Georges De Long American navigator and polar explorer. Date of Birth: 22.08.1844 Country: USA

Biography of George De Long

George W. De Long was an American sailor and polar explorer. He began his career as a sailor on whaling ships and eventually became a captain. In July 1879, he set sail from the port of San Francisco on the ship "Jeannette" with a crew of 32 people. Their goal was to search for the missing Swedish polar expedition led by Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, which was believed to be lost on the ship "Vega" in the Chukchi Sea.

After making a stop in Alaska, De Long passed through the Bering Strait and arrived in Chukotka in August 1879. There, he learned that the Nordenskiöld expedition had resumed its exploration after wintering. Upon hearing this, De Long made the decision to sail towards the North Pole. A few days later, on September 5, 1879, near Gerald Island in the Arctic Ocean, the "Jeannette" became trapped in ice and began to leak. Drifting on the ice-bound ship, De Long discovered islands in the East Siberian Sea, which were later named after him (De Long Islands).

After two years of being trapped in the ice, the "Jeannette" sank 800 km north of the Lena River. De Long and his crew managed to escape and reached the Novosibirsk Islands in September 1881. From there, the sailors divided into three groups and attempted to reach the mainland on boats. One group was rescued by local Yakuts, while only two members of De Long's group made it to a Yakut settlement, where their comrades from the first group were also present. The third group disappeared without a trace.

In 1882, a search expedition was conducted in hopes of finding traces of De Long and his companions. Their last camp and the bodies of the sailors, including their captain, were discovered. Next to De Long's body lay his diary, which he had kept until his last moments. It is highly likely that they all died of hunger. The travelers were buried at the mouth of the Lena River, and a large cross with their names was erected on their grave.

In the summer of 1884, several sheets of ship's paper, sailor's trousers, a board, and a barrel frozen in the ice were found off the southern coast of Greenland. The label on the trousers, Captain De Long's handwritten signature on the papers, and the inscription on the board helped identify these items as belonging to the sunken "Jeannette" three years earlier. This long-term drift in the ice inspired Fridtjof Nansen to use ice drifts with the help of powerful Arctic underwater currents to explore vast polar territories, which he later applied during his famous voyage on the "Fram".