In 1879, the steamer Jeannette went missing near Alaska. It had been sent by the American Navy in search of a missing Swedish expedition. Having become trapped in ice, the ship was not heard from for almost two years, when her remaining crew finally reached safety. By this time, any American expedition that focused its efforts further north than the sixtieth parallel was usually considered to be within the Arctic, and these invariably perilous expeditions were often launched in search of lost ships. In 1884, Joseph Everett Nourse (1819 89) published details of all the major American expeditions, including the efforts to rescue the Jeannette, Hayes's attempt to prove the existence of the Open Polar Sea, and Schwatka's 3,000-mile sledge journey across the tundra. Written to make the journals of explorers more accessible to young readers, Nourse's comprehensive text is still of relevance to students of American maritime history.

Title: American Explorations in the Ice Zones ... With a brief notice of the Antarctic Cruise under Lieut. Wilkes, 1840, etc.Publisher: British Library, Historical Print EditionsThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.The HISTORY OF TRAVEL collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This collection contains personal narratives, travel guides and documentary accounts by Victorian travelers, male and female. Also included are pamphlets, travel guides, and personal narratives of trips to and around the Americas, the Indies, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library Nourse, Joseph Everett; Wilkes, Charles; 1884. 578 p.; 8 . 10460.p.8.