Brigantine.
L/B/D:
88 × 21.8 × 8.4 dph (26.8m × 6.6m × 2.6m). Tons:
144 tons. Hull:
wood. Comp.:
17. Built:
New Kent, Maryland; 1847.
Originally built as a merchant ship, Advance became the flagship of the first U.S. Arctic expedition in 1850 when she was purchased by New York merchant Henry Grinnell and dispatched with Rescue to take part in the search for Sir John Franklin's
HMS Erebus and
Terror. Under command of Lieutenant Edwin J. De Haven, USN, Advance departed New York on May 23, 1850, and sailed for Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. From there the ships headed west through Lancaster Sound north of Baffin Island. On August 25, the expedition reached Devon Island where a shore party found the remains of a campsite as well as a number of British ships also engaged in the search for Franklin. In September 1853 the two ships were caught in pack ice with which they drifted through Wellington Channel as far as the northern tip of Devon Island, which they named Cape Grinnell. The ice carried the ships south again to Lancaster Sound and then east to Baffin Bay and Dover Strait before releasing its grip on June 7, 1854. The ships returned to New York, and over the next twenty months Advance was fitted out for a second expedition, this time under Assistant Surgeon Elisha Kent Kane, a veteran of the first voyage.
The Second Grinnell Expedition sailed through Smith Sound at the head of Baffin Bay and into Kane Basin. There the members of the expedition saw Humboldt Glacier, then the largest known, and attained 78°43N, farther north than any Europeans before them. During their first winter in Rensellaer Harbor all but six of their sled dogs died and the crew members were laid up with scurvy. In March, two men were killed in an attempt (made too early in the season) to establish a forward depot for overland expeditions. A later expedition reached Cape Constitution, which Kane mistakenly believed led to a warmer Open Polar Sea hypothesized by Commander Edward Inglefield in 1852. The latter had sailed in search of the Franklin expedition in the steam yacht Isabel, and confirmation of the Open Polar Sea was probably the real object of Kane's mission. Faced with the prospect of another winter aboard Advance, eight of the crew attempted to make their way overland to Upernavik. They failed, but with the assistance of Eskimos at Etah and other settlements, returned safely to the ship. The winter was one of horrifying privation, and the expedition's survival was due almost entirely to the Eskimos from whom the men were able to obtain food. Reduced to cannibalizing Advance for fuel, the survivors abandoned ship on May 17 and over the next month hauled their three boats, supplies, and four invalid crew 80 miles to open water. Sailing south and east along the coast of Greenland, they reached Upernavik on August 6, 1854, and by October they were back in New York.
Berton, Arctic Grail. Kane, U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin. U.S. Navy, DANFS.
