The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin
A Personal Narrative

Dr Elisha Kane, medical officer on the first Grinnell expedition, published this account of an icebound polar winter in 1853.

Elisha Kent Kane (Author)

9781108074872, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 January 2015

586 pages, 114 b/w illus. 3 maps
21.6 x 14 x 3.9 cm, 0.77 kg

Dr Elisha Kane (1820–57), the most famous of American Arctic explorers before Peary, published this work in 1853. Having graduated from medical school, Kane joined the US Navy in 1843, and in 1850 was appointed senior medical officer on the expedition financed by the philanthropist Henry Grinnell to search for Sir John Franklin. Kane had departed on a second expedition while this book was in press, and he continued his Arctic travels, to the detriment of his health, until the year before his early death. In this work, Kane describes the origins of the expedition in the worldwide appeal by Lady Franklin, and, using his own journals, gives a vivid account of a winter spent icebound in the Arctic. Among the appendices is the official report of the expedition's commander, Lieutenant De Haven. Though Franklin's first winter camp was found, there were no further traces of his crew.

Note
1. Introductory
2. Preparations for departure
3. Departure from New York
4. Davis's Straits
5. Whale-fish islands
6. Boat party to Lievely
7. The middle ice
8. Formation of icebergs
9. Svartehuk
10. Jumping-off place
11. Navigation of the pack
12. Devil's Thumb
13. The ice
14. Melville Bay
15. Opposite Duneira Bay
16. Bear hunt
17. Refraction
18. The crimson cliffs of Beverly
19. Arctic highlands
20. Entering Lancaster Sound
21. Visit to the encampment
22. United searching squadrons
23. Wellington Channel
24. Wellington Channel (cont.)
25. Grinnell Land
26. In the ice of Wellington Channel
27. Wellington Channel (cont.)
28. Drifting about outlet of channel
29. Continued drift
30. The cold
31. Continued drift (cont.)
32. Continued drift (cont.)
33. Continued drift (cont.)
34. Continued drift (cont.)
35. Meteors
36. The Rescue in her ice dock
37. Snow drifts
38. April
39. House-cleaning
40. Trying to cut out
41. Cape Walsingham
42. The ice (cont.)
43. June
44. Our floe
45. fantastic forms of ice
46. Pröven
47. Uppernavik
48. The Arctic glaciers
49. March and collision of the bergs
50. Uppernavik (cont.)
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Historical geography [HBTP]