JOHN MUIR NEVER returned to the High Arctic. After his trip on the Corwin, he became gradually embroiled in the conservation battles that led to his co-founding, in 1892, of the Sierra Club. Instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park, Muir is considered one of the fathers of the environmental movement. He died in 1914. The Cruise of the Corwin, Muir’s posthumously published account of his journey in search of the lost Jeannette, is now a classic of Arctic literature.
AFTER WINNING MEDALS and Navy commendations, Charles Tong Sing turned to a life of gambling and crime, resulting in several prison terms. As the head a powerful Chinese criminal syndicate in New York, he was said to be responsible for at least six murders; he became known as Scarface Charley, in reference to a five-inch facial scar from an injury he sustained aboard the Jeannette. An 1883 article in the New York Times noted, “Recently he gained an unenviable notoriety in Chinatown through his ferocity and physical prowess, and has been suspected of a number of bold and very adroit robberies.” Later in life, Charley Tong Sing went clean and reportedly ran a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, worked as a court interpreter, and briefly served as a policeman in Portland, Oregon. The circumstances of his death are unknown.
WILLIAM NINDEMANN WAS awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He married Miss Newman in New York, as planned, but was soon widowed and left to raise their only son, Billy. Nindemann spent two decades working closely with the Irish-American engineer John Holland, widely regarded as the father of the modern submarine. Serving as a gunner and torpedo operator on Holland’s prototypes, Nindemann delivered several of the new undersea vessels to Japan for use in the Russo-Japanese War. In 1913, one year to the day after his son, Billy, drowned in a canoe accident on the Hudson River, Nindemann died in Brooklyn.
JAMES GORDON BENNETT JR. remained the publisher of the New York Herald and its sister publication, the Paris Herald (forerunner of the International Herald Tribune), until his death. He continued to live the high life, in a manner perhaps best exemplified by his construction, in 1901, of his dream yacht. The 314-foot Lysistrata boasted, among other amenities, a Turkish bath, a theater, and a padded stall for dairy cows so he could have fresh cream every morning. Bennett’s interest in sports only intensified with age. He established cups for yacht racing and automobile racing, and in 1906 he funded an international balloon race, the Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett, which continues today. He remained a bachelor for most of his life, but finally, at the age of seventy-three, married Maud Potter, the widow of George de Reuter of the Reuters news agency family.
Bennett died in 1918 at his seaside villa in Beaulieu, France, surrounded by his beloved dogs. He was buried in Paris, not far from Avenue Gordon Bennett, in a mausoleum decorated with stone owls. In 1924, the Herald merged with its archrival, the New York Tribune. In addition to Bennett Island, an asteroid—305 Gordonia—was designated in his honor. His name lives on in Great Britain, where the exclamation “Gordon Bennett!” is still sometimes used as an expression of absolute incredulity.
THE LAST SURVIVING member of the Jeannette expedition was Herbert Leach, the seaman from Melville’s party who nearly perished of frostbite in the Lena delta. A native of Penobscot, Maine, Leach worked much of his life in a shoe factory in Massachusetts. In 1928, he joined Emma De Long at the unveiling of an enormous granite statue dedicated to George De Long and the other Jeannette dead, at Woodlawn Cemetery. Leach died in 1933.
IN 1909, AMERICAN explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reached the North Pole—though many details of their claim have been disputed. During one of his earlier polar attempts, Peary found a handwritten letter that Emma De Long had penned to her husband in 1881. The letter, still sealed in red wax, had somehow made its way to a remote hut in Greenland, where it lay undisturbed for twenty years. Peary returned the unopened letter to Emma.
