590 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



It was now decided to abandon the Investigator, immovably 

 fixed as she was in the ice. Her colors were hoisted on the 3d 

 of June, and she was left alone in Mercy Bay. The officers 

 and crew arrived on board the Resolute on the 17th. McClure 

 sent Lieutenant Gurney Cresswell, with despatches for the 

 Admiralty, by sledges, down to Beechey Island, where he 

 found a Government vessel and at once sailed for England. 

 Though he had not made the Northwest Passage, he had at 

 least crossed the American continent within the Arctic Circle ; 

 and this had yet been done by no mortal man. 



Kellett and McClure remained for many months in the Reso- 

 lute and Intrepid, beset in the ice. They received instructions 

 from Belcher, in April, 1854, to abandon their ships. The 

 latter were placed in a condition to be occupied by any Arctic 

 searching-party, — the furnaces of the steamer being left ready 

 to be lighted. Sir Edward Belcher had also been compelled to 

 abandon his vessels, the Assistance and Pioneer : the four 

 crews met at Beechey Island, and embarked on board their 

 storeship, the North Star, which had been laid up for two 

 years. They arrived in England late in September. The 

 reader will at once recognise the Resolute as the ship which 

 was found in Baffin's Bay, in 1855, by Captain Buddington, 

 of the New London whaler George Henry. She had forced 

 her way, unaided by man, through twelve hundred miles of 

 Arctic ice. The incidents of her arrival at New London, of 

 the abandonment to the American sailors of all claim upon her 

 by the British Government, of her purchase by the United 

 States Congress from her new owners, her re-equipment at the 

 Brooklyn Navy- Yard, and her restoration to the English Navy 

 by Captain Hartstene, U.S.N., are still fresh in the minds 

 of all. 



In the year 1853, an expedition sent by the United States 

 under Commodore Perry ventured into waters never before 

 ploughed by vessels of a Christian nation. On the 8th of 



