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A polar ship chased a current that did not exist and was crushed by ice
The USS Jeannette tried to reach the North Pole on a supposed warm current, but spent nearly two years trapped before the ice crushed it.
The Jeannette expedition of 1879 to 1881 set out to reach the North Pole by a bold new route from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait. Its premise was that a temperate current called the Kuro Siwo flowed north into the strait, opening a gateway to a hypothesized warm Open Polar Sea and the pole beyond.
Led by George W. De Long, the U.S. Arctic Expedition instead found ice.
The USS Jeannette became trapped for almost two years, was crushed, and finally sank.
Why it mattersIts failure helped overturn the long-held myth of an Open Polar Sea, reshaping how explorers understood the Arctic.
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