GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS AND DISCOVERY. 



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tation of being an officer of much energy and ex- 

 ecutive talent. The second officer was Lieuten- 

 ant Charles W. Chipp, of the United States Navy, 

 who had been a companion of De Long in a 

 perilous voyage in a steam-launch to the north- 

 ward from Upernavik, in Greenland, where the 

 Juniata was stopped by the ice in the search 

 for the missing members of the Polaris crew. 

 The third officer was Master John Wilson Da- 

 nenhower, of the United States Navy. The en- 

 gineer, George W. Melville, had served on the 

 Tigress, in her voyage for the relief of the Po- 

 laris party. Dr. James Markham Marshall Am- 

 bler, the physician, was a surgeon in the navy. 

 Jerome J. Collins, the scientist and corre- 

 spondent of the " New York Herald," was born 

 in Cork, Ireland, in 1841 ; an engineer by pro- 

 fession, he was the organizer of the "Herald" 

 weather bureau, which was started about 1873. 

 Raymond L. Newcomb was the taxidermist. 

 The ice-pilot was William Dunbar, an experi- 

 enced whaling captain. The crew was com- 

 posed as follows: Jack Cole, boatswain ; Alfred 

 Sweetman, carpenter's mate; George Wash- 

 ington Boyd, carpenter; William Ninderrnan, 

 carpenter ; Walter Lee, machinist ; George 

 Landertack, coal-heaver ; Louis Phillip Noras, 

 Herbert Wood Leach, Henry David Warner, 

 James H. Bartlett, George Stephenson, Adolph 

 Dressier, Carl August Gortz, Peter Edward 

 Johnson, Henry Wilson, Edward Star, Hans 

 Haelnor Erickson, Henry Hansen Kaack, Neils 

 Ivorson, and Albert George Kaihne, seamen. 

 There were also two Chinamen in the crew. 



De Long stated his intention of landing on 

 Wrangel Land, and of leaving records in cairns 

 on its eastern shore, and on Herald Island. No 

 serious apprehensions for the safety of the 

 expedition were felt until the spring of 1881. 

 When the news came that Lieutenant Berry, 

 commander of the Rodgers, had thoroughly ex- 

 plored, without finding any traces of the Jean- 

 nette expedition, the coast of Wrangel Land, 

 which was found to be an insignificant island, 

 thus disappointing all the theories as to the con- 

 figuration of the region and the course of the 

 Jeannette, the anxiety concerning the safety of 

 the explorers was intensified. Rumors had 

 come of shipwrecked white men seen by natives 

 in different part3_of the coast of the Arctic 

 Ocean. The stnok'e of a steamer was reported 

 to have been seen by Yakuts near the mouth 

 of the Lena River, in September, 1880. A 

 party of white sailors were reported to be mak- 

 ing their way up the Mackenzie River, and the 

 Hudson Bay Company was urged to institute a 

 search in that region. A report came later 

 that wandering Samoyeds had found the 

 corpses of two Europeans on the Siberian coast, 

 near the mouth of the Yenisei. Experience 

 of the currents of the Arctic strengthened the 

 conclusion that the Jeannette when ice-bound 

 had been carried to the westward instead of 

 eastward. Another conjecture was that De 

 Long had ascended to th<J pole in sledges, and 

 then made his way either to Smith Sound -or 



Spitzbergen, the nearest points where he would 

 be likely to fall in with walrus-hunters. There 

 was the possibility also of his reaching a very 

 high latitude in clear water, and then being 

 caught in the ice or prevented from continuing 

 bis northward course by the ice-pack. The 

 ship might then be carried to the islands at the 

 entrance of the northwest passage, or upon 

 Grant Land, or the northern coast of Green- 

 land. If there should be found to be an open 

 polar sea, it was conjectured that the Jean- 

 nette might have sailed clear across the polar 

 basin and have come out on the east coast of 

 Greenland, or the northern shore of Spitzber- 

 gen. No polar expedition since the loss of Sir 

 John Franklin's party has caused so much so- 

 licitude, and elicited so many efforts for its 

 rescue. During the season of 1881, measures 

 were taken to search every shore of the polar 

 basin for the lost explorers. 



Five expeditions were sent into the polar 

 regions by the United States Government in 

 1881, all of which took instructions to search 

 for the missing Arctic cruiser, one of these 

 having for its sole object the search for the 

 Jeannette and the lost whalers, Mount Wollas- 

 ton and Vigilant. This was the Rodgers ex- 

 pedition, under the command of Lieutenant 

 Berry, which was sent over the same route 

 pursued by the Jeannette, in the hope of find- 

 ing on Wrangel Land records of the expedition 

 and indications of its future movements. At 

 about the same time that the Rodgers left San 

 Francisco the Alliance, under Commander 

 Wadleigh, sailed from Norfolk for the waters 

 north of Spitzbergen, on the chance of the ex- 

 pedition's having crossed the pole in sledges. 

 The revenue cutter Corwin, in command of 

 Captain Hooper, was directed to land on 

 Wrangel Land, if possible, during the summer 

 cruise, to seek for traces of the Jeannette. The 

 two government meteorological expeditions to 

 Alaska and to Smith Sound were also instruct- 

 ed to explore the regions near their stations in 

 quest of indications of the fate of the Jeannette. 

 Leigh Smith, the English explorer, in his sum- 

 mer's trip to Franz-Josef Land, volunteered to 

 make a special search for the Jeannette in that 

 neighborhood, and the Dutch exploring ship 

 William Barents also intended searching the 

 coast of Nova Zembla for traces of the expe- 

 dition. 



The special search expedition under Lieu- 

 tenant Berry was directed, if the researches 

 on Wrangel Land proved fruitless, to repair to 

 the coast of Siberia, and pursue their inquiries 

 along the whole northern shore. At the time 

 when the news of the rescue of part of the 

 Jeannette's crew came, Lieutenant Hovgaard, 

 Nordenskiold's companion, was planning an 

 expedition over the track he had sailed in 

 the Vega, to search the same ground which 

 Berry was to go over later. He concluded, 

 from the report of a steamer having been seen 

 off the month of the Lena, together with that 

 of white men- found dead by Samoyeds at the 



