: SEARCHING FOR THE USS JEANNETTE

(Source: The Siberian Times, Wikipedia. org) Andrey Khoroshev, a Siberian adventurer, screen writer and TV presenter is planning to find and raise the wreck of the USS Jeannette, which sank during an exploration of the Arctic in 1881. The wreck lies at depth of only 18 metres, with the location known down to one kilometre. Andrey Khoroshev says that in modern day conditions, to find and raise it is not such a hard task. Along with the Russian North fund, he has applied to Russia's influential Geographical Society to carry out an expedition to find the lost schooner, which was seeking - before it was lost - to plant the US flag on the . The heroic story was told in the book “In the Kingdom of Ice” by Hampton Sides. The USS Jeannette was originally HMS Pandora, a gun vessel of the launched at Pembroke Dockyard, Wales in 1861. The ship was purchased in 1878 by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald; and renamed Jeannette after his sister. Jeannette departed San Francisco on 8 July 1879 under Cdr De long direction. The ship progressed through the Chukchi Sea, but in early September caught fast in the ice near Wrangel Island, and for 21 months, it drifted, in the general direction of its ultimate goal, the North Pole. The 12 June 1881 the pressure of the creaking ice crushed their ship, fortunately giving enough warning to the men to abandon the vessel, salvaging food and small boat. The Jeannette sank at about 800 kilometres north of the Siberian mainland. De Long and 11 companions died in the Siberian tundra. From 33 men, 13 made it home. On June 18, 1884, wreckage from Jeannette was found on an ice floe near the southern tip of . (The Jeannette, illustration by W. W. May)