The greatest American Arctic disaster

In the course of the 19th century, various flotillas of expeditions hastened to the polar regions in little wooden ships which sooner or later expired in the pincers of an ice floe while crewmen ate their shoes. These stories bear retelling for our own age, and Hampton Sides does well to identify the gruesome story of the USS Jeanette, which ended in the greatest American Arctic disaster ever.

The idea began with James Gordon Bennett Jr, the proprietor of the New York Herald (the largest circulation daily in America) and a flamboyant character who enjoyed riding round Manhattan in the nude. He had already sponsored numerous expeditions and popularised the now standard technique of creating news, the more sensational the better. (The phrase ‘Gordon Bennett!’ was minted for him.) In what turned out to be Bennett’s last attempt at an Arctic scoop, in 1879 he despatched Navy Captain George De Long to
rescue the Finnish-Swedish explorer Baron Nordenskiöld (it didn’t matter that the fellow didn’t need rescuing) and, more significantly, to proceed to the undiscovered North Pole by the Pacific route.

De Long, a balding figure with a swanky moustache, was 35 when he steamed out of San Francisco in Jeanette. As soon as he reached the east Siberian coast, he learned that Nordenskiöld was out of the ice and on his way home, and immediately got stuck himself. In June 1881, the ship — which had been reinforced with a network of double trusses and iron box beams — sank after being locked in the ice for 21 months. The 33-strong crew set out for the Siberian mainland 1,000 miles away, first with dogs relaying 800 tons of supplies on sledges, then sailing in three patched-up boats. They were able to hunt: one day they tucked into a 200-stone walrus.