End of the Jeannette Expedition

Date: June 13, 1881 • Location: Lavrentiya, Russian Federation

The Jeannette expedition to reach the North Pole from the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait came to an end when the USS Jeannette (pictured), after having been trapped in ice for almost two years, was crushed and sank.

The Jeannette expedition of 1879–1881, officially called the U.S. Arctic Expedition, was an attempt led by George W. De Long to reach the North Pole by pioneering a route from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait. The premise was that a temperate current, the Kuro Siwo, flowed northwards into the strait, providing a gateway to the hypothesized Open Polar Sea and thus to the pole.