FRAGMENTS FROM JEANNETTE! THE MUSICAL
This musical was written as a tribute to the June 1881 sinking of the USS Jeannette, which was seeking passage to the North Pole through the Bering Strait. It was originally published in the New York Herald—whose publisher, James Gordon Bennett., Jr., owned the Jeannette and co-financed the expedition—in 1891, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the tragic event. Unlike my more modern musicals, this one was written in the fashion of a Harrigan/Hart production; in fact, a critic at the time suggested that Harrigan play the role of the sailor, and that “seafaring is not so distant from The Mulligan Guards’ Surprise as one might imagine.” Because the musical itself was long—more than five hours—I have chosen to reproduce only its centerpiece, the mournful, jaunty “Sailor’s Overture.”
[The ghostly figure of a SAILOR appears. Icicles hang from his beard.]
SAILOR
The HMS Pandora
Her name contained a warning
Perhaps we should have heeded it
And avoided needless mourning
A few years after she was built
James Gordon Bennett, Jr. bought her.
From Le Havre to San Francisco:
That was where he brought her.
Bennett was a wild man
A rich man who lived fast
He published New York’s Herald
His fortune was quite vast
He paid for great adventures
He was a roguish dreamer
He placed his money and his trust
In this bark-rigged steamer
He renamed it the Jeannette
And said he couldn’t wait
To sail up to the North Pole
Via the Bering Strait
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
Just above the Napa River
In Mare Island Navy Yard
The Jeannette was given boilers
Her hull made thick and hard
In June eighteen seventy-nine
She departed from the dock
The rain was cold and cutting
It was half past ten o’clock
She sailed under Naval blue
Though she was a peacetime ship
Twenty-eight brave officers and
Three civilians made the trip
The captain was one George DeLong
An upright Navy man
He pledged himself to fully serve
His patron’s fateful plan
The engineer on the Jeannette
He was called George Melville
The names of these fine sailors
They stir my spirit still
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
It took a month or maybe more
To reach the Norton Sound
We sailed away from St. Lawrence Bay
The crew was Arctic-bound
We passed by Herald Island
As some like to tell it
It was named for Bennett’s paper
But in fact Henry Kellett
Back in eighteen forty-nine
Had landed there and named it.
Walked around it, kicked some stones,
Dropped a flag and claimed it.
Near Herald Island, in the sea,
Was Wrangel Island, small and cold,
DeLong took us east of there
His instincts were too bold.
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
Then came that fateful winter day
It began like any other
One sailor dreamed of flying,
Another of his mother
Another still of sitting
On a warm beach way down south.
The name of his young girlfriend
Lay gently in his mouth.
“Come up, come up,” the captain said.
“We’re locked into the ice.”
It hemmed us in on both our sides
And held us like a vise.
At first we didn’t mind it
Our eyes stayed on our goal
We were drifting Northwest
Ever closer to the Pole
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
Our instruments were working
Our spirits remained high
We took our soundings and positions
From the stars in the sky
In May of eighty-one we spied
Some islands in the distance
We gave them names and marveled
At our craft’s persistence
But marveling is irony
And pride precedes a fall
And soon enough our progress
Had slowed down to a crawl
Now the ice was pressing in
And crumpling the hull
The way a great and fearsome weight
Can crush a grown man’s skull
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
We jumped off the Jeannette
Unloaded our supplies
Dragged three small boats to safety
We heard our ship’s last cries
She sank on June 13th
In the first hours of dawn
We put our packs upon our back
And went to soldier on
We searched for open water
Our hope was strong at first
Some men were felled by cowardice
And others by their thirst
The three small lifeboats we had manned
Eventually broke through
One drifted off, forever lost,
Thus leaving only two.
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
Of those two boats, one came to shore,
George DeLong was inside.
Some scouts were sent to go ahead
The men who stayed all died.
The third boat reached the Lena River
Its sailors lived. But then
Melville turned around and went
Back for the other men
Beneath the frozen corpses
Were the expedition’s notes.
Those he brought to safety with
A fleet of rescue boats.
Twenty men were lost in all
Just thirteen kept their lives
Thanks to Melville’s bravery
Our memory survives
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
Time has kept on moving
It’s what time tends to do
And we wish to be remembered
The lost men of that crew.
So I claim your memory for
The men of the Jeannette
We are all that’s happened and
What hasn’t happened yet
Once a year, think of those who
Expired in polar snow,
Who stayed upon its surface
And slowly sunk below
I was among the twenty
I perished with a groan.
The ice was all around me
And I was all alone.
CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually
