A Brief History
On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette sailed from San Francisco on an ill-fated voyage to the North Pole. Not realizing the North Pole is on completely frozen sea water, the voyage could not have been successful, but little did the sailors know just how unsuccessful the voyage would be!
Digging Deeper
The ill-starred ship started its career in 1861 as the HMS Pandora, a Royal Navy gunboat that patrolled the coast of West Africa for 14 years before being decommissioned and sold. A private party, Allen Young, bought the Pandora as a substantial yacht, and made 2 trips to the Arctic in the ship. Young sold the ship to the owner of the New York Herald, James G. Bennet, Jr., in 1877.
Bennet renamed the ship the USS Jeannette and planned another Arctic trip, this time with the intention of reaching the North Pole, a destination not yet known to have been reached by humans. Bennet thought the path through the Bering Strait would continue with open water all the way to the North Pole on the mistaken assumption that the warm Pacific waters would keep the ice at bay via a “thermometric gateway.”
