P.W. Johnson Diary

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P.W. Johnson Diary

In the fall of 2024, this diary was used in the class, "Environmental Issues of the Earth's Cold Regions". Each of the students were assigned a page to transcribe and index, and they all did a great job! Now we need your help in finishing and correcting the transcriptions. Please leave [[indexing brackets]] in place, but words in [single brackets] or with question marks need editing. Thanks for helping out!

The diary of P.W. Johnson (Peter William Johnson) chronicles his experiences as a member of the Greely Relief Expedition of 1884. It is notable due to his low rank as a sailor, and mentions of him are few or non-existant in other documented histories of the rescue, even as those histories relied on Johnson's diary to help tell the story.

In 1881, First Lieutenant Adolphus Washington Greely was given command of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, its purpose was to establish one of a chain of meteorological-observation stations as part of the First International Polar Year. Commonly known as the Greely Expedition, the expedition had some success in gathering weather data and geographic information, and also in reaching a new "farthest north." However, it is remembered for its disintegration and the deaths of nineteen of its twenty-five members, caused primarily by the failures of the relief expeditions of 1882 and 1883 to reach Greely's party. Two ships, the Thetis and the Bear, reached Greely and the 6 surviving crew members in 1884.

Learn more about the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition by viewing the David Brainard Diary digital exhibit.

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P.W. Johnson Diary

P.W. Johnson Diary

144 pages: 79% complete (72% indexed, 87% transcribed, 7% needs review)
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People, Places