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The vision of a Northwest Passage to allow shipping to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific, north of Canada, seems to have obsessed the British from Elizabethan days to the 19th century.
In March of 1845, the expedition of Sir John Franklin in Her Majesty’s Ships Erebus and Terror left England to make yet another attempt to find the Northwest Passage. A whaling ship saw them in July of that year in Baffins Bay. They were never seen again. The expedition of 137 men and two ships vanished and has never been satisfactorily traced.
When, after three years no word was heard of the expedition, doubts about their safety prompted the Royal Navy in 1848 to send out the first of several search parties. Sir John Franklin’s wife hired and equipped a ship, and the American philanthropist Henry Grinnell sent two ships. In the summer of 1850, 16 ships and 689 men were looking for the Erebus and Terror.
In 1852, the British Government made its final attempt to find the missing explorers. Well- equipped and manned by men who had previous experience of the Arctic the expedition included two of the new screw steamers to tow the larger sailing vessels through passages in the ice during unfavorable winds.
The fleet consisted of five ships under the command of Sir Edward Belcher which went north of Labrador from the Atlantic, while two ships had set out earlier to proceed north of Alaska and search from the west.
The ships crossed Baffins Bay in June, split up and fanned out, each taking a different route but working westward as far as they could go during the short northern summer. When the ice stopped them, each ship sent out several parties pulling sledges far and wide in order to cover as much ground as possible.
HMS Resolute, a three-masted bark with a polar bear for a figurehead, went the farthest west that year of 1852, wintering at Dealy Island in Latitude 75° North, Longitude 109° West. Her commander was an Irishman, Captain H. Kellet, C.B., a seasoned veteran of voyages of exploration and a skillful surveyor. Four years previously he had led parties surveying the Pacific Coast of Colombia and the waters of the Atrato River in Colombia with a view to building a canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific. Having secured his ship he sent out parties to scout out the land and leave supplies of food as depots for the next spring’s search parties.
In August 1853, the Resolute was driven from her base at Dealy Island by a storm which started the ice floes moving, taking the ship with them. The Resolute spent another winter in the ice. During all this time search parties were continually dispatched with sledges and many scientific and meteorological data were obtained. By the spring of 1854, the Resolute was still beset by ice. On 15 May she was abandoned. After a hard march across the ice her men joined other ships of the expedition and all returned to England in October 1854.
The Resolute had been left, snugged down for the winter, her hatches caulked and yards sent down, sails stowed below, fast in the Arctic ice, 300 miles north of what is now Manitoba. The British Government announced in the London Gazette that the Resolute although abandoned, was still Her Majesty’s property.
On 10 September 1855, Captain James M. Bud- dington in the American whaling bark George Henry of New London, found an abandoned ship drifting among the ice floes north of Cape Walsingham- Buddington took 11 of his 17-man crew to the derelict, leaving his first mate with six men to sail the George Henry home.
There was little doubt about the nationality of their prize. On the quarterdeck letters of brass on the oaken wheel announced to the empty Arctic that “England expects every man will do his duty.” They had found HMS Resolute a thousand miles from the scene of her abandonment.
Thus began the prodigious labor of rerigging the ship, hoisting spars and sails, and then sailing her to New London, where she arrived on Christmas Eve. 1855. Even for a race of men to whom storms, toil, and high adventure were routine, this was no small
tt was relegated to the broadcast room of the llte ^ouse- Mrs. John F. Kennedy restored it to e Oval Office. Subsequently it was banished again-
eat- Buddington had only a hand-drawn outline of rhe American coast as a chart, a lever watch, and a Quadrant with which to navigate.
On learning of the Resolute s arrival at New Lon- °n> the British Government waived all claim to the sh*P, leaving her to the disposal of Captain Bud- *ngton. The U.S. Congress voted $40,000 to purchase the vessel, and the U. S. Navy refitted her to er original condition. Under the command of Cap- ta*n Hartstein, USN, she sailed to England in 1856, arnving at Spithead in December flying the Stars and triPes and the British Red Ensign at the same peak, he occasion was made memorable by the fact that Vueen Victoria was wintering at the Isle of Wight a°d so Captain Hartstein was able to take the Resolute to Cowes and personally return to Her Majesty her hissing ship.
The Americans were given a hero’s reception in ngland. Captain Hartstein dined with Queen Vic- t()ria who gave £100 to be divided among the crew.
Tears later, in 1879, when the Resolute was broken UP, Queen Victoria remembered the gift and preSented a desk made from the ship’s timbers to Presi- deht Rutherford B. Hayes.
Succeeding presidents used the desk until 1952 ^hen TChit
Subsequently it was -until President Carter had it moved back.