www.articwebsite.com

tv.azpm.org/p/whatson-featured/2011/1/27/932




www.arlingtoncementary.net


Summary

     The Greely expedition was a traject event.  Many people died in the group.  Some died of cannibalize.  That is why we wrought this blog.

hello i am jason and Q and me and Q are making a blog on the greely expedition we are doing this for   a school project, so we hope your have a nice time reading this.

jason.G : did u know that knowledge Adolphus Greely was born to poverty ground up by unforgiving mills, 

Q: he also fought in the civil war and gained commission.

Jason.G:then After the war, he performed some what good in his duties, but he was searching for something that would give him a lasting place in the annals of his time.

Q: That opportunity came when the I.S.C (international scientific community) saw the exploration of the Polar Regions as the key to understanding the climate of the world. 

jason.G: Different nations were assigned areas on the Arctic Circle to set up a total of fourteen stations for scientific study.

Q: In the later part of the 19th century the federal government was just beginning to develop specialized scientific agencies so the U. S. Army was put in charge with manning the station.

jason.G: But the Army was much more woreid with its outposts on the0 western frontier and its role in protecting westward expansion than in examining ice.

Q:Enter Greely, saw a chance for status and fame.

jason.G : happy days finally appropriated the money for the expedition with a start date in the summer of 1881.   

Q:Twenty-four soldiers volunteered to join the expedition, most of them hardy cavalrymen who lacked knowledge of scientific matters and of the sea. But their fortitude and character were what would ultimately count most in this unusual assignment.

jason.G: Greely's expedition left the northernmost North American port—St. John's, Newfoundland—on July 7, 1881.

Q:their ship was carrying 350 tons of supplies.

jason.G: The men built a sturdy compound they named Fort Conger and then set about making the round-the-clock metrological measurements that would become the recorded story of the expedition. Many of the men, including Greely, kept personal diaries as well.

Q:A party from the expedition also accomplished an important goal of the U.S. Government that had less to do with scientific research than with bragging rights—they reached a geographical point that was farther north in the Arctic than the place where the British had established a world polar record two centuries earlier.

jason.G: His leadership was tempered by a duty-bound first sergeant named David Brainard and by George Rice, a worldly photographer, who kept the camp in balance.

Q: Things were sustainable at Fort Conger, until the resupply ship failed to show up on the mission's first anniversary.

jason.G: By the time the second anniversary came and the men were to leave, the fact that no ship was in sight became the topic of—not exactly panic, but serious concern.

Q: Modern researchers reason that if the men had stayed at Fort Conger, they probably would have been just fine. But Greely decided to follow the army's orders to make their way to Cape Sabine; a rescue party was to be waiting in the area there.

           

jason.G: Meanwhile, two rescue attempts had been made to reach Fort Conger but were turned back by impassible ice in the channel. The second relief expedition's commander even lost a ship trying. When all others had given up hope or interest in the fate of Greely his young wife, Henrietta, kept the effort alive. She pestered the Army and Congress to no avail.

Q: Then she took the plight of the soldiers public and into the press, which finally stirred the Army into action. A new rescue effort reached the camp on Ellesmere Island, but the expedition was in bad shape. Only six men, including Greely, survived. A doctor with the rescue effort said these six would not have lasted another 48 hours.

jason.G: When they arrived back in the U. S. it was hardly a hero's welcome. But the scientific journals were intact, and Greely looked forward to what these journals and the fact of having set a new northern-most polar record might bring to him and to the memory of those who had perished on the frozen Arctic ice.

Q: Then a darker side of the expedition emerged: rescuers described finding signs of cannibalism in their examination of the dead left at Camp Clay. Greely was never able to overcome the disgrace of these accusations; they even negated the value of the scientific work the expedition had done.

jason.G: However, these historical measurements are of great value to modern scientists studying the changes in the Polar Regions and the effect on Earth's environment.

Q: What makes this documentary more than merely the recounting of a sad and grisly story is the method of how it presents its lessons in human behavior. In a photograph, the expedition's members' outlook appears crisp and breezy the first time the image is shown, but as it is reintroduced at various points in the program it takes on a haunting air. The visual symbolism is suggested, not shouted

        

jason.G: The same holds true of familiar American Experience devices that Rapley expertly shuffles and deals: still photographs that the camera moves through; hints of historic objects without a human in sight; modern views of places visited; the simple music. The focus stays on the men and their interactions—that aura of Victorian duty and valor that we have difficulty understanding in the modern age.

Q: Even the on-camera authorities seem in awe of the range of emotions these men shared with each other under the most trying of circumstances. It is virtually impossible not to get choked up over the tragedy and sadness that befell these Arctic pioneers.

           

jason.G: The same holds true of familiar American Experience devices that Rapley expertly shuffles and deals: still photographs that the camera moves through; hints of historic objects without a human in sight; modern views of places visited; the simple music. The focus stays on the men and their interactions—that aura of Victorian duty and valor that we have difficulty understanding in the modern age.

           

Q: Also, I'm beginning to wonder if the series should not occasionally break from narrator Michael Murphy, as wonderful as he is. I'm getting a feeling when I begin to hear his voice that I might be seeing something of a cookie-cutter program, which American Experience clearly is not.

jason.G: we have gotten all of are in of from the sight 

'The Greely Expedition' - Duty, Honor and Arctic Ice

have a nice day :)