USS Advance (1847)

Storms battered the two ships on the initial leg of the voyage and separated them. However, both safely reached Disko Island, located off the west coast of Greenland where Davis Strait gives way to Baffin Bay. Advance arrived on 24 June, and Rescue pulled into port three days later. On the 29th, the two ships headed into Baffin Bay, bound for Lancaster Sound located north of Baffin Island and south of Devon Island. Off Haroe Island on 1 July, Advance encountered pack ice. A week later, she and her consort were caught in the pack just north of Upernavik. For the next three weeks, the two ships fought their way through the ice. On the 29th, they cleared the pack and continued their voyage across Melville Bay to Lancaster Sound. The two ships entered the sound on 19 August and, that same day, encountered two British vessels engaged in the same mission as the Americans.

That evening, a storm blew up and separated Advance and Rescue. The next day dawned "thick and foggy," but the wind had abated. Advance began searching for her companion. By 25 August, she was off Cape Riley on Devon Island where she put ashore a landing party to search for clues to the whereabouts of the Franklin expedition. While the searchers ashore were discovering the former campsite of some unidentified party, Advance was run aground by a strong current. The British ship Prince Albert offered assistance, but Rescue showed up at about the same time. Moreover, Advance lightened her load and succeeded in hauling off by her own efforts.

On 26 August, the two ships attempted the passage of Wellington Channel to search the area north of Cape Spencer. Soon, however, they found the way north blocked by a solid mass of pack ice and prudently returned south to the vicinity of Point Innes. There, the Americans again encountered the British, along with positive evidence of the Franklin party having camped nearby. Heartened by that find and by a favorable change in weather conditions, they headed back toward Wellington Channel. At Beechy Island, all the search vessels gathered in a cove (later called Union Bay) to plan a coordinated search. While the leading officers were so engaged, a party sent ashore discovered three graves and "other unmistakable evidences of the missing expedition (Franklin's) having passed its first winter here." At that point, she and Rescue entered Wellington Channel to pursue the search, but the pack ice quickly closed in upon the two ships. Though they tried to escape the clutches of the pack, abysmal weather foiled their attempts; and Rescue suffered a damaged rudder. By mid-September, they were caught fast in the floating ice.

For the duration of the winter, Advance and Rescue were at the mercy of the drifting floe. For what remained of September and most of October, they drifted in Wellington Channel, discovering the northern peninsula of Devon Island which they named Grinnell in honor of the expedition's benefactor. During November, changing winds carried them back and forth past Beechy Island. In December, the floe made the transit of Lancaster Sound and, on 14 January 1851, they reentered Baffin Bay. Their imprisonment, however, did not end until early June. They had passed Davis Strait in May, and the floe began to break up near the end of the first week in June. Rescue – repaired – cleared the pack on 7 June 1851. Advance followed the next day.

The expedition replenished at Disko Bay and sought to renew the search. However, the ice proved heavier than in the previous year; and prudence dictated that the mission be abandoned for the time being. Therefore, the two ships headed back to the United States. Advance arrived in New York on 30 September 1851, and Rescue reached that port on 7 October. Both ships were returned to Mr. Grinnell, and he immediately began outfitting Advance for another Arctic expedition.

Preparations for the second Franklin rescue expedition took about 20 months. Advance finally departed New York on 30 May 1853, Passed Assistant Surgeon Elisha Kent Kane in command. The expedition stopped at Upernavik, Greenland, to purchase supplies and, most importantly, sled dogs for searches ashore and on the solidly frozen floes. Continuing north, Advance passed the length of Baffin Bay reaching Smith Sound – the northern terminus of Baffin Bay – by 7 August. Near the end of August, she reached her northernmost point – about 78°43' north latitude – in Kane Basin, named for the ship's commanding officer, Passed Assistant Surgeon Kane.

At that point, Kane decided to pass the winter among a group of islets near the Greenland coast rather than to return south to some safer harbor. By 10 September, Advance was imprisoned in the ice. The interior of the ship underwent extensive preparations for wintering farther north than any previous expedition. When that was complete, the crew began expeditions across the frozen wastes both on the Greenland shore and the frozen pack. Kane and his officers also established a scientific station to observe climatic conditions and to make astronomical calculations.

Their expeditions on foot, however, were hampered by the loss of almost all their sled dogs to disease. In the absence of animal transport, the men themselves carried out the searches and explorations on foot, serving as beasts of burden to manhandle caches of supplies to points which would allow for more distant searches in the future.

On one such expedition in late March 1854, four of the party suffered so severely from frostbite that they had to be left behind under the care of a fifth man while the remaining members of the party – too physically exhausted to do more than drag their own persons across the frozen wastes – headed back to the brig for help. The leader of that group, upon returning to the brig, volunteered to return with the rescue party as a guide. However, his own ordeal caused him to fall victim of a temporary mental disorder and prevented him from rendering any real help. It was only good luck – first in finding the advanced party's trail and then in sighting a canvas tent at the site of the disabled men's "encampment" – and their own Herculean efforts that allowed the rescue party to complete their mission. Even that success, however, was marred by the fact that two of the rescued men later succumbed to their infirmities.

Fatigue and illness of all associated with the rescue expedition prevented Kane from undertaking further searches until the end of April. During that interlude, Greenlandic Inuit arrived in the area, and Kane bartered with them for additional sled dogs. The four animals he thus obtained allowed him to fit out a single seven-dog team which greatly extended the range of their searches. In his own words, "The value of these animals for Arctic ice-travel (sic) can hardly be over-estimated (sic)." Through the ensuing summer, search parties ranged the far northern coasts of Greenland and the eastern coast of Ellesmere Island searching for evidence of Sir John Franklin's party and making notes on geography and climate.

• Harstine Island, Washington for island that may be named after Lt. Hartstene

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to USS Advance (ship, 1847).

• "Dr. Elisha Kent Kane's Arctic brig, Advance", at the Historical Society of Philadelphia