Rough Weather All Day: An Account of the “Jeannette” Search Expedition from Log Kept by Patrick Cahill, Machinist on Board U.S.S. “Rodgers”

A true story, told in the words of one who survived shipwreck on the forbidding shores of Siberia. Patrick Cahill was a machinist’s mate sent in the “U.S.S. Rodgers” in 1881 to seek out the fate of the missing “Jeannette”, commanded by George Washington DeLong. That ship was doomed to be wrecked by the ice in 1881, while the “Rodgers” was likewise doomed to never return when she burned to the waterline in St. Lawrence Bay, in late 1881. Cahill was also contracted by the SF Chronicle to be a correspondent during the search expedition. Although his reports never made it into print a typescript survived, held by his descendants. It is from this and interviews Cahill gave later in life that the present volume is formed. His account provides a witty view of the life of the seamen among their unwilling but still generous hosts - -a culture shock to both sides of the arrangement.