July 8, 1879: George De Long choked back his emotions. Approaching the Jeannette in a small rowboat with his wife, he gazed at Emma, knowing that he wouldn’t see her again for at least two years. They’d spoken about the separation constantly, and both ached over it. They knew it was possible that they’d never see each other again.
“I have been thinking,” George said to Emma a few nights before, “what a pretty widow you would make.”
“I shan’t be a widow,” Emma replied.
The water of San Francisco Bay sloshed against the rowboat, which was dwarfed by the Jeannette and a large fleet of yachts. The oarsmen sculled the boat aside one of the yachts.
De Long, sharply dressed in his full captain’s uniform, took his wife’s hand. He hesitated, then said simply, “Good-by,” and they kissed. Emma stepped onto the yacht and looked back. De Long shook slightly, feeling “as if I had been stunned by a blow,” then pulled himself together. In a clear, strong voice, he said, “Pull away, men!”
In De Long’s pocket was a small blue bag with a lock of Emma’s blonde hair and the cross she’d given him when they first met.
Watching from the Jeannette’s deck was George W. Melville, the ship’s chief engineer. Melville had worked with De Long on other voyages, and they liked and respected each other. But Melville’s life held little of the warmth and affection that was obvious in De Long’s relationship with Emma. Melville’s marriage was volatile and cold, and he’d spent more than half his adult years on ships, away from his family. His life was the sea, so he was eager for this voyage to begin.
De Long climbed onto the Jeannette. A huge crowd had turned out to see it depart. Flying below the American flag on the ship’s flagpole was a blue silk flag made by Emma.
“The docks were lined with people—and the Bay was alive with boats of all kinds,” De Long wrote. “Telegraph Hill was black with people and crowds were on every dock we passed. Ships dipped their colors to us, people cheered, whistles blew.”
Even Bennett’s rival newspapers couldn’t resist reporting on the voyage. The world was watching.
But the excitement of the day wasn’t enough to overcome one of De Long’s disappointments. No Navy boats were on hand to give the Jeannette a patriotic send-off. De Long also fumed about the Navy’s last-minute order to search for the Vega, a missing Dutch ship, along the Siberian coast. The side trip would cost many precious days and might prevent the Jeannette from getting close to the pole that year. Still, it was customary for ships to help each other, even if they were from different countries.
Chief engineer George W. Melville
With the voyage finally underway, De Long’s mood improved. The Jeannette carried an all-star crew, and De Long had confidence in most of his officers.
Ice pilot William Dunbar
The biggest prize was Civil War hero George Melville. The chief engineer was a genius with anything mechanical and could be relied on to fix engines, pumps, stoves, and anything else. The Navy resisted letting him go on the Jeannette expedition because he was so valuable elsewhere. De Long insisted that he be included. “He is not only without a superior as an engineer, but he is bright and cheerful to an extraordinary extent,” De Long wrote of Melville, whose shock of graying, sandy-red hair circled a shining bald head. “He sings well, is always contented, and brightens everybody by his presence alone.”
The heavily loaded Jeannette steamed slowly north toward Alaska. Collins and Newcomb—civilians not used to ocean travel—promptly became seasick. So did the cook, Ah Sam. The seasoned crewmen had no problems and happily played musical instruments every night. After he recovered from his seasickness, Collins led the nightly singing and provided music on a small pump organ. But he constantly annoyed Melville, who didn’t trust reporters and disliked the Gilbert and Sullivan tunes Collins insisted on singing.
De Long was troubled by more heartfelt matters. After a week at sea, he wrote to tell Emma how deeply he missed her. “I have been remembering something every minute which I would give worlds to have the chance to say.” He admitted to being “as lovesick as I was eleven years ago” when they’d met, and he recalled his final glimpse of Emma from the deck of the Jeannette. “I could see your handkerchief and answered it by waving my cap as long as I could make out anything at all.”
De Long closed the letter with these words: “If by any mischance we should never meet again in this world, be assured that in everything, word and deed, you have always been to me the truest, best and most loving wife that man ever had, and have always cared for me and looked out for me tenderly and lovingly, my precious, precious wife.”
In Alaska, De Long loaded up with forty dogs for pulling sleds, six tons of dried fish to feed those dogs, sealskin clothing for the crew, and other supplies. He bought a small porcelain doll for his daughter, Sylvie, and tucked it into the blue pouch with Emma’s lock of hair. He mailed the letters he’d written to Emma.
