American naval officer and explorer (1844–1881) who, during an expedition to find a quick route to the North Pole via the Bering Strait, became trapped in the ice with his crew. After the ship was eventually crushed and sank, DeLong and his crew set out in three small boats for Siberia. Though DeLong’s boat reached land, and two members of his party survived, he himself died of starvation; nineteen men in all either died or were unaccounted for. Scarce ALS, one lightly lined page both sides, 8 x 10, July 22, 1879. DeLong writes from “Arctic Steamer Jeannette, At Sea making a Passage to Jun[eau] Alaska,” to a fellow naval officer. In part: “Though I had been preparing and planning and providing for the expedition ever since my first arrival in San Francisco … there seemed almost as much to do the last day as on the first—in fact I believe if we had not have [sic] up our anchor and gone to sea as we did, we might have been finding something worthy of attention for a minute longer. Expeditions of this kind require an awful amount of thinking and consideration; and I think that if I had to do it again I should begin at least a year earlier. It requires a year to think about what you want; another year to get it; and a third year to make sure you have not left it behind you. I did it all in 18 months it is true, but it was at the cost of a great amount of brain tissue of which I have no great quantity. Your kind offer to come up and dig us out if necessity requires it makes me say all these things to you…. Be assured I shall do all I can for the good of our service and if I fail in accomplishing anything it will be no worse than many a better man has done before me. The good opinion my friends hold of me and the kind things they say of me will spur me on I know; but if I make a mess of it I hope they will be as charitable in the future as they are generous in the present…. The routine of three years at sea and a spell on shore until one is 62 and retired, began, I confess, to grow tiresome to me, and as everything else was already occupied by people better than myself, I turned my attention to the Arctic Circle when the field was not crowded and where I could carry out my determination to ‘make a spoon or spoil a horn.’ You will make your spoon, I have no doubt, and no one will wish you better….” In good to very good condition, with intersecting folds, scattered staining (slightly touching signature), light show-through of ink, and tiny tape remnants to edges. The writing is dark and clear. R&R COA.
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