“Herald Island,” the farthest land known there.  He was one of the last men to see McClure in the “Investigator” before she entered the Polar seas from the northwest.  He sent three of his men on board that ship to meet them all again, as will be seen, in strange surroundings.  After more than seven years of this Pacific and Arctic life, he returned to England, in May or June, 1851, and in the next winter volunteered to try the eastern approach to the same Arctic seas in our ship, the “Resolute.”  Some of his old officers sailed with him.

We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters, despatches, and instructions show, as they are now printed in enormous parliamentary blue-books, and what the despatches and letters of his officers and of his commander show.  But these papers present the picture of a vigorous, hearty man, kind to his crew and a great favorite with them, brave in whatever trial, always considerate, generous to his officers, reposing confidence in their integrity; a man, in short, of whom the world will be apt to hear more.  His commander, Sir Edward Belcher, tried by the same standard, appears a brave and ready man, apt to talk of himself, not very considerate of his inferiors, confident in his own opinion; in short, a man with whom one would not care to spend three Arctic winters.  With him, as we trace the “Resolute’s” fortunes, we shall have much to do.  Of Captain Kellett we shall see something all along till the day when he sadly left her, as bidden by Sir Edward Belcher, “ready for occupation.”

With such a captain, and with sixty-odd men, the “Resolute” cast off her moorings in the gray of the morning on the 21st of April, 1852, to go in search of Sir John Franklin.  The brave Sir John had died two years before, but no one knew that, nor whispered it.  The river steam-tug “Monkey” took her in tow, other steamers took the “Assistance” and the “North Star”; the “Intrepid” and “Pioneer” got up their own steam, and to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to see them off, they went down the Thames.  At the Nore, the steamship “Desperate” took the “Resolute” in charge, Sir Edward Belcher made the signal “Orkneys” as the place of rendezvous, and in four days she was there, in Stromness outer harbor.  Here there was a little shifting of provisions and coal-bags, those of the men who could get on shore squandered their spending-money, and then, on the 28th of April, she and hers bade good by to British soil.  And, though they have welcomed it again long since, she has not seen it from then till now.

The “Desperate” steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines to the “North Star,” and for three days in this procession of so wild and weird a name, they three forged on westward toward Greenland,—­a train which would have startled any old Viking had he fallen in with it, with a fresh gale blowing all the time and “a nasty sea.”  On the fourth day all the tow-lines broke or were cast off however, Neptune and the winds claimed their own, and the “Resolute” tried her own resources.  The towing steamers were sent home in a few days more, and the squadron left to itself.