The officers and men were interested and willing. Mate Bartlett was in charge of the Roosevelt during the absence of Captain Bartlett and myself. Boatswain Murphy was of material assistance in the field. Two of the firemen, Clark of Massachusetts, and Ryan of Newfoundland, took an active part in the spring sledge work.
The Roosevelt was very effective even with her reduced power, forcing her way through the heaviest ice and apparently impassable places, and coming safely through experiences which I am satisfied no other ship afloat would have survived. Young ice, even of very considerable thickness, she trod under her with great facility, and under serious pressures she rose readily and easily.
As a sea boat she was equally satisfactory, lying to in the October North Atlantic gale off Resolution Island rudderless under double-reefed foresail, with all the ease and dryness of one of our best Banks fishing schooners. For this the fullest credit is due her builder, Captain Chas. B. Dix, who put his whole heart and years of experience into her construction.
The main results of the Expedition may be summarised as follows:
First.—The attainment of the “highest North” leaving a distance of but 174 nautical miles yet to be conquered this side of the Pole, narrowing the unknown area between my highest and Cagni’s to less than 381 miles, and throwing the major remaining unknown Arctic area into the region between the Pole and Bering Strait.
Second.—The determination of the existence of a distant new land northwest of the northwestern part of Grant Land, probably an island in the westerly extension of the North American archipelago.
Third.—The distinct widening of our horizon as regards ice and other conditions in the western half of the central Polar Sea.
Fourth.—The traversing and delineation of the unknown coast between Aldrich’s farthest west in 1876, and Sverdrup’s farthest north in 1902.
Fifth.—The determination of the unique glacial fringe and floeberg nursery of the Grant Land coast.
Tidal and meteorological observations have been made, soundings taken in the Smith Sound outlet of the Polar Sea, also along the north coast of Grant Land, and samples of the bottom secured; the existence of considerable numbers of the Arctic reindeer in the most northern lands determined; the range of the musk-ox widened and defined, a new comparative census of the Whale Sound Eskimos made, etc., etc.