HMS Resolute was a mid-19th-century barque-rigged ship of the British Royal Navy, specially outfitted for Arctic exploration. Resolute became trapped in the ice searching for Franklin's lost expedition and was abandoned in 1854. Recovered by an American whaler, she was returned to Queen Victoria in 1856. Timbers from the ship were later used to construct the Resolute desk which was presented to the President of the United States and is located in the White HouseOval Office.
In the face of rising concerns regarding the fate of the Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin, having left Britain in 1845 in search of the North West Passage, the British Government sent expeditions in 1848 in search of the expedition. With few existing warships deemed suitable, six merchant ships were purchased between 1848 and 1850 and soon converted to exploration ships: two steamships, HMS Pioneer and HMS Intrepid, the other four (Resolute, Assistance, Enterprise and Investigator) seagoing sailing ships. The first ship to set sail in search of Franklin was HMS Herald, and at the helm, Captain Henry Kellett. Herald went through the Bering Strait to search the western reaches of the Canadian Arctic. In 1850, HMS Investigator, Captain McClure, and HMS Enterprise, Captain Collinson were sent to the Arctic from the west.
Resolute, formerly known as the barquePtarmigan, was purchased on 21 February 1850 and renamed a month later. Fitted for Arctic service by the Blackwall Civilian Shipyard Blackwall Yard, the refitting included installation of strong timbers, an internal heating system, and a polar bear as a figurehead.[1]
During 1850–51, Resolute (flagship), Assistance, Pioneer and Intrepid, sailed the eastern Arctic under the command of Horatio Thomas Austin. The expedition found traces of Franklin's first winter camp on Beechey Island.
During the winter months, from October 1850 to March 1851, Second Master George F. McDougall, from Resolute and Lieutenant Sherard Osborn of Intrepid published five accounts in The Illustrated Arctic News, in what the editors identified as the "Barrow Strait". Upon returning the Resolute to her home port in England, the manuscript paper was printed in London in 1852. Atwood (1997) references extant copies of the papers at both the British Museum and the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.[2]
Belcher Expedition
After returning to England, the squadron assigned to Austin received provisions and placed under the command of Sir Edward Belcher. The Belcher Expedition was augmented by the addition of a fifth ship, North Star that remained at Beechey Island as a depot ship. Belcher's orders contained the following objectives: to find Franklin, or evidence regarding his fate by broadening the search to the Eastern Canadian Arctic; and to split the expedition at Beechey Island and send Resolute and Intrepid west in search of Franklin, as well as secure provisions for Investigator and Enterprise.[3] The expedition left England in April 1852, and later crossed Baffin Bay westward in August 1852. After the rendezvous of the five ships at Beechey Island, splitting the squadron was necessary. The flagship Assistance and her steam tender, Pioneer, headed north up Wellington Channel. Resolute, then under Captain Kellett, and her steam tender, Intrepid, headed west and North Star remained at Beechey Island.[3] In 1852, of the seven Royal Navy ships searching the Arctic, only Enterprise found traces of Franklin's expedition in the form of a small quantity of timber on the eastern coast of Victoria Island.
HMS Resolute and HMS Intrepid winter quarters, at Melville Island, 1852–53. Drawn by George Frederick McDougall, sailing master on Resolute.
The crew of Resolute set up winter camp and a temporary dock on the stationary land ice of Dealy Island near the north shore of Viscount Melville Sound.[1] During the spring and summer of 1853, the crews of Resolute and Intrepid sledged aboard in search of clues to Franklin's whereabouts in hope to locate Investigator and Enterprise.[3] They found neither Franklin nor Enterprise, but did succeed in finding and rescuing Captain McClure and his crew upon the ice-bound ship, HMS Investigator in April 1853. Captain Kellett ordered McClure to abandon Investigator due to the ship being frozen in ice since 1850. The lack of a proper spring and summer thaw kept the ship at bay. The conditions caused severe hardship for the crew, forcing the crew to reduce their rations for over a year. Before winter set in, and while passage remained open at Dealy Island, the 1852–53 winter camp was dissolved and Resolute and Intrepid sailed eastward.[3] In August 1853, a cold front caused the open passage to freeze, encasing Resolute in ice. Since the flow direction of the water, and therefore the ice, was from the west to the east, Resolute moved east at about 1.5 nautical miles (2.8km; 1.7mi) per day. The crew prepared the ship for the winter by stowing her sails and upper rigging below deck.[3]Resolute was still beset by this floe ice in the spring of 1854.[1] In April, Belcher ordered Captain Kellett to abandon Resolute. Despite his protest, Kellett obeyed orders and prepared the ship for winter.[3] In May, Captain Kellett left Resolute locked in the slowly moving floe ice, and led his men in a hard march across the ice to reach the ships of the expedition at Beechey Island. Their number included the officers and crew of Investigator, rescued by Kellett in the spring of 1853, and the men from Intrepid and Resolute.
