Adolphus Washington Greely

Adolphus Washington Greely (1844-1935), American explorer of the Arctic and army officer.

Greely was born on March 27, 1844, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. After participating as a volunteer with the Union forces during the American Civil War, he entered the regular army in 1867. He was subsequently appointed to the signal service and from 1876 until 1879 supervised the erection of more than 3200 km (2000 mi) of telegraph line in Texas, the Dakotas, and Montana. In 1881 he became commander of an American expedition to establish one of a chain of 13 circumpolar meteorological stations recommended by the International Geographical Congress in 1879. His expedition discovered new territories north of Greenland, and several members of the group reached 83°24’ north latitude, the northernmost point attained to that date. Relief parties sent out during 1882 and 1883 failed to reach the expedition, and during the winter of 1883 all the party except Greely and six of his men died. In the spring of 1884 survivors were rescued by U.S. Navy Commander Winfield Scott Schley. For his service in the Arctic, Greely was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1887 he was made chief signal officer and brigadier general, becoming the first volunteer and enlisted man in the U.S. Army to attain that rank. During the Spanish-American War he was in charge of constructing telegraph lines and establishing communications in Puerto Rico, China, Cuba, and the Philippines. He was later given a similar commission in Alaska, establishing the first wireless stations in the territory. Greely supervised relief operations in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. In that year he was promoted to major general, and two years later he retired from the army. He wrote Three Years of Arctic Service (2 volumes, 1885), Handbook of Alaska (1912), and The Polar Regions in the Twentieth Century (1928).