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The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition By Ginny Coyne

First charted by the British Nares expedition in 1875-76, Lady Franklin Bay, located on Ellesmere Island, was chosen as a site for an American colony by Captain Howgate, of the US Army in the 1870s. In 1880, Howgate successfully proposed to the U.S. Congress that a polar station be established in the area. Point Barrow and Lady Franklin Bay research stations, manned by the U.S.Army Signal Corps, began conducting International Polar Year research in 1881 as well as geographical explorations which included the pursuit of a navigible winter sea routes.

In July 1881, [LieutenantAdolfusWashingtonGreely], departed on his ill-fated journey to Lady Franklin Bay, with a party of 24 men aboard the steamship Proteus. Two Inuit hunters, named Thorlip Frederick Christiansen and Jens, as well as a physician named Dr. Octave Parry, boarded the vessel at Godthaab, Greenland to accompany the Lieutenant to the mouth of Lady Franklin Bay. Greely built Fort Conger in August 1881at the site where Nares had landed the Discovery and overwintered.

The data collection began immediately and continued successfully for two years. Water temperatures were recorded using thermometers designed for the expedition. High and low tides were logged and the team built a magnetic observatory which housed a magnetometer for measuring terrestrial magnetism.

In the Spring of 1882, Greely led a team to the interior of Ellesmere Island while another excursion led by Lieutenant James Lockwood and Sergeant David Brainard headed north to Cape Bryant on the coast of Greenland. Using supplies left by the Nares expedition, Lockwood travelledas far as Lockwood Island 83 24'N. They had achieved a new non-idigenous record for northern survey.

While Fort Conger was well fed during the summer of 1882 with a ready supply of fresh muskoxen meat and the team enjoyed mild weather, the social climate in the camp was cooling. Fort Conger was due to be resupplied in 1882 but the relief ship was late. By August 1883, Feelings of isolation were taking a heavy toll on the station's party, at one point Greely was considering arresting Dr. Parry for insubordination. With the tensions rising, Greely decided to travel south to Cape Sabine where he could resupply. Travelling sixteen days through incliment weather, Greely led two boats laden with all their scientific data only to be trapped in pack ice thirteen miles shy of Ellesmere Island, they continued on by foot to Pym Island, where two men walked eight more days to find out there was to be no supplies.

General William Hazen, chief signal officer of the US, tried to send a relief ship north but this was turned down by the US secretary of war, Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln. Greely's cause was not abandoned due in part to Greely's wife, Henrietta, who relentlessly lobbied for her husband's safe return.

On Pym Island, the men constructed what shelter they could fashion from an upturned boat and stones, they called this Camp Clay. The men's health began to deteriorate. The death of the Inuit hunters- one to scurvy and one to drowning, eroded the chance for survival. In January men were beginning to die from starvation, by May they were dying daily.

Greely wrote,"Seven of us left-here-we-are-dying, like men. Did what we came to do-beat the old record".(Sale, 2002,P114)

On June 22, 1883, when the ships, Thetis and Bear, sailed to Pym Island the grim fate of Greely's party was discovered. Only Greely, and six of 24 men were still alive. Among the dead there was evidence of cannibalism.

Following his trip home, Greely wrote a book and began a lecture circuit, carefully downplaying the harrowing events of Pym Island.

The story of Greely's ordeal is chronicled in Alden Todd's Abandoned: The Story of the Greely Arctic Expedition 1881-1884.

References:

Sale, Richard. Polar Reaches:The History of Arctic andAntartic Exploration.he Mountaineers Books, 2002,P.112-115.

Taylor, C.J.First International Polar Year, 1882-83. Arctic, Vol.34,N04(DEcember1981),P.370-376.