Görtz died during the night. Mr Collins dying.”

And here the brave commander’s diary tragically ends. Some months later Melville, who had made his way to the coast in a less inhospitable region, and had organised a search-party as soon as he heard of De Long’s plight, came upon the camp.

“Suddenly,” he says, “I caught sight of three objects, and one of these was the hand and arm of a body raised out of the snow.... I identified De Long at a glance by his coat. He lay on his right side, with his right hand under his cheek, his head pointing north, and his face turned towards the west. His feet were drawn slightly up, as though he were sleeping; his left arm was raised with the elbow bent, and his hand, thus horizontally lifted, was bare. About four feet back of him, or towards the east, I found his small notebook, or ice-journal, where he had tossed it with his left hand, which looked as though it had never recovered from the act, but had frozen as I found it, upraised.”

During his ill-fated cruise, De Long not only made a number of valuable physical observations in an unknown region, but he also proved the Siberian Ocean to be a shallow basin dotted with islands, and exploded the theory of a great continent to the north of Asia.