Elisha Kent Kane

Elisha Kent Kane (born Feb. 3, 1820, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Feb. 16, 1857, Havana, Cuba) was an American physician and Arctic explorer who in 1850 led an unsuccessful expedition to northwestern Greenland to search for the British explorer Sir John Franklin, missing since 1845.

Educated as a physician, Kane became a naval surgeon in 1843. After the Arctic search for Franklin, he made plans for his own attempt to find Franklin and also to establish whether or not there was an open sea around the North Pole. Leaving New York City on May 31, 1853, he sailed aboard the Advance to northwestern Greenland and entered the sea now called Kane Basin. The ship became icebound, but the party accomplished much geographic, meteorologic, geologic, and other scientific research, though none of Franklin’s crew was found nor was an open polar sea discovered. Kane and his men suffered from scurvy and other ills and hardships during two winters. In May 1855 they abandoned the Advance and began an 83-day journey overland to Upernavik, Greenland. Found by a relief expedition, they returned to New York City in October 1855. In 1856 Kane published Arctic Explorations; The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, in the Years 1853, ’54, ’55.