The Greely Arctic Expedition

Abstract

THE principal incidents of this wonderfully successful and singularly unfortunate Expedition must be familiar to most of our readers. It formed one of the series of International Polar Stations which carried on a year's observations all round the Polar area in 1882-83. The Greely Expedition, however, took up its quarters at Fort Conger (81° 44′ N., 64° 45′ W.), Discovery Harbour, Lady Franklin Bay, in August of 188i. This, it will be remembered, was the station of the Discovery in the last English Expedition. The Expedition consisted of twenty-five men, all told. So far as organisation goes, the Expedition was a military and not a naval one, under the U.S. Signal Service, which is attached to the War Department. It was certainly a mistake not to have had the naval element substantially represented on such an expedition, and a still greater and more fatal blunder not to have provided the party with a ship in which they might have escaped in case no relief party reached them. No time was lost after landing in erecting a substantial wooden house, observatory, and the various instruments with which the scientific work of the Expedition was to be carried on. Observations in all departments of meteorology seem to have been faithfully and regularly taken according to the prescribed programme, and we have no doubt that most of them were preserved and taken home in the rescue ship. Only a few of the results are given in the appendixes to these volumes; the observations themselves will doubtless be sent to the Central Committee to be worked out along with those from other stations. Under the very efficient guidance of Major Greely excellent work of various kinds was carried out in the autumn of 188i and the spring and summer of 1882. The relief vessel which was sent out in the latter year failed to come near Fort Conger, and the party, well provided, continued their work in the autumn of 1882 and up to the end of August 1883. Two vessels were sent out in the summer of 1883 to reach Fort Conger, but through incredible mismanagement, completely failed in fulfilling their mission, and even carried back with them the bulk of the provisions which they ought to have cached at certain points for the sustenance of the retreating party. It seems a strange perversity and a remarkable piece of red-tapeism in the U.S. Government to have intrusted these relief expeditions entirely to military men. It would surely have been easy to get experienced Arctic navigators for such critical work, and so probably have saved the lives of the poor men who were practically without the means of saving themselves. According to instructions, Major Greely, since no relief reached him, abandoned his station at Fort Conger on September 1, 1883, and with all his men, who up to this time had enjoyed excellent health on the whole, made his way south in a small steam launch and a boat or two, through almost impassable ice. In the end they were forced to land at Cape Sabine about the middle of October, and here, with scarcely any shelter, with only about enough food to sustain one man in these regions, and under the most miserable meteorological conditions, on the bleakest spot in all the Arctic, did these men drearily drag them-selves through the winter. When at last Commander Schley did reach the spot in June 1884, he found only six out of the twenty-five alive. Yet up to within a few days of the rescue, such observations as were possible were carried on, and the conduct of the men, on the whole, was as noble as could be imagined. This fearful sacrifice of life is deplorable, all the more so when it is remembered that it was due to blundering and half-heartedness on the part of those at home. It is easy to ask whether the gains to science are worth all this sacrifice to human life, but the question is not so easily answered. And whatever the answer is, we may be sure that the Greely disaster will never deter humanity from attempting to find out all about the remotest and most inhospitable corners of its little home.

Three Years of Arctic Service. An Account of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–84, and the Attainment of the Furthest North.

By Adolphus W. Greely, Lieutenant U.S. Army, Commanding the Expedition. Two Vols. (London: Bentley and Son, 1886.)