Our Lost Explorers: The Narrative of the Jeanette Arctic Expedition

by George W De Long, Raymond Lee Newcomb (Revised by)

Overview

Lieutenant George Washington De Long was an American explorer whose disastrous Arctic expedition in July of 1879 he set sail from San Francisco taking the Jeannette through the Bering Strait and heading for Wrangel Island, off the northeast coast of Siberia.

On September 5th, the ship became trapped in the pack ice near Herald Island (now Gerald Island), east of Wrangel. With crewman George Melville's engineering skill, the boat was kept afloat for almost two years until it was finally crushed on June 12, 1881.

The crew, including De Long, escaped with most of their provisions and three small boats. Their destination, the Siberian coast, lay some 600 miles away. They endured extreme hardships for the next two months as they crossed the ice. After reaching open water, one of the boats and the men aboard were lost. The remaining two boats became separated. De Long's boat reached the eastern side of the Lena River delta, Melville's, reached the western side. Melville's party was rescued, but De Long and his men died of exposure and starvation.

Melville later led an expedition that found the remains of De Long and his party the following Spring. De Long's journal, in which he made regular entries until shortly before his death, was found a year later and published as The Voyage of the Jeannette (1883). Three years after the Jeannette was sunk, wreckage from it was found on an ice floe on the southwest coast of Greenland, a discovery that gave new support to the theory of trans-Arctic drift.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582182827
Publisher:	Digital Scanning, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/01/2000
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.06(h) x 1.26(d)

Table of Contents

Chapter I.	The Jeannette and Her Crew--Voyage to the Arctic Ocean	17
Chapter II.	A Search for Missing Whalers and the Jeannette	28
Chapter III.	Searches for the Jeannette--Second Cruise of the Corwin	39
Chapter IV.	Searches for the Jeannette--Cruise of the Rodgers	54
Chapter V.	Searches for the Jeannette--Cruise of the Alliance	71
Chapter VI.	Plans for an International Search	79
Chapter VII.	First Tidings from the Explorers	83
Chapter VIII.	The Siberian Tundra	91
Chapter IX.	The Lena River and Its Delta	98
Chapter X.	Engineer Melville's Narrative	111
Chapter XI.	Lieutenant de Long's Records	125
Chapter XII.	Experiences of Nindermann, Noros, and Leach	130
Chapter XIII.	Yakutsk	140
Chapter XIV.	Irkutsk	154
Chapter XV.	Lieutenant Danenhower's Narrative	169
Chapter XVI.	Lieutenant Danenhower's Narrative--(Continued)	191
Chapter XVII.	Lieutenant Danenhower's Narrative--(Continued.)	207
Chapter XVIII.	Lieutenant Danenhower's Narrative--(Continued.)	222
Chapter XIX.	Lieutenant Danenhower's Narrative--(Continued.)	238
Chapter XX.	Lieutenant Danenhower's Narrative--(Concluded)	250
Chapter XXI.	Lieutenant de Long's Log-Book	262
Chapter XXII.	A Roll of Honor	270
Chapter XXIII.	Mr. Newcomb's Narrative	277
Chapter XXIV.	Mr. Newcomb's Narrative--(Continued)	292
Chapter XXV.	Mr. Newcomb's Narrative--(Continued)	308
Chapter XXVI.	Mr. Newcomb's Narrative--(Continued)	320
Chapter XXVII.	Mr. Newcomb's Narrative--(Continued)	332
Chapter XXVIII.	Mr. Newcomb's Narrative--(Continued)	343
Chapter XXIX.	Mr. Newcomb's Narrative--(Continued)	353
Chapter XXX.	De Long's Fate Discovered--The Graves on the Lena	366
Chapter XXXI.	Lieutenant de Long's Diary	379
Chapter XXXII.	New Searchers in the Field	394
Chapter XXXIII.	Burning of the Rodgers--an Ice-Floe Tragedy	401
Chapter XXXIV.	Life Among the Chukches	414
Chapter XXXV.	Mr. Gilder's Travels in Siberia	428
Chapter XXXVI.	The Story of the Forlorn Hope	449
Chapter XXXVII.	Engineer Melville's Narrative--(Continued)	462
	Appendix	470