 Alert in pack ice during the Arctic Expedition of 1876 | |
| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom | |
| Name | Alert |
| Ordered | 2 April 1853 |
| Builder | Royal Dockyard,Pembroke |
| Cost | £36,743[1] |
| Laid down | January 1855 |
| Launched | 20 May 1856[2] |
| Acquired | 1855 by RN, 1884 by USN and 1885 by Canada |
| Commissioned | 21 January 1858[1] |
| Decommissioned | 1894 |
| Out of service | 1894 |
| Fate | Loaned toUS Navy on 20 February 1884–1885 and Canada 1885–1894; sold in 1894 and broken up |
 United States | |
| Name | Alert |
| Acquired | 1884 |
| Fate | Loaned by the Admiralty to Canadian Government in May 1885 |
 Canada | |
| Name | CGSAlert |
| Operator | Marine Service of Canada of theDepartment of Marine and Fisheries |
| Fate | Sold in November 1894 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & type | Cruizer-classsloop |
| Displacement | 1,045 tons[1] (1,240 tons after conversion for Arctic exploration) |
| Tons burthen | 747+51⁄94bm[1] |
| Length |
|
| Beam | 31 ft 10 in (9.70 m)[1] |
| Depth of hold | 17 ft 6 in (5.33 m)[1] |
| Installed power | Indicated 383 hp (286 kW) |
| Propulsion |
|
| Sail plan | Barque-rigged |
| Speed | 8.8knots (16.3 km/h; 10.1 mph) under power |
| Complement | |
| Armament |
|
HMSAlert was a 17-gun woodenscrew sloop of theCruizer class of theRoyal Navy,launched in 1856 andbroken up in 1894. She was the eleventh ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name (or a variant of it), and was noted for her Arctic exploration work; in 1876 she reached a record latitude of 82° North.Alert briefly served with theUS Navy, and ended her career with theCanadian Marine Service as a lighthouse tender and buoy ship.
The wooden sloops of theCruizer class were designed under the direction ofLord John Hay, and after his "Committee of Reference" was disbanded, their construction was supervised by the newSurveyor of the Navy,Sir Baldwin Walker. Ordered together with her co-shipFalcon on 2 April 1853,[1]Alert waslaid down at the Royal Dockyard,Pembroke in January 1855. It was fitted at Chatham[3] with a two-cylinder horizontal single-expansionsteam engine, which was supplied by Ravenhill & Salkeld at a cost of £6,052 and generated anindicated horsepower of 383 hp (286 kW); driving a singlescrew, this gave a maximum speed of 8.8knots (16.3 km/h). The class was given abarque-rig sail plan.
All the ships of the class were provided with one32-pounder (56 cwt) long heavy gun on a pivot mount and sixteen 32-pounder (32 cwt) carriage guns in a broadside arrangement.[1] When she was converted for Arctic exploration in 1874, her armament was reduced to a token outfit of fourArmstrong breech-loaders.[5]
Alert spent the first 11 years of her life on thePacific Station, based atEsquimalt at the southern tip ofVancouver Island, Canada.Alert Bay, British Columbia is named after the ship, and nearbyPearse Island, at the north entrance toJohnstone Strait, is named after Commander William Alfred Rumbulow Pearse, her commanding officer.[6] During this period it returned toPlymouth between October 1861 and May 1863 for a refit. Her service on the Pacific station was the type of work for which her class had been designed—the policing of Britain's far-flung maritime empire.
A photograph exists ofAlert atEsquimalt,British Columbia from 1867, and it is further attested to by the following extract fromThe Colonist newspaper:
"The 'Alert' Taken! – On Wednesday, H.M.S. Alert was taken without resistance on the part of her officers and crew, who are believed to have lent themselves to the plot. The ship was lying at anchor in Esquimalt harbour when the affair occurred, and the time chosen by the enemy was noon-day. The captor was Mr. Robinson the Photographer, and the only weapons he used in effecting his object were a Camera, and a bit of glass."
— The Colonist, 5 July 1866[7]
Alertpaid off at Plymouth on 30 May 1868 and was placed in the Steam Reserve.
_pushed_aground_by_ice.jpg)
In 1874,Alert was taken in hand for conversion to the role of Arctic exploration. Her single-expansion engine was replaced with anR & W Hawthorncompound-expansion engine, it was re-boilered to 60 pounds per square inch (410 kPa), her armament was reduced to four guns and her hull was strengthened with felt-covered iron. Above the waterline it was sheathed with teak, and below it, Canadian elm and pitch-pine. The modifications caused her displacement to increase to 1,240 tons.[5]
TheBritish Arctic Expedition was commanded by CaptainGeorge Strong Nares, and comprisedAlert (Captain Nares) andDiscovery (CaptainHenry Frederick Stephenson). The expedition aimed to reach theNorth Pole viaSmith Sound, the sea passage betweenGreenland and Canada's northernmost island,Ellesmere Island. Contemporary geographers proposed that there could be anOpen Polar Sea, and that if the thick layer of ice surrounding it were overcome, access to the North Pole by sea might be possible. Ever sinceEdward Augustus Inglefield had penetrated Smith Sound in 1852, it had been a likely route to the North.