Two of the other main vessels of Belcher's fleet were abandoned, the flagship Assistance and her steam tender, Pioneer. Belcher arrived at Beechey Island between May–August 1854. The men were divided into roles as crew to North Star and two relief ships: HMSPhoenix and HMSTalbot, which arrived at Beechey Island just as the overcrowded North Star was about to sail. The men left Beechey Island on 29 August 1854.[3]
The British Government announced in The London Gazette that the ships, including Resolute, were still Her Majesty's property, but no salvage was attempted.[1]
On 10 September 1855, the abandoned Resolute was found adrift by the American whalerGeorge Henry, captained by James Buddington of Groton, Connecticut[1] in an ice floe off Cape Walsingham of Baffin Island, 1,200 miles (1,900km) from where she had been abandoned. An October 1856, New York Journal article relates Captain Budington and crew's encounter:
Finally, stealing over the side, they found everything stowed away in proper order for desertion—spars hauled up to one side and bound, boats piled together, and hatches closed. Everything wore the silence of the tomb. Finally reaching the cabin door they broke in, and found their way in the darkness to the table. On it they accidentally turned on a box of lucifer matches; in a moment one was ignited, the glowing light revealed a candle; it was lit and before the astonished gaze of these men exposed a scene that appeared to be rather one of enchantment than reality. Upon a massive table was a metal teapot, glistening as if new, also a large volume of Scott's family Bible, together with glasses and decanters filled with choice liquors. Near by was Captain Kellett's chair, a piece of massive furniture, over which had been thrown, as if to protect this seat from vulgar occupation, the royal flag of Great Britain.[4]
Buddington split his crew, and took 13 men with him on the Resolute. He arrived home in New London, Connecticut on Christmas Eve.[5]
Queen Victoria visits Resolute, 16 December 1856, after its rediscovery and return to the British by the Americans.
Although most of the expeditions in search of the lost Franklin expedition, before 1856, were funded by either the British government or by public subscription from within the British Empire, two expeditions were funded by Henry Grinnell, a New York merchant and shipowner in New Bedford, in addition to the assistance offered by the United States Government. Senator James Mason of Virginia presented Congress with the bill to restore Resolute and return her to England as a gesture of "national courtesy". Grinnell wrote in support of this bill. The United States Congress purchased the Resolute for $40,000. Once refitted, Commander Henry J. Hartstene sailed Resolute to England to present the ship to Queen Victoria on 13 December 1856 as a token of comity.[1]
Both Grinnell and Lady Jane Franklin hoped the restored Resolute would once again be employed for a new expedition in search of the Franklin expedition. Evidence found by John Rae proved beyond reasonable doubt that the crew had suffered harsh conditions that led to their deaths. The British Government declined. Lady Franklin organized a private expedition under Francis Leopold McClintock, who, in 1859, located the only written account of the fate of Franklin.
Resolute served in the Royal Navy from 1856, but never left home waters. Retired in 1879, Resolute was later salvaged for timber.[1] The Canadian settlement of Resolute, Nunavut, is named after the ship. In March 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented US President Barack Obama with the framed commission of Resolute, and a pen holder made from the wood of another Royal Navy ship, HMSGannet.
The British government ordered at least three desks to be made from the timbers of the ship, and they were constructed by cabinetmakers at the Joiner's Shop of Chatham Dockyard. A large partner's desk was presented to U.S. PresidentRutherford B. Hayes in 1880 as a gesture of thanks for the rescue and return of Resolute.[1] Since then, this desk—known as the Resolute desk—has been used by every American President in some capacity except Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. Eight Presidents have used it as their official desk in the Oval Office starting with John F. Kennedy, but some have had it in their private study in the Executive Residence.[1]
A second desk, called the Grinnell Desk[6] or, the Queen Victoria Desk, was also made from the timbers of HMS Resolute. This smaller lady's desk was presented to the widow of Henry Grinnell in 1880 in recognition of her husband's generous contributions to the search for Franklin. In 1983, it was given to the New Bedford Whaling Museum and is in their collection in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
A third desk, or more accurately a writing table, was commissioned by Queen Victoria; it remains part of the Royal Collection.
HMS Resolute in popular media
The 2007 novel HMS Resolute by Elizabeth Matthews is about the discovery of Resolute by the whaler George Henry.[7]
The book Resolute, by Martin Sandler, tells the story, with historical accuracy, of all the different expeditions tied to the one by John Franklin, HMS Resolute being one of them.[8]
Related Research Articles
Sir John Franklin was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. After serving in wars against Napoleonic France and the United States, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago, in 1819 and 1825, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1839 to 1843. During his third and final expedition, an attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off King William Island in what is now Nunavut, where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later and the entire crew died, from causes such as starvation, hypothermia, and scurvy.
Admiral Sir Edward Belcher was a British naval officer, hydrographer, and explorer. Born in Nova Scotia, he was the great-grandson of Jonathan Belcher, who served as a colonial governor of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.
