The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Personal NarrativeElisha Kent Kane (1820-57) was an American Arctic explorer. He studied medicine in his native Philadelphia and in 1843 entered the U.S. Navy as a surgeon. In 1850 he sailed as the senior medical officer and naturalist on an expedition in search of Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), the British naval officer and explorer who had been missing in the Canadian Arctic since 1845. Funded by New York merchant Henry Grinnell and carried out by the U.S. Navy, the expedition explored Lancaster Sound and Wellington Channel and found one of Franklin's camps but no trace of the men. The expedition was led by Lieutenant Edwin Jesse De Haven and consisted of two ships, the brig Advance and the brig Rescue. In 1853-55 Kane was placed in command of a second expedition, also funded by Grinnell, which also failed to find Franklin. This book, published in 1854 while Kane was in the Arctic, is his narrative of the first Grinnell expedition. It contains Kane's detailed observations about pack ice, glaciers, icebergs, and Arctic fish and wildlife. The narrative is followed by a lengthy appendix that includes six documents: the instructions from the Secretary of the Navy William Ballard Preston to De Haven; De Haven's official report on the expedition; three sets of abstracts and tables containing detailed meteorological data compiled from the log book of the Advance; and the text of a lecture about the expedition given by Kane to the American Geographical and Statistical Society in December 1852. |
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ahead Arctic atmosphere Baffin's Bay bear Beechy bergs birds boat brig Cape Riley Captain Captain Penny changes CHAPTER cliffs close coast cold color commander crew dark deck Disco distance drift eight Esquimaux expedition face fiord floating floe fragments frozen gale gave glacier gneiss Greenland Grinnell hills horizon hummocks hundred yards ice-tables icebergs inches Island Ivory gulls journal July kayack Lancaster Sound land latitude little Auks look margin mass Melville Bay miles morning Murdaugh Narwhals nearly night northward observed officers open water pack party passed perhaps Polar reach refraction Rescue ridges rocks rose round rude sail scurvy seal season seemed seen sextant ship shore side Sir John Franklin Sir John Ross snow sunshine surface temperature thermometer thick thing tion to-day vessels walk warping Wellington Wellington Channel whalers wind winter
Popular passages
Page xvii - Science felt for its votaries, humanity mourned its fellows, and an impulse, holier and more energetic than either, invoked a crusade of rescue. That admirable woman, the wife of Sir John Franklin, not content with stimulating the renewed efforts of her own countrymen, claimed the cooperation of the world. In letters to the President of the United States, full of the eloquence of feeling, she called on us, as a " kindred people, to join heart and hand in the enterprise of snatching the lost navigators...
Page 183 - NW from our position, terminated abruptly in an elevated cape, to which I have given the name of Manning, after a warm personal friend and ardent supporter of the expedition. Between Cornwallis Island and some distant high land visible in the north appeared a wide channel leading to the westward. A dark misty-looking cloud which hung over it (technically termed frost smoke] was indicative of much open water in that direction.
Page 491 - ... a long period to become liberated from this cause alone. More was expected from our southerly drift, which still continued, and must soon carry us into a milder climate and open sea. On the 19th of May, the land about Cape Searle was made out, the first that we had seen since passing Cape "Walter...
Page 488 - With the kindest consideration, and the most cheerful alacrity, he volunteered to perform the executive duties during the winter, and relieve me from every thing that might tend in the least to retard my recovery. " During the remainder of December, the ice remained quiet immediately around us, and breaks were all strongly cemented by new ice. In our neighborhood, however, cracks were daily visible. Our drift to the eastward averaged nearly six miles per day ; so that on the last of the month we...
Page 475 - Access to an open Polar Sea, in connection with the search after Sir John Franklin and his companions.
Page 488 - ... neighborhood, however, cracks were daily visible. Our drift to the eastward averaged nearly six miles per day, so that on the last of the month we were at the entrance of the sound, Cape Osborn bearing north from us. January, 1851. On passing out of the sound, and opening Baffin's Bay, to the north was seen a dark horizon, indicating much open water in that direction. On the llth a crack took place between us and the Rescue, passing close under our stern.
Page 241 - All our eatables became laughably consolidated, and after different fashions, requiring no small experience before we learned to manage the peculiarities of their changed condition. Thus, dried apples became one solid breccial mass of impacted angularities, a conglomerate of sliced chalcedony. Dried peaches the same. To get these out of the barrel, or the barrel out of them, was a matter impossible. We found, after many trials, that the shortest and best plan was to cut up both fruit and barrel by...
Page 488 - ... single desponding look among the whole crew: on the contrary, each one seemed resolved to do his whole duty, and every thing went on cheerily and bravely. For my own part, I had become quite an invalid, so much so as to prevent my taking an active part in the duties of the vessel as I had always done, or even from incurring the exposure necessary to proper exercise. However, I felt no...
Page 489 - AM Every moment I expected the vessel would be crushed or overwhelmed by the massive ice forced up far above our bulwarks. The Rescue being further removed on the other side of the crack from the line of crushing, and being firmly imbedded in heavy ice, I was in hopes would remain undisturbed.
Page 489 - We had the misfortune to find sad havoc had been made among the stores and provisions left on the ice; and few barrels were recovered; but a large portion were crushed and had disappeared. " On the morning of the 14th there was again some motion in the floes. That on the port side moved off from the vessel two or three feet and there became stationary. This left the vessel entirely detached from the ice round the water line, and it was expected she would once more resume an upright position. In this,...