In early November, 1881, George Washington DeLong, Lt. Commander USN, after surviving almost three years in the Arctic, froze to death on the Lena River Delta of Siberia. Eleven sailors and Arctic researchers died with him. Eight more men on his expedition were lost at sea. Of the thirty three sailors and civilians who sailed on the research ship Jeannette, only thirteen survived.
Many readers are familiar with the names of explorers Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott and Ernest Shakleton. Few have ever read or heard the name George Washington DeLong.
Lt. Commander DeLong was the Jeannette's captain. He was educated at the United States Naval Academy in Newport, Rhode Island. In the summer of 1879 his ship and crew left San Francisco on an expedition to discover an ice-free passage to the North Pole. By September, 1879, the ship was trapped in ice near Wrangell Island. The ship drifted in ice for two and one half years before it was crushed by ice and sank off Henrietta Island. The crew abandoned ship in June, 1881, and hauled three open boats and supplies across the ridges of ice and used the boats to cross open water leads. They reached Semenovski Island in desperate condition, then crossed the open sea for the Lena River Delta. A boat commanded by Lt. Chipp with seven other men was lost in a gale. The other two boats, commanded by DeLong and Chief Engineer George Melville, survived the gale and landed far apart on the Lena River Delta.
Melville and ten others were discovered by three natives and rescued. DeLong sent two of his healthiest men ahead to search for native habitation near Ku Mark Surk, while he rested with the others, who were frost bitten, emaciated, and fatigued. The two men that were sent ahead were rescued. The others, including Lt. Commander DeLong and the ship's surgeon James M. Ambler, died after thirty days of exposure and starvation. Their bodies were found a year later.
Additional information about this tragic Arctic adventure can be found at the U. S. Naval Museum link: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/ev-1880s/jeannett.htm and George Wallace Melville's narrative In the Lena Delta at Google books link:
Melville's narrative offers profound thanks to the Russians who rescued and aided the surviving Americans. Melville eventually became Engineer-in-Chief of the United States Navy and retired as a Rear Admiral. He was also a founding member of the National Geographic Society.
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