Vice-Admiral Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure was an Irish explorer who explored the Arctic. In 1854 he traversed the Northwest Passage by boat and sledge, and was the first to circumnavigate the Americas.
The Resolute desk, also known as the Hayes desk, is a nineteenth-century partners desk used by several presidents of the United States in the White House as the Oval Office desk, including the five most recent presidents. The desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute. The 1,300-pound (590-kilogram) desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford. The desk has been modified twice, with a kneehole panel added in 1945 and a 2-inch-tall (5.1 cm) plinth added to the desk in 1961.
Sir Alexander Armstrong was an Irish naval surgeon, explorer, naturalist and author. After obtaining a medical degree he joined the Royal Navy and was stationed on board HMS Investigator, tasked with finding the lost expedition of explorer Sir John Franklin. Investigator was trapped in the ice at Mercy Bay in 1851 and Armstrong spent several winters in the Arctic before he returned to London.
Beechey Island is an island located in the Arctic Archipelago of Nunavut, Canada, in Wellington Channel. It is separated from the southwest corner of Devon Island by Barrow Strait. Other features include Wellington Channel, Erebus Harbour, and Terror Bay.
Sir Edward Augustus Inglefield was a Royal Navy officer who led one of the searches for the missing Arctic explorer John Franklin during the 1850s. In doing so, his expedition charted previously unexplored areas along the northern Canadian coastline, including Baffin Bay, Smith Sound and Lancaster Sound.
The first USS Rescue was a brig in service with the United States Navy.
Admiral Sir Richard Collinson was an English naval officer and explorer of the Northwest Passage.
Vice Admiral Sir Henry Kellett, was an Irish naval officer and explorer.
Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point two dozen men, including Franklin, had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.
HMS Assistance was an Arctic discovery barque of the Royal Navy, and the sixth vessel to carry the name. She began in 1834 as the India-built merchant vessel Acorn. Her name was changed to Baboo. Under that name she transported contract labourers between Mauritius and India, and immigrants to South Australia. The Royal Navy purchased her in 1850 and named her HMS Assistance. Assistance participated in two Arctic expeditions before her crew abandoned her in the ice in 1854.
Isabel was a vessel intended to be used in four planned expeditions in search of the fate of Franklin's lost expedition between 1852 and 1856, although she only managed to reach the Arctic once, in 1852. All of these expeditions were sponsored by Lady Jane Franklin who also owned the vessel over most of this period, and expended much money for little result.
The First Grinnell expedition of 1850 was the first American effort, financed by Henry Grinnell, to determine the fate of the lost Franklin Northwest Passage expedition. Led by Lieutenant Edwin De Haven, the team explored the accessible areas along Franklin's proposed route. In coordination with British expeditions, they identified the remains of Franklin's Beechey Island winter camp, providing the first solid clues to Franklin's activities during the winter of 1845, before becoming icebound themselves.
The McClure Arctic expedition, one of many attempts to find the missing Franklin expedition, was significant for being the first to successfully discover and transit the Northwest Passage, which it accomplished by both boat and sledging.
The McClintock Arctic expedition of 1857 was a British effort to locate the last remains of Franklin's lost expedition. Led by Francis Leopold McClintock, RN aboard the steam yacht Fox, the expedition spent two years in the region and ultimately returned with the only written message recovered from the doomed expedition. McClintock and crew were awarded the Arctic medal in recognition of their achievements.
Breadalbane was an 1843 British three-masted merchant barque that was crushed by ice and sank in the Arctic in 1853. Notable as one of the northernmost shipwrecks known, she is also considered one of the best-preserved wooden ships ever found in the sea due to slow deterioration in the cold Arctic water. Historically, Breadalbane is considered to be a time capsule.
Vice-Admiral William John Samuel Pullen was a Royal Navy officer who was the first European to sail along the north coast of Alaska from the Bering Strait to the Mackenzie River in Canada. His 1849 journey was one of the many unsuccessful expeditions to rescue Sir John Franklin and explore the Northwest Passage.
HMS North Star was a 28-gun Atholl-class sixth-rate post ship built to an 1817 design by the Surveyors of the Navy. She was launched in 1824. North Star Bay, a bay in Greenland, was named in honour of this ship.
Roderic Owen (1978). The Fate of Franklin, Hutchinson. ISBN0-09-131190-X.
John Brown, F.R.G.S. (1860). The North-West Passage and the Plans for the Search for Sir John Franklin: A Review with maps, &c., Second Edition with a Sequel Including the Voyage of the "Fox" London, E. Stanford, 1860.
Sherard Osborn and George F. McDougall, eds. (1852) Facsimile of the Illustrated Arctic News, Published on Board H.M.S. Resolute, Captain Horatio T. Austin, C.B., In Search of the Expedition Under Sir John Franklin (London, Ackerman, 1852).
Sandler, Martin W. (2006). Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship. ISBN9781402758614
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