USS Jeannette was a naval exploration vessel which, commanded by George W. De Long, undertook the Jeannette expedition of 1879–1881 to the Arctic. After being trapped in the ice and drifting for almost two years, the ship and her crew of 33 were released from the ice, then trapped again, crushed and sunk some 300 nautical miles (560 km; 350 mi) north of the Siberian coast. The entire crew survived the sinking, but eight died while sailing towards land in a small cutter. The others reached Siberia, but 12 subsequently perished in the Lena Delta, including De Long.

The vessel had begun her active career in 1861 as HMS Pandora, a Royal Navy gunboat. After more than a decade's service off the West African coast and in the Mediterranean, Pandora was retired from duty and sold as a private yacht to a British explorer, Allen Young. Young took her on two voyages to the Arctic, in 1875 and 1876, before selling her to James Gordon Bennett Jr., proprietor of the New York Herald, who changed her name to Jeannette. Although she sailed to the Arctic under the U.S. flag as USS Jeannette, subject to naval laws and discipline, Bennett remained responsible for the costs of the expedition.

Service history

Construction and launch

The ship that became USS Jeannette began her life as a Royal Navy gunboat, built at the Pembroke Naval Dockyards in 1860. She was of wooden construction, in length and at the beam, with a draft of . Her tonnage, calculated by Builder's Measure, was 428 tons, with a displacement of 570 tons. She was rigged as a barque, but her principal means of propulsion was by a steam-driven screw.

After her launch on 7 February 1861, Pandora was taken from Pembroke to Portsmouth Dockyard, where she was fitted with her engines and boilers, and underwent trials before commissioning. On October 22, she concluded her trials successfully, achieving a speed of 9.25 knots over a measured mile. Pandora remained at Liverpool until January 1862 before returning to Portsmouth. Pandora returned in Portsmouth in 1867, and was transferred to the reserve. In April 1868, she was recommissioned, and returned to West Africa. Two years later she was transferred to the Mediterranean squadron, based at Valletta, Malta. This was her last commission in British naval service. In July 1872, after two years in the Mediterranean, she returned to Spithead, where she was taken out of active commission and berthed in Portsmouth as part of the steam reserve.

Recovery plan

In February 2015 the Russian adventurer, traveler and media personality announced that in consultation with the Russian Geographical Society, he was developing plans to locate and raise the wreck of Jeannette. Khoroshev told The Siberian Times: "This vessel lies at a depth of only , with the known location down to . So in modern day conditions, to find and raise it is not such a hard task." He imagined that the event would be a great boost for Russia's relations with the United States, "which are not very good right now". However, a survey of the area where the ship sank did not reveal any results and , it had not been found.

In fiction

Captain Edward Ellsberg recounted the voyage of the Jeannette in his book Hell on Ice published in 1938. It tells the journey through the eyes of the chief engineer.

The path and fate of the Jeannette is mentioned several times in Buddy Levy's account of the disastrous journey of , Empire of Ice and Stone. The crew of the Karluk were familiar with how eerily similar their circumstances were with those experienced by the Jeannette.

Footnotes

Bibliography

  • USS Jeannette at history.navy.mil
  • Jefferson Brown Arctic Sketches at Dartmouth College Library
  • Giles Harber Papers on the "Jeannette" at Dartmouth College Library
  • "Jeanette" Expedition Collection at Dartmouth College Library