Screw sloop (1f/3m).
L/B:
160 × 32 (48.8m × 9.8m). Tons:
751 bm. Hull:
wood. Arm.:
17 × 32pdr. Mach.:
steam, 1 screw. Built:
Pembroke Dockyard, Wales; 1856.
Following the search for Sir John Franklin's expedition in the mid-nineteenth century, British interest in Arctic exploration waned. When the British again turned north, it was to conduct research in terrestrial magnetism and the search for the north magnetic pole. In 1875, the Admiralty dispatched HMS Alert and Discovery under the command of Captain George S. Nares. A veteran of HMS
Resolute in the last government-sponsored search for Franklin, Nares was reassigned from command of the
Challenger expedition specifically to take charge of the British Arctic Expedition.
The two ships left Portsmouth on May 29, 1875, and after taking aboard dogs in Greenland, proceeded up the Davis Strait as far as Ellesmere Island's Lady Franklin Bay. Discovery remained there while Alert pressed on to Cape Sheridan (82°24N), 53 miles to the north—a new farthest-north point. She remained icebound from September 1, 1875, to July 31, 1876. In April 1876, separate parties were sent out to explore. Commander Markham and his men reached 83°20N—400 miles shy of the North Pole, and Lieutenant Beaumont's expedition to northeast Greenland reached 82°18N. These parties and the ships' companies were stricken with scurvy, and several men died before the expedition was brought under control. Alert began drifting south in July; in August she and Discovery got under way again from Discovery Harbor, reaching England in October. The expedition proved that Greenland was an island and laid to rest the theory of an ice-free polar sea. (In honor of Alert's achievement, the world's northernmost permanently manned settlement, on Ellesmere Island, is named Alert.)
Nares again commanded Alert in 1878, on a two-year hydrographic survey of the Strait of Magellan. Laid up at Chatham on her return, the ship was refitted and donated to the United States to sail in Captain Winfield Scott Schley's expedition for the relief of the stranded Adolphus Greely expedition on Ellesmere Island.
Nares, Narrative of a Voyage to the Polar Sea.