De Long hired two more crew members: bilingual Yup’ik hunters and dogsled drivers from the Native Village of St. Michael. De Long recorded their names as Alexey and Aneguin. (“Alexey” wasn’t the man’s Yup’ik name; it was a nickname given by non-Native explorers. “Aneguin” was an approximate spelling of that man’s Yup’ik name.) Just a few months earlier, Alexey had successfully guided explorer Edward W. Nelson through the Yukon Delta. Alexey and Aneguin would hunt seals, walruses, and bears to provide meat when the Jeannette reached the Arctic ice.
The trip to Alaska had been more challenging than expected, as De Long had his first experience with Petermann’s inaccurate maps. “Reached this place yesterday afternoon after knocking around for two days in thick fogs among a hundred or more islands, very incorrectly laid down on the chart,” De Long wrote from Unalaska Island. “I have seen some crooked navigation but our experience in getting through the passes into Behring Sea goes far beyond anything for difficulties.”
In Alaska, De Long mailed this photo and note to Emma along with his letters.
Instead of heading directly out of Alaska, the Jeannette had to wait a week for a coal ship to arrive. De Long needed to refill the bunkers to replace the coal they’d burned on the three-thousand-mile trip from San Francisco. The delay added to his worries that the Jeannette wouldn’t get far north before winter.
De Long also learned firsthand about another challenge of the Arctic: mosquitoes. “For the last two nights I have hardly had an hour’s rest,” he wrote to his wife. He lay awake “killing mosquitoes by the dozen. I am one mass of bites from head to foot.”
The frustration continued after the Jeannette passed through the narrow Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia. There were no signs of the Vega along the Siberian coast. De Long did not believe that the Vega was in trouble, since it was equipped for two years in the Arctic, and its captain, Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld, had more experience than any Arctic commander.
De Long was right. The Vega had already sailed safely to the south, but the Jeannette had traveled hundreds of miles out of its way looking for it. De Long refused to waste more time. He’d fulfilled his orders to execute a thorough search for the Vega. Much later in the season than he’d hoped, he got on with the business of exploring. The North Pole was more than a thousand miles away.
The Native Village of St. Michael, Alaska—where skilled hunters Alexey and Aneguin joined the crew
By September 2, De Long estimated that the Jeannette was only one hundred miles from Wrangel Land—the land-mass that Petermann said extended all the way to Greenland. Landing there could open the door to nearly unlimited exploration. But ice closed in, and navigation proved difficult in the dense fog. De Long skirted around the ice floes, moving farther from Wrangel, approaching the much smaller Herald Island instead.
His wife later lamented that “he vanished into the Arctic ice and for more than two years was shrouded in mystery.”
SEPTEMBER 4TH, THURSDAY [1879]
We observe a gradual closing in of large floes around us, and a seeming drift of small pieces to the southeast through the small water spaces. The rigging is one mass of snow and frost, presenting a beautiful sight; but as we are more interested in progress than in beautiful sights it has but little charm for us.
SEPTEMBER 5TH, FRIDAY
A clear and pleasant day throughout, with light northerly breeze. At four A. M. spread all fires and got a full head of steam, and entered the pack through the best looking lead in the general direction of Herald Island. For the first two hours we had but little trouble in making our way, but at six A. M. we commenced to meet young ice ranging from one to two inches in thickness in the leads, and seemingly growing tougher as we proceeded. We ground along, however, scratching, and in places scoring and cutting our doubling, until 8.40 A. M., when we came to pack ice from ten to fifteen feet in thickness, which of course brought us up. Anchored to the floe to wait for an opening.
While working along the pack the captain, the ice pilot, or myself, was always in the crow’s-nest. The crow’s-nest of the Jeannette may be described as a large cask, having a trap-door in the bottom, through which the observer entered. It was then closed and formed a floor on which he stood. The crow’s-nest was secured by iron bands to the foretop-gallant mast, above the topmast cross-trees. It was made of wood and was about 5 feet in height and 4 [feet] in diameter at the base and 3 at the top. There was a little ridge where a person could sit. There were places for putting glasses, the long glass, and the binoculars. We coasted the pack until September 6.