IN 1938, Emma De Long, well into her eighties, published her memoir, Explorer’s Wife. (That same year had seen something of a Jeannette revival, with the publication of a best-selling novel, Hell On Ice, which was adapted into a nationally broadcast radio drama by Orson Welles.) Emma De Long never remarried, and she lived out her last years alone—happily, she said—on a New Jersey farm she had purchased. “My husband’s memory,” she said, “is all I have left.” Not only was she a widow, but she had lost her only child: Sylvie De Long, after serving in World War I as a Red Cross nurse, marrying, and giving birth to two children, had died in 1925, of a mastoid infection. Emma De Long passed away in 1940 at the age of ninety-one. She was laid to rest beside her husband at Woodlawn Cemetery.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Researching and writing the story of the Jeannette expedition has been a peripatetic adventure that ranged over three years and three continents, with so many good souls to thank. First, I must single out Katharine De Long, a distant relation of George De Long’s, for bestowing upon me that magical gift all historians fantasize about but rarely get an opportunity to enjoy: an old trunk, rescued from the attic, full of yellowed letters. In this case, the trunk contained the correspondence and personal papers of Emma De Long, which Katharine was kind enough to loan me for the duration of my research.
My work in Paris and Le Havre went off without a hitch, thanks to the tireless and stalwart efforts of Maria Vincenza Aloisi, a veteran Time-Life researcher. I thank also Bernadette Murphy at the International Herald Tribune for guiding me down to the basement and opening the paper’s musty files on James Gordon Bennett. Elizabeth Alice conducted a valuable reconnaissance of Bennett’s villa in Beaulieu-sur-Mer and other old haunts in the south of France. I’m grateful to David Howard and the editors of Bicycling for getting me to Paris in the first place, with an assignment to cover the Tour de France.
In Germany, my field researcher, translator, and guide was the ever-resourceful Mieke Hagenah. I thank Horst Richardson and Gunther and Michaela Karsten for their generous hospitality in Erfurt, as well as Dr. Petra Weigel, of the Perthes-Verlag archive in Gotha. Thanks to Andrea and Sven Johns for their warm welcome in Berlin, and to historian and biographer Philipp Felsch for illuminating the life and times of August Petermann.
At Stanford, I thank Mandy MacCalla and the Edwards Media Fellows program for a substantial fellowship that allowed me to inhabit the university’s voluminous newspaper archives from the Gilded Age. The staffs at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California, the Mare Island Museum, and the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum were most helpful.
Mark Mollan at the National Archives, in Washington, assisted me greatly as I sifted through the mountains of Jeannette primary documents housed there. Thanks also to Jim and Penny Conaway, Jessica Goldstein and Peter Braslow, and Ken and Florri DeCell for their generosity during my stays in Washington. James Cheevers, senior curator of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, in Annapolis, was crucially helpful in the early stages of this project.
A special thanks to journalist and historian Mitchell Zuckoff at Boston University for his collegiality in sharing his trove of Jeannette research materials. Archivists at Newport’s Redwood Library and Athenaeum generously facilitated my research, as did the curatorial staff at Bennett’s Newport Casino, now known as the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum.
National Geographic magazine helped support this book in multiple ways, including by sending me to Norway, where I first learned of the Jeannette expedition, and then to the Bering Strait and Russia’s Wrangel Island. At the magazine, I especially want to thank Jamie Shreeve, Victoria Pope, Oliver Payne, Brad Scriber, Nicholas Mott, and Chris Johns. My work in Russia would not have been possible without the extraordinary efforts of Ludmila Mekertycheva, legendary researcher, translator, and all-around fixer for National Geographic. In Moscow, I benefited enormously from the insights of journalists Jim Brooke and Jeffrey Tayler, photographer Sergey Gorshkov, Wrangel Island Reserve director Alexander Gruzdev, and Mikhail Stishov of the World Wildlife Fund. My journey by icebreaker to Wrangel Island and the Arctic coast of Siberia cou
ld not have happened without the generosity and hard work of the staff at Heritage Expeditions, especially David Bowen, Rodney Russ, and Leanne Dunhill.
