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George W. De Long | |
|---|---|
 De Long before 1879 | |
| Birth name | George Francis[a] De Long |
| Born | (1844-08-22)August 22, 1844 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | c. October 31, 1881(1881-10-31) (aged 37) Yakutia, Siberia, Russia |
| Buried | |
| Branch | United States Navy |
| Service years | 1865–1881 |
| Rank | Lieutenant commander |
| Expedition | Jeannette expedition |
| Awards | Gold Jeannette Medal (1890) |
| Memorials | Jeannette Monument |
| Spouse(s) | Emma Wotton De Long |
George Washington De Long (August 22, 1844 –c. October 31, 1881) was aUnited States Navy officer and explorer who led the ill-fatedJeannette expedition of 1879–1881, in search of theOpen Polar Sea.
In 1879, backed byJames Gordon Bennett Jr.—owner of theNew York Herald—and under the auspices of the United States Navy, Lieutenant Commander De Long sailed fromSan Francisco on the shipUSS Jeannette with a plan to find a way to theNorth Pole via theBering Strait.[2] As well as collecting scientific data and animal specimens, De Long discoveredthree islands and claimed them for the United States in the summer of 1881.[2] The government did not endorse this claim, and the islands are under Russian jurisdiction.
The ship became trapped in the ice pack in theChukchi Sea northeast ofWrangel Island in September 1879. It drifted in the ice pack in a northwesterly direction until it was crushed in the shifting ice and sank onJune 12, 1881, in theEast Siberian Sea. De Long and his crew then traversed the ice pack to try to reachSiberia pulling three small boats.
After reaching open water on September 11 they became separated and one boat, commanded by Executive OfficerCharles W. Chipp, was lost; no trace of it was ever found. De Long's own boat reached land, but only two men sent ahead for aid survived. The third boat, under the command of Chief EngineerGeorge W. Melville, reached theLena Delta and its crew were rescued.[2] Melville later found and brought to the U.S. the ships log books which now sit in the U.S. National Archives.[3]
De Long died of starvation near Matvay Hut,Yakutia. Melville returned a few months later and found the bodies of De Long and his boat crew. Overall, the doomed voyage took the lives of 20 expedition members, as well as additional men lost during the search operations.[2] De Long's death – and that of the other men – was assumed to have occurred at or about the end of October. By direction of the United States government, the remains of De Long and his companions were brought home and interred with honour in his native city.[4]
In 1890, the officers and men of the United States Navy dedicated theJeannette Monument, a granite-and-marble monument designed byGeorge P. Colvocoresses—a cross with carved icicles hanging from it that sits atop a cairn. The 24-foot (7.3 m)-high structure is in theUnited States Naval Academy Cemetery overlooking theSevern River.
His journal, in which he made regular entries up to the day on which he died, was edited by his wife and published in 1883 under the titleVoyage of the "Jeannette", and an account of the search which was made for him and his comrades by Melville was published a year later under the title ofIn the Lena Delta.[4]
Union veterans in theKingdom of Hawai‘i on September 23, 1882, named the post of theGrand Army of the Republic there after him.[5]
Two United States Navy ships have been named USS DeLong after George W. De Long. In addition to theDe Long Islands, theDe Long Mountains in northwestAlaska, TheDe Long Strait separatingWrangel Island from mainland Eurasia and theDe Long Fjord in Greenland bear his name.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "De Long, George Washington".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 970.
