Greely, Adolphus Washington.

Greely’s official report is only 93 pages and records, mostly in monthly segments, the chief events of the expedition. It does not amplify what he already had published more expansively in his Three Years of Arctic Service (1886), but continues the defensiveness over some disputed actions. He is always concerned about the safety of the scientific records and other journals prepared by the expedition.

Greely’s report from Fort Conger in 1881 on the first few months of the expedition, including discovery of fragments from the Nares expedition, and his conviction: …that in my opinion, a retreat from here southward to Cape Sabine, in case no vessel reaches us in 1882 or 1883, will be safe and practicable, although all but the most important records will necessarily have to be abandoned. Abstracts could and would be made of those left. (p. 175)

These volumes are Greely’s personal, not official, somewhat sanitized version of his expedition and its aftermath. Much of the work is taken from Greely’s journals, and those passages are given within quotation marks, as in the original publication.