Outside magazine encouraged this book from its inception and helped subsidize my travels—most notably sending me to Russia’s Lena delta, one of the most inaccessible places on the planet, to find the Jeannette memorial on America Mountain. My heartfelt thanks to Mary Turner, Chris Keyes, Amy Silverman, and the whole team at Outside. In Yakutsk, I thank the curatorial staff of the Museum of the Northern Peoples. In helping me reach the remote site of De Long’s final wanderings in the Lena delta, I must thank Captain Vitali Zhdanov and his second-in-command, Andrey Krukov, who found a berth for me aboard their working diesel riverboat, Puteyskiy 405.
In Santa Fe, I was blessed to have two first-rate research assistants; Devon MacLeod and Alexi Horowitz were creative, dogged, cheerful, thorough, and ultimately indispensable. I’m grateful to my German translator and friend, Dag Dascher, and to William Talbot and Richard Fitch, professional connoisseurs of vintage maps. Thanks also to Dick Stolley, James McGrath Morris, Kevin Fedarko, Molly Leonard, Matthew Hecht, Gene Aker, Elizabeth Hunke, Dr. Renny Levy, and Dr. Robert Reidy. The amazing Revell Carr provided invaluable advice on all things nautical. A big shout-out to the folks at Iconik, my caffeinated writing bunker, and to my good friend and photographic wizard, Gary Oakley.
A warm thanks to George Getschow of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, which gave me creative oxygen at a critical moment, and to Steven Hayward and Barry Sarchett at Colorado College, where my time as a visiting professor gave my work a much-needed shot of inspiration. Caroline Alexander, Nat Philbrick, John Bockstoce, David Quammen, Jim Donovan, Ian Frazier, and Bill Broyles provided valuable insights. Special thanks to Dr. Kevin Wood of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean and to John Hattendorf of the U.S. Naval War College. I was fortunate enough to make useful contact with several descendants of Jeannette expedition members, especially Amy Nossum Johnson, Geoffrey Wilson, and Maggie Baker. Ken DeCell’s fine eye made my manuscript infinitely better.
For this and all my books, I’m forever grateful to the mighty Sloan Harris and the crew at ICM. I especially want to thank Heather Karpas at ICM New York, as well as Ron Bernstein in Los Angeles. At Doubleday, a big thanks to Todd Doughty, Melissa Danaczko, and, of course, the unstoppable Bill Thomas, who has been my loyal editor and friend for fifteen years now.
Highest praise for last: From London to Le Havre to San Francisco to Siberia, my wife and family saw me through every meandering step of this polar saga—and always showed me what a profound joy it is to be home.
NOTES
PROLOGUE: BAPTISM BY ICE
On a misty morning: My account of the discovery of Tyson and his party is primarily drawn from Tyson’s own account in his book Arctic Experiences, originally published in 1874. Other key sources include Weird and Tragic Shores, by Chauncey Loomis; Trial by Ice, by Richard Parry; and newspaper accounts published in the New York Herald in 1873.
“God-made raft”: Tyson, Arctic Experiences, 230.
“fools of fortune”: Ibid., 310.
“like a shuttlecock”: Ibid., 322.
“Those who have baffled and spoiled”: Ibid., 232.
“Do it now”: Emma Wotton De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 54.
“I never in my life saw such”: Ibid., 70.
“The ‘town,’ such as it is”: Ibid., 71.
“destined always to be separated”: Ibid., 58.
“I cannot help thinking”: Ibid., 85.
“narrated with considerable minuteness”: New York Herald, September 10, 1873.
“The officers and crew of the Polaris”: Ibid.
“I shall await with great interest”: George Washington De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:14.
“never witnessed a more glorious scene”: New York Herald, September 10, 1873.
“Absolutely hemmed in”: Ibid.
“Our boat is a beauty”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 74.
“At every one of the fearful plunges”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:18.
“Looking back at it now makes me tremble”: Ibid., 1:22.
“The waves, lashed to a fury”: New York Herald, September 10, 1873.
“how far the lives of our little party”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:21.
“Prosecuting the search for the Polaris”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 81.
“The ship was wild with excitement”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:22.
“The adventure had affected him deeply”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 89.
“the greater became his desire”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:40.
