GREELY'S ARCTIC EXPEDITION

GREELY'S ARCTIC EXPEDITION. The Greely Expedition, marketed to the public as the first attempt by the United States to begin a new era of scientific research in the Arctic, was instead largely another expedition in the tradition of romantic polar exploration and tragedy. Its intent was first to act as a search party for the lost naval expedition aboard the Jeannette, and second to establish a scientific station on Lady Franklin Bay as part of the U.S. contribution to the first International Polar Year (IPY), a systematic simultaneous study of the Arctic environment slated for 1882–1883. But the ulterior motives of the expedition, decided long before it was folded into the IPY, were to beat the record set by the English for farthest north, and to attempt the North Pole itself.

Except for two Eskimo hunters, no one in the twenty-five-man party had previous Arctic experience. But Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely had wisely planned his provisions for his stay in the Arctic; the tragedy of the expedition came not from their stay, but their means of egress. In the summer of 1881, Greely and his men landed on the far northern shores of Ellesmere Island on Lady Franklin Bay. Here they established Fort Conger; but scarcely before the ship that dropped them off left the harbor, there were significant tensions in the party. The friction was in part the result of personality conflicts and jealousies, but also because Greely had alienated his men.

From October 1881 through February 1882, the men passed the time carrying out their scientific duties; for example, they made meteorological, magnetic, tidal, and pendulum observations. In April 1882, a smaller party reached the farthest north. Greely himself surveyed Grinnell Land, in the middle of Ellesmere Island. In August 1882, they waited for a supply ship that never arrived; it was caught in the ice two hundred miles south. Another relief ship had splintered in the ice pack. They spent another winter; the summer of 1883 passed, again without a relief ship. Although game was plenty at Fort Conger and supplies would have lasted another winter, Greely followed orders and left by boat in the beginning of August 1883. But Greely did not know that the relief ships, in their haste to find them, did not adequately provision the caches toward which they retreated.

On their southward journey, the party became trapped on a free-drifting ice floe at the mercy of the winds, currents, and tides. After thirty-two days, the floe began to break up, and finally they reached the shores of Ellesmere, near Cape Sabine. The only remaining rations would last a mere fifty days; with rations cut, the starving crew began the slow suffering from frostbite, scurvy, and infections, and men died throughout the winter and spring.

The next rescue was planned amid public debate on the folly of polar exploration; Congress had difficulty passing the appropriations bill. But a relief party left in late April, and by late June they reached the seven survivors, although one died shortly thereafter. The highly publicized dramas of the Greely Expedition overshadowed much of its scientific achievement, and that of the International Polar Year itself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barr, William. "Geographical Aspects of the First International Polar Year, 1882–1883." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73, no. 4 (1983): 463–484.

Greely, A. W. Three Years of Arctic Service: An Account of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–84, and the Attainment of the Farthest North. New York: Scribners, 1886.

Vogel, Hal, Steve Shapiro, and Daniel Zimmerman. "The Rise and Set of Arctic Moon." Polar Record 27, no. 160 (1991): 43–46.

AnnetteWatson

See alsoPolar Exploration .