George De Long in the Kingdom of Ice Quiz

Answer: Pandora

Many sailors thought it was bad luck to rename a ship, but Bennett thought that this ship should have a better name than Pandora, the unlucky woman of Greek myth. It was rechristened Jeannette after Bennett's sister.

Answer: Open Polar Sea

Many assumed that the area around the North Pole was warm, with the ice walls keeping warm air and water in. There were more fanciful ideas than the Open Polar Sea: possibly there were civilizations there, or a vortex leading to the Earth's core. While the expedition failed to find the North Pole, it did put paid to these ideas.

Answer: The ship became encased in ice at an angle.

Not very conducive to scientific work, is it? De Long was very upset that the ship became "nipped", as they called it, so soon. He knew that the ship would get stuck in ice at some point, but they were several degrees south of where he'd hoped to be when the ship became stuck in ice. He partially blamed his bad luck on Bennett's order to look for another explorer, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. De Long considered the search a waste of time, since there was no reason to suspect that Nordenskiöld was not safe. The one-week detour cost them valuable sailing time in the short Arctic summer.

Not only was the ship stuck at an angle, the electric lights supplied by Thomas Edison failed to work, leaving the crew in the dark for several months in winter.

Answer: Eye

He had hidden the fact that he had syphilis from De Long so that he could go on the expedition. His left eye began to irritate him so much that the ship's doctor, James Ambler, did multiple surgeries on his eye, and he had to keep his eye bandaged and sit in a dark room all day for months.

He refused to admit he had a problem, even when Ambler feared he'd have to remove the eye. That surgery was, thankfully, never done, as Ambler had no anesthetic. Danenhower lost sight in that eye but never lost the eye itself.

Answer: Lead poisoning

The crew ate the same canned food, yet many became ill with symptoms that included anemia, loose bowels, hand tremors, bloody urine, weight loss, and sleep difficulties. Ambler discovered that the soldering in the tomato cans had started to deteriorate, putting lead pieces in the food. Crew members who ate more canned tomatoes had worse symptoms than those who ate fewer.

Answer: June 1881

The Jeannette was stuck in ice for 21 months. She was briefly released before once again being caught, the pressure crushing her this time. She sank on June 12, 1881. No one, man or dog, was killed in the sinking.

Answer: The ice they were walking on was drifting north.

While the crew marched south, the ice pack they traveled on shifted north at a faster rate than their walking speed. Thus, though they walked about 20 miles south, they ended up almost 30 miles farther north.

Answer: Bennett Island

In honor of their financier, they called it Bennett Island. While uninhabited by humans, Bennett Island had wildlife, and the team took the time to recover from their exhausting marches and starvation. George Melville, the engineer, claimed the islands for the United States, but they became Russian territory.

Answer: None

Between dogs running away, becoming sick, and being shot for being a burden, only one dog, Snoozer, was left by the time the men had to split into three teams in the boats. Unfortunately, even he had to be shot when the men ran low on food.

Answer: No

The expedition had split into three groups to cross the water, one for each boat they had. After Hans Erichsen died, De Long sent William Nindemann and Louis Noros ahead of the group to get help. They came across Yakuts, who lived in the delta and helped the two men. They also found Melville, who'd been in one of the other groups. All of Melville's party were alive. Melville then set out with several Yakuts to find De Long's group. He found their remains and camp several months later: all had died. The men in the third boat were never found.

From accounts left, De Long was one of the last of his group to die. In letters to her husband (which he never saw), Emma expressed a desire to come to Siberia to nurse him after she found out the Jeannette sank and the men had to march to civilization.