John M. Bateman Papers, 1877-1939

Résumé du livre

Letter, 1 June 1936 (Columbia, S.C.), from Gadsden C. Zimmerman, discussing the British Navy ship, HMS Resolute, dispatched in hopes of finding the expedition lead by Sir John Franklin. The Resolute was one of four vessels that sailed the eastern Arctic, 1850-1851, and was "one of Sir Edward Belcher's vessels that came through Lancaster sound and wintered to the south of Melville island [in Canada] about the year 1852." [The Resolute became trapped in the ice and was abandoned in 1854, but was recovered by an American whaling ship, and was returned to Great Britain in 1856. At least three desks were constructed using timbers from this ship, one of which was presented to United States President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 by Queen Victoria.in gratitude for the rescue and return of the Resolute. It remains in use in the White House]. Zimmerman also quotes from "that very interested volume 'Derelicts [An Account of Ships Lost at Sea in General Commercial Traffic and a Brief History of Blockade Runners Stranded Along the North Carolina Coast, 1861-1865]' by James Sprunt, Wilmington (N.C.), 1920," which discusses the use of the ship's timbers.