User:SaltedSturgeon/sandbox/Victory expedition

The Victory expedition (1829–1833) was a British voyage of discovery to the Arctic led by John Ross. Its goal was the discovery of the Northwest Passage, a sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Archipelago. It comprised a single ship, a steamer named the Victory, which had a crew of 23 men. The expedition lasted over four years and cost three lives. Ross and his men failed to discover the Northwest Passage and ultimately had to abandon the Victory, but they have been recognized for their geographic discoveries, scientific achievements, and endurance in the face of hardship.

John Ross was a Royal Navy officer who had previously led an expedition to the Arctic in 1818, during which he made a number of cartographic errors that led to controversy on his return and effectively ended his naval career. Through the 1820s, a period of renewed British interest in Arctic discovery, naval explorers such as William Edward Parry, John Franklin

Overall outcome, cost, a quote, k

Background
By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the Royal Navy was the most powerful navy in the world. ... In 1818, whalers working off the coast of Greenland began reporting a notable reduction in the Arctic ice pack History of NWP

Parry? Ross's expedition departed England in the spring of 1819

Ross and others in the 1820s

Funding
Booth, the Parliament comedy

Personnel
Applications

Crew of the Victory

Vessels and provisions
Beliefs, scurvy

First season
The Victory set sail from Woolwich on Saturday, 23 May 1829.

Lord Mayor Bay
By the end of September, it was clear that winter had arrived, and Ross determined

The boats were moved ashore, the rigging was dismantled, and the spars were removed from the masts. The deck was roofed over with a tent made from the Fury ' s sails, and the sides of the ship were banked with snow up to the gunwale.

Retreat to Fury Beach
With the onset of the expedition's third winter, it became clear that the Victory would never sail again. Ross calculated that their provisions would only last until June 1832,

The Victory was officially abandoned on 29 May

After a 250 mi journey, the exhausted group reached Fury Beach on 1 July. Despite Ross's instructions, the men secretly gorged themselves and subsequently suffered from painful indigestion. After a one-day rest, the men set to work consolidating their supplies and constructing a dwelling to shelter them until the ice opened up. The structure measured 31 by and had a height of 7 ft. The frame was made out of spars and the walls formed from blocks of snow. Heat was provided by two stoves, and later the whole structure was covered with a layer of canvas for extra protection. The crew lived and slept in a large common area, while each of the four officers had a small private room. Henry Eyre, the cook, lived in a tent.

As the temperature rose, game reappeared and the men's health improved. Thomas and Shreeve began repairing the boats, strengthening each by installing two bulkheads and extra beams. The ice, however, showed no sign of breaking up. On 21 July, Ross climbed a 1000 ft promontory to scout for open water, but found that all of Prince Regent Inlet was a solid field of ice. A week later, narrow lanes of water appeared, and on the last day of the month the floes congesting Prince Regent suddenly broke up. Ross knew that there was no time to lose, so the men immediately began preparing to depart. The three boats were stocked with two months of provisions, and the two Rosses exchanged copies of each other's maps and journals. After depositing a bottle with a brief overview of the events of the expedition, the 21 men took to the ice on the afternoon of 1 August.

The ice proved to be a serious menace to the three small boats, and only 8 mi of progress was made on the first day. Day by day they inched slowly northward, snaking through narrow leads and pushing their way through the ice with boarding pikes. With a minor change in the wind or tide, floes would spontaneously crash together, forming elongated hummocks that tended to move towards the shore, posing grave danger to the boats. The narrow beaches of Somerset Island, backed by 500 ft cliffs, were barely safer. The spring melt cracked and dislodged large rocks from the crevices, causing them to hurtle down to the beach where the men were encamped. Ross recognized that any one of them could have killed in an instant, but conceded that they "[they] were fully tried by hazards and had become somewhat careless".

As the month continued the ice maintained its unpredictability. Progress generally involved loading the heavy mahogany boats into leads that often closed soon after they opened up. When the way ahead was blocked, the men were forced to unload the boats, haul them onto the ice, then drag them into the next lead. This process was often repeated every 100 yd. After a month of travelling, the men had gotten as far as the junction of Lancaster Sound and Prince Regent Inlet, about 70 mi from Fury Beach. There they waited for another three weeks for the ice to open, but it didn't. With the weather worsening every day, Ross concluded on 30 September that there was no hope for them except in returning to Fury Beach and trying again next year.

Rescue
In September, the Isabella moved to the fishing grounds off Bylot Island and rendezvoused with the rest of the whaling fleet. There, the masters of every ship came aboard to congratulate Ross and his men. After remaining in the area a few more weeks to chart a section of coastline, the Isabella sailed out of Baffin Bay on 30 September, and reached Hull on 18 October.

Search efforts
In England, concerns for Ross and his men first arose in the spring of 1832. Naturalist and Arctic explorer John Richardson, who was a personal friend of Ross, petitioned the Royal Geographical Society to organize an overland rescue mission; Barrow, who was a chairman of the Geographical Society, quickly moved to reject the it. George Ross, brother of John and father of James, then formed a committee and began aggressively lobbying the government.

George Back, who had served under Franklin in all three of his Arctic journeys,

Back's expedition

Aftermath and legacy
On his return to Britain, John Ross was lionized by the public and showered with honors and awards from across Europe. He and James Ross were given an audience with William IV, who gave permission to affix the names of the royal family onto their maps. John Ross was given the freedom of five cities, a knighthood, and a companionship of the Order of Bath.

Cartography
Poctes Bay

Inuit
Names and groups, connection to Franklin in '48