On July 8, 1879, amid cheering crowds, the U.S.S. Jeannette, a three-masted former British navy gun vessel specially adapted for Arctic waters, set sail from San Francisco for the Bering Strait.
Its mission, Hampton Sides writes in The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Voyage of the U.S.S. Jeannette, was bold—to make the United States the first nation to reach the North Pole.
Bankrolled by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald—the Rupert Murdoch of his day—the expedition would not only announce America's arrival on the world stage but also sell a lot of newspapers.
But it wasn't to be. "Nipped" in the ice just north of the 75th parallel and the remote New Siberian Islands, the Jeannette eventually sank to the bottom of the sea, taking with it the dream of planting the Stars and Stripes at the top of the world.
