On September 13, 1883, Garlington wrote from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to the Chief Signal Officer, U.S.A., Washington:—
“It is my painful duty to report total failure of the expedition. The Proteus was crushed in pack in latitude 70° 52´, longitude 74° 25´, and sunk on the afternoon of the 23d July. My party and crew all saved. Made my way across Smith Sound and along eastern shore of Cape York; thence across Melville Bay to Upernavik, arriving there on 24th Aug. The Yantic reached Upernavik 2d Sept. and left same day, bringing entire party here to-day. All well.”
To telegraphic inquiries from the Signal Office asking what stores had been left for Greely, came answer:—
“No stores landed before sinking of ship. About five hundred rations from those saved, cached at Cape Sabine; also large cache of clothing. By the time suitable vessels could be procured, filled, provisioned, etc., it would be too late in the season to accomplish anything this year.”
We leave to the imagination the alarm aroused by the sudden realization of what this failure meant to our fellow-countrymen at Fort Conger. From July, 1882, to August, 1883, not less than 50,000 rations were taken in the steamers Neptune, Yantic, and Proteus, up to or beyond Littleton Island, and of that number about 1000 were left in that vicinity, the remainder being returned to the United States or sunk with the Proteus.
General A. W. Greely, U.S.A.
Courtesy of Clinedinst
The date of Garlington’s letter read “September 13.” With what horror did it dawn upon the public mind that the abandonment of the well-supplied station at Fort Conger was ordered “not later than” September 1. Even now Greely and his men, leaving behind them a scant year’s army rations, and carrying with them every pound of food possible, were making their hazardous retreat in “heavily laden boats through water-ways crowded with ice, acted on by strong currents and high winds, the recurring heavy gales, keeping the pack in constant motion, to and fro against the precipitous and rockbound coast.”