Adolphus Greely
Encyclopedia : A : AD : ADO : Adolphus Greely
Adolphus Washington Greely (1844 - 1935) was an American Polar explorer.
Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, he entered the United States Army at the age of seventeen, after having been rejected twice before, and achieved the rank of Brevet Major by the end of the Civil War. In 1878 he married Hennrietta Nesmith.
In 1881, as a lieutenant, Greely was given command of the Lady Franklin Bay expedition, whose purpose was to find the North Pole and establish one of a chain of international circumpolar meteorological stations. Greely was without previous arctic experience, but he and his party were able to discover hitherto many unknown miles along the coast of northwest Greenland. The expedition also crossed Ellesmere Island from east to west and Lt. James B. Lockwood achieved a new northern record of 83°24'.
Two relief ships failed to reach Greely's party encamped at Cape Sabine, on Ellesmere Island. The ship called the Bear, built in Greenock, Scotland, first used as a whaler, was purchased by the U.S. to rescue the Greely party. By the time this third ship arrived in 1884 to rescue them, 21 of Greely's 27-man crew had perished from starvation, drowning, or hypothermia. Greely and the others were themselves near death; one of the survivors died on the homeward journey.
As Chief Signal Officer of the Army there were constructed, operated and maintained during the Spanish American War the following Military telegraph lines: Puerto Rico, 800 miles ; Cuba, 3,000 miles ; The Philippine Islands, 10,200 miles. In connection with Alaska, then General Greeley had constructed under very adverse conditions a telegraph system of nearly 4,000 miles, consisting of submarine cables, landcables and wireless telegraphy, the later covering a distance of 107 miles, which at the time was of installation was the longest commercial system regularly working in the world.
In 1915, Greely invited the Italian polar geographer Arnaldo Faustini to the United States for a lecture tour.
He was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1935.
Works
- Three Years of Arctic Service (1886)
- Handbook of Alaska (rev. ed. 1925)
- The Polar Regions in the Twentieth Century (1928).
Sources
- [Naesmyth.com]
- [Family Tree]
- [Antarctic Ships]
- [U.S.R.C Bear]
- [Columbia Encyclopedia: Adolphus Washington Greely]
- [Arlington National Cemetery Website: Adolphus Washington Greely (engl.)]
- [Adolphus Washington Greely]
- [Henrietta Hudson Cruger Nesmith, wife of Adolphus W. Greely]
- [Army Medal of Honor]
- Genealogy of the Greely -- Greeley Family by George Hiram Greeley Boston,MA 1905
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.