PART ONE: A GREAT BLANK SPACE
1: A SHOCKING SABBATH CARNIVAL OF DEATH
Close to midnight: My description of the Great Animal Hoax is primarily drawn from the story itself, originally published in the New York Herald on November 9, 1874, in several different editions. See also Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts, 304–39, and O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, 131.
“ability to seize upon dormant situations”: Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts, 271.
“gnawing horribly at his head”: New York Herald, November 9, 1874.
“saturating herself in the blood”: Ibid.
“kept busy dressing the fearful wounds”: Ibid.
“The hospitals are full of the wounded”: Ibid.
“groaned” at this remarkable story: Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts, 337.
“Of course, the entire story”: New York Herald, November 9, 1874.
“How is New York prepared to meet”: Ibid.
“No such carefully prepared story”: O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, 132.
“helped rather than hurt the paper”: Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts, 338.
2: NE PLUS ULTRA
“a great, sad blot upon the present age”: From a letter by Charles Hall, reprinted in Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores, 229.
“As a family will, of course”: Ernst Behm, quoted in T. B. Maury, “The New American Polar Expedition and Its Hopes,” Atlantic Monthly, October 1870.
“Man will not be content”: Editorial in the New York Times, July 26, 1879.
“Within the charmed circle of the Arctic”: Maury, “New American Polar Expedition.”
“immense tract of hitherto unvisited land”: C. R. Markham, “Arctic Exploration,” Nature, November 30, 1871.
“If I do not succeed”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 116.
“Her famous trip to Cape York”: From a series of articles published in the New York Herald in the fall of 1874, reprinted in Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 87.
“abhorred public acclaim”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 88.
“Death, in a hundred ghastly shades”: Times (London), May 24, 1873; also quoted in Clements R. Markham, “Arctic Exploration,” Nature, May 29, 1873.
On the night of November 1, 1873: My account of the meeting at Grinnell’s house is drawn from Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 89; George De Long The Voyage of the Jeannette 1:25; and Guttridge, Icebound, 21.
3: THE LORD OF CREATION
“half a head taller than his competitor”: “A Walking Match,” New York Times, May 6, 1874.
“pace of both men was terrific”: Ibid.
“almost pitiable”: Ibid.
“he walked as much with his arms”: Ibid.
Whipple “struggled manfully”: Ibid.
“Oh, I am always walking”: Ibid.
“The two men were attracted to each other”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 91.
“Bennett the Terrible”: O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, 8.
“was a ruler over a domain of romance”: Crockett, When James Gordon Bennett, 19.
Bennett had a habit: See Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts, 239.
Once, after a musical show in Amsterda
m: See Crockett, When James Gordon Bennett, 234.
4: FOR YOU I WILL DARE ANYTHING
“incessant friction”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:8.
“a hungry heart”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 41.
called his commanding style “monolithic”: Hoehling, The Jeannette Expedition, 62.
“a hard thing on the temper”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 65.
“I never allow any argument”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:24.
“a third-rate assemblage”: Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy, 278–79.
a life of “crushing hopelessness”: Ibid., 281.
“A stagnant navy”: Ibid., 282.
“morbidly solicitous for him”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:6.
“De Long’s first encounter with hostile ice”: Guttridge, Icebound, 8.
“found exercise in an intellectual ardor”: George De Long, The Voyage of the Jeannette, 1:6.
“an uneasy desire for larger liberty”: Ibid.
“in my proper element at last”: Emma De Long, Explorer’s Wife, 9.
“I am Midshipman De Long”: Ibid., 9.
“He got what he wanted”: Ibid.
“a finished young lady”: Ibid., 22.
“But we’ve scarcely met!”: Ibid., 26.
“I was gradually being drawn”: Ibid., 29.
“I felt completely lost”: Ibid., 33.
“As I may not be able to speak to you alone”: Ibid., 29.
“Your father spoke to me kindly”: Ibid., 36.
“I am firmly resolved”: Ibid., 38.
“Poor little silken bag!”: Ibid., 35.
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