Hampton Sides · 2014 · survival
Hampton Sides's 2014 history of a doomed expedition. In 1879, chasing a theory of a warm open sea at the top of the world, Captain George De Long sailed the USS Jeannette from San Francisco through the Bering Strait toward the North Pole. Trapped and crushed by pack ice north of Siberia, her crew abandoned ship and dragged their boats south across the ice in a desperate march for the Lena Delta.
- 1San Francisco
In July 1879, cheered on by a nation gripped by Arctic fever, Captain George Washington De Long sails the USS Jeannette out of San Francisco with thirty-two men, bound for the North Pole by way of the Bering Strait.
- 2The Bering Strait
Coaling at ports along the Alaskan coast, the Jeannette pushes north through the Bering Strait into uncharted waters - and, far sooner than anyone expected, is frozen fast into the drifting pack ice.
- 3The pack ice
For nearly two years the ship drifts helplessly, locked in the ice north of Siberia, until in June 1881 the floes finally crush her hull and she sinks - marooning the crew a thousand miles from land with three small boats.
- 4The Lena Delta
Hauling and sailing their boats south over ice and open water, the starving men make for the Lena Delta on the Siberian coast, where the boats are scattered by a gale and De Long and most of his party die within reach of rescue.