Proceedings of the Proteus Court of Inquiry on the Greely Relief Expedition of 1883

In 1881, Adolphus Greely led a US Arctic expedition to gather meteorological, astronomical and magnetic data. The expedition was poorly supported by the US Army, neither Greely nor his men had experience of Arctic conditions, and their ship, the Proteus, sailed home without them once they landed in Greenland. An inadequately planned relief mission failed to reach them in 1882, and a second expedition in 1883, including the Proteus, also failed to locate the men or to land supplies. In 1884, Congress investigated the earlier attempts with a view to launching a further rescue. This report includes an inquiry into the inadequate earlier missions, details of Greely’s original resources, and suggestions for a plan of approach for the rescue, including how to find the men and where they were likely to be. When found in 1884, only seven of the original team of twenty-five were still alive.