Despite finding heavier-than-expected ice, the expedition pressed on.[8] LeavingDiscovery to winter atLady Franklin Bay,Alert pressed on a further 50 nautical miles (93 km; 58 mi) through theRobeson Channel, establishing her winter quarters at Floeberg Beach.[8] Spring 1876 saw considerable activity by sledge, charting the coasts of Ellesmere Island and Greenland, butscurvy had begun to take hold, withAlert suffering the greatest burden.[8] On 3 April the second-in-command ofAlert,Albert Hastings Markham, took a party north to attempt the Pole. By 11 May, having made slow progress, they reached their greatest latitude at 83° 20' 26"N.[9] Suffering from snow blindness, scurvy and exhaustion, they turned back.
The expedition was rewarded on its return; Nares was knighted, Markham was promoted to captain.[3] The geography of northern Canada andGreenland is dotted with the names of those connected with the expedition:Nares Strait,Nares Lake,Markham Ice Shelf,Ayles Ice Shelf, andMount Ayles. The northernmost permanently inhabited place on earth, the settlement ofAlert at the northern point of Ellesmere Island, was named for the ship.
Alert recommissioned at Chatham on 20 August 1878[5] under the command of Captain Sir George Strong Nares for a survey of theStrait of Magellan. On 12 March 1879Captain John Maclear took command,[5] and under him she went toAustralia Station and the Pacific. She was employed in surveying, but the presence of DoctorRichard Coppinger, her surgeon, ensured that she also made a huge contribution to the field of zoology. Coppinger, who had also served in the Arctic expedition, was an accomplished naturalist[10] and his collections from the period 1878–1882, which included indigenous cultural artifacts purloined, as he admitted, fromMutumui sites onClack Island,[11] added 1,300 species to the National Collection.[12][13]Alert paid off atSheerness on 20 September 1882.[5]
Adolphus Greely led theLady Franklin Bay Expedition to the Arctic in 1881. Two supply ships failed to reach his party, and a relief expedition in 1883 also failed to extract the team. TheUS Navy put together a further relief expedition in 1884 under Captain W. S. Schley, andAlert was offered. She was loaned to the US Navy under the command of Captain George W Coffin on 20 February 1884, and was used to set up supply dumps to supportUSS Bear in the extrication of Greely and his men.[3]
Two members of Greely's expedition, LieutenantJames B. Lockwood and SergeantDavid Legge Brainard had achieved a new record of 83° 30'N,[14] just 4 miles (6.4 km) closer to the Pole than Markham had achieved in 1876. Lockwood and 19 other members of the expedition died; Greely, Brainard and four others survived.
In September 1880, the United Kingdom transferred its rights of Arctic sovereignty to Canada. From 1884 to 1886 the Canadian Marine Service of theDepartment of Marine and Fisheries sent an expedition toHudson Bay to establish observation posts and to estimate the length of season for ice-free navigation. A former lieutenant of the Royal Navy, Andrew Robertson Gordon, was placed in command, and a suitable ship was sought. Having finished her work with the US Navy,Alert seemed the ideal vessel for the task. She was sailed to theRoyal Naval Dockyard, Halifax and transferred by the senior naval officer to the marine agent of the Department of Marine and Fisheries.[3]
"TheAlert was a screw steamship, barque rigged, of about 700 tons gross . . . constructed as to be capable of resisting great ice pressure, and her engines being only 50 nominal horsepower, the screw is small . . . so that in every way she was well adapted for the work of the expedition."
— Andrew Robertson Gordon[3]
In 1886 she carried Captain Markham, who had been second-in-command ofAlert during the 1876 Arctic Exploration, and now represented the interests of a railway company interested in building a line fromWinnipeg toHudson Bay. Captain Markham left the ship atYork Factory, Manitoba and returned by theHayes River canoe route.[15]
After the last Hudson Bay expedition in 1886,Alert was reconfigured as a light-house supply vessel and buoy tender. Hertopmasts andyards were removed, and awheelhouse was built abaft the remains of the main mast. She worked at first inNova Scotia, but as her wooden hull showed signs of deterioration, she was moved to theGulf of Saint Lawrence, sailing out ofQuebec.[3] Thirty years after her launch little was left of her original appearance; in essence she was now a small, old, low-powered steamer showing the scars of hard labour and many an ungainly conversion. Nevertheless, she continued to give useful service until the last decade of the nineteenth century.
CGSAlert was laid up in November 1894 and sold, the bill of exchange being forwarded to the Admiralty, since she was still officially on loan,[5] the total sum being 814 pounds, 2 shillings and 7 pence.[3][16] It was burned on the flats atBeauport but frame was sold for reuse.[17]
Thefigurehead,wheel and other remains are part of theMusée de la civilisation's collections inQuebec City.[18]
CFS Alert, a Canadian militarylistening post,Alert, Nunavut the world's northernmost continuously inhabited settlement, andAlert Bay, British Columbia, are named after the ship.[19]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
