Because there had been no word from the Jeannette for nearly two years, several expeditions were sent to look for it. While the Jeannette was sinking, the U.S.R.C. Thomas Corwin searched the Siberian coast, hundreds of miles away. That same ship had carried Alexey and Edward Nelson into the Yukon in 1879. Nelson was on board again, along with naturalist John Muir (who later in life helped create the U.S. National Park Service). Muir had little interest in the rescue mission; he’d signed up so he could study Arctic glaciers. “The clouds lifted from the mountains, showing their bases and slopes up to a thousand feet; summits capped,” he wrote from the deck on June 4.
“Of course, if De Long is found we will return at once,” Muir noted as the Corwin chugged north. But the ship returned home with no news of the Jeannette. Later that summer, the secretary of the Navy sent the U.S.S. Rodgers on a search as far as the ice pack, and Bennett funded a trip to the North Atlantic, in case the Jeannette had reached Greenland.
Dragging the boats and sleds over the ice took incredible effort.
By then, the Jeannette rested at the bottom of the sea. The crew and captain were still on the ice. Survival was their only goal now, and they prepared to begin a do-or-die trek to Siberia. De Long wrote a letter to document the situation. He explained when and where the ship had sunk and that the crew was about to head for the New Siberian Islands with eighty days’ worth of provisions.
De Long sewed up his letter in a piece of black rubber and put it in an empty cask. Then he left it on the ice in the hope that it “may get somewhere.” A large pile of clothing and food was also left behind, including Louis Noros’s sealskin pants.
De Long was as well prepared as ever. He issued precise orders for the distribution of food and equipment in each of the sleds and the boats; for the daily schedule of travel, meals, breaks, and sleep; and for what each man would wear. “The clothing allowance for each officer and man will be limited to what he actually wears and the contents of his packed knapsack. Each may dress in skins or not as he pleases at the start, but having made his choice, he must be ready to abide by it. Extra outside clothing of any kind (except moccasins) cannot be taken, so much was left behind. The contents of the packed knapsacks are to be as follows:
2 pairs blanket nips, or duffle nips,
2 pairs stockings,
1 pair moccasins,
1 cap,
2 pairs mittens,
1 undershirt,
1 pair drawers,
1 skull-cap,
1 comforter,
1 pair snow spectacles,
1 plug tobacco,
1 pipe,
20 rounds ammunition,
24 wind matches.
Soap, towels, thread and needles at discretion.”
The rations would be spare, and there’d be no variety unless the men shot some seals or bears along the way.
De Long set an ambitious routine, with a plan to travel at night. There would be less glare from the sun then, and the ice that melted during the day would freeze solid in the colder night air, making for smoother travel.
De Long divided the men into several work crews. He hoped that each crew could move a boat or a sled independently, but that theory was immediately shot to pieces. Advancing the heavy gear over the broken ice took “superhuman exertions,” and most of the available crew was needed to move each boat or sled. (The men on the sick list did not work. Chipp, in fact, was so weak from lead poisoning that he had to be pulled in a sled. The others were able to walk.)
“Twenty-eight men and twenty-three dogs laying back with all their strength could only start our sixteen hundred pound sled a few feet each time,” De Long wrote in exasperation. The rough, rutted ice made for a nearly impossible path, and before they’d pushed the gear a quarter of a mile, they had broken three sleds.
De Long and Dunbar had laid out the first day’s route the night before, setting up a series of flags as guideposts, and Melville brought a day’s provisions forward in advance.
The crew strained to move a boat after strapping on their canvas harnesses. “Aided by these, the men seized the drag-rope, and, surrounding the boat to keep it upright, began hauling it through the deep, soggy snow, which at times reached to our waists,” Melville wrote. “Whooping and singing, we at last carried and dragged it as far as the depot of supplies that I had deposited the day before.” They thought they were done for the day.
Melville was surprised to learn that there was another flag a half mile ahead. De Long made it clear that they must stay on schedule, so they started again.
The ice began breaking up, causing channels of water. Frantic to get everything to safety, “all hands were placed on one boat or sled at a time, and when the passing floes came together we hurried it over; many of us with a firm grip on the drag-rope dashing into the slush and water ‘neck and heels,’ to be hauled out by our companions ahead,” Melville wrote. Somehow, to the men this all seemed funny! “Amid roars of laughter and good-humored banter, we succeeded late in the afternoon in again bringing all our baggage together.”
Even the lightest sleds (which, when loaded, weighed nearly a ton) could be moved only one at a time. Having everyone go back and forth for sleds and boats meant a huge amount of extra work. “To make one mile good in a straight line, we must march thirteen,” Melville explained.
With several hundred miles between them and Siberia, their prospects looked bleak. Eighty days’ worth of food wouldn’t get them nearly that far.
JUNE 20TH, MONDAY
At no time of the year is traveling worse than at present. In the winter or spring months it is, of course, cold and comfortless, but it is nevertheless dry. In autumn or late summer it is favorable, because the melted snow has all drained off the hard ice, and the traveling is excellent. But just now the snow is soft enough to sink into, and progress is almost impossible.
JUNE 22D, WEDNESDAY
I hardly had gone one fourth mile when I came to an ice opening, and in spite of my strongest efforts, the dogs scattered across some lumps, capsized the sled, dragged me in, and sent all my mess gear flying, having accomplished which, and reached the other side themselves, they sat down and howled to their hearts’ content.
JUNE 24TH, FRIDAY
There is no work in the world harder than this sledging; and with my two line officers [Danenhower and Chipp] constantly on the sick-list, I have much on my hands. In Melville I have a strong support, as well as a substitute for them, and as long as he remains as he is—strong and well—I shall get along all right.