HMS Resolute

---

Herald went through the Bering Strait to search the western reaches of the Canadian Arctic.

More Images

Resolute , formerly known as the barque Ptarmigan , was purchased on 21 February 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.

Navigation menu

The expedition found traces of Franklin's first winter camp on Beechey Island. Upon returning the Resolute to her home port in England, the manuscript paper was printed in London in 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: 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. 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. Captain Kellett ordered McClure to abandon Investigator due to the ship being frozen in ice since 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 —53 winter camp was dissolved and Resolute and Intrepid sailed eastward. Since the flow direction of the water, and therefore the ice, was from the west to the east, Resolute moved east at about 1. The crew prepared the ship for the winter by stowing her sails and upper rigging below deck.

Despite his protest, Kellett obeyed orders and prepared the ship for winter. Their number included the officers and crew of Investigator , rescued by Kellett in the spring of , 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.

HMS Resolute – Today in History

Belcher arrived at Beechey Island between May—August The men were divided between as crew to North Star and two relief ships: The men left Beechey Island on 29 August The British Government announced in The London Gazette that the ships, including Resolute , were still Her Majesty's property, but no salvage was attempted. He and his crew had no choice but to leave.

Categories

On the 28th of April, , Sir Edward Belcher gave his order to abandon ship. The Resolute was frozen in among the icebergs in lat.

Miracle Ship - HMS Resolute

She had remained in the icebergs sixteen months, when a large portion of the ice in which she was imbedded becoming detached from the mass by a thaw, it floated off with her, leaving her at the mercy of the wind and waves, and hurrying her out to remote seas, where in lat. She had then drifted over the wilderness of waters about miles from the spot where she was abandoned.

Captain Buddington and a part of his crew approached her over the ice and took up their quarters within her. They found "a deathlike silence and a dread repose" for, except themselves, there was not a living creature on board. The ship was found not to have sustained any very material damage.

The ropes, indeed, were hard and inflexible as chains; the rigging was stiff, and cracked at the touch; the tanks in the hold had burst, the ironwork was rusted, the paint was discoloured with bilge-water, and the mast and topgallantmast were shattered; but the hull had escaped unscathed and the ship was not hurt in any vital part.

There were three or four feet of water in the hold, but she had not sprung a leak.

The President's Desk

The cordage was coiled in neat little circles on the deck, after the fashion of English seamen, and the sails were frozen to such stiffness as to resemble sheets of tin. Several thousand pounds of gunpowder were found on board, somewhat deteriorated in quality, yet good enough for such purposes as firing salutes.

The desk, known as the Resolute Desk , has been used by nearly every American President since, whether in a private study or the oval office. FDR had a panel installed in the opening, since he was self conscious about his leg braces.

Tag: HMS Resolute

It was Jackie Kennedy who brought the desk into the Oval Office. The Resolute Desk spent several years in the Kennedy Library and later the Smithsonian Institute, the only time the desk has been out of the White House.

Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and, thus far, Donald J. HMS Resolute was a Barque rigged merchant ship, purchased by the English government in as the Ptarmigan, and refitted for Arctic exploration. Re-named Resolute, the vessel became part of a five ship squadron leaving England in April , sailing into the Canadian arctic in search of the Franklin expedition, which had disappeared into the ice pack in They never found Franklin, though they did find the long suffering crew of the HMS Investigator, hopelessly encased in ice where they had been stranded since Most of them made it, despite egregious hardship, straggling into Beechey Island between May and August of the following year.

Meanwhile Resolute, alone and abandoned among the ice floes, continued to drift eastward at a rate of 1.

• Libération 1973-1981 un moment divresse (Documents) (French Edition)
• Longren Family Trilogy Bundle Box Set (Mail Order Bride)
• THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET
• The New Leaders Test of Courage (The Dark Crystal Chronicles Book 2)
• Damned for Eternity
• The Real Dracula: Historical Origins of Bram Stokers Vampire