ABSTRACT
The newspaper magnate, the infamous James Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York Herald, decided to dabble in Arctic exploration. Bennett had become famous as the man who sent Henry Morton Stanley in search of Dr David Livingstone. He outfitted the Jeannette, a 420-ton barque-rigged coal burner, in an effort to reclaim the 'farthest north' from the British. De Long and his crew escaped with most of their provisions and three small boats. Their destination, the Siberian coast, lay some 600 miles away. They endured extreme hardships for the next two months as they crossed the ice, dragging their boats with them. De Long's reached the eastern side of the Lena River delta, and his engineer, George Melville, with ten men, reached the western side. De Long's journal, in which he made regular entries until shortly before his death, was found a year later.
