The story of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. The British ship HMS Resolute was abandoned in the Arctic in 1854 while searching for Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition. The Resolute was constructed expressly as an arctic vessel with a bow covered in iron to cut through ice. It nevertheless became trapped in ice in April 1854, and the other three ships became stuck soon after. Belcher decided to abandon the four ships, and on May 15, 1854, Resolute was abandoned in Melville Sound. The ships' crews marched across the ice to the North Star back at Beechey Island and later sailed back to England on it and two auxiliary vessels. Belcher was court-martialed for the loss of his ships and the danger he put his crew through during the expedition. He never again received a naval command. When the ice thawed in the spring, the unmanned Resolute began drifting south, traveling more than 1,000 miles and roughly 7 degrees latitude, where it was spotted in September 1855 in Davis Strait, off the shores of Baffin Island, by the crew of George Henry, an American whaling ship captained by James Buddington. The whalers tried to signal the ship, and after it failed to respond four sailors boarded it. They found the ship uninhabited but still stocked. The ship was listing badly to its port side and missing its topmast. It took several weeks to pump out the water from the ship and get it back to an even keel, but Buddington knew the ship's story and knew he could likely sell it for a large sum when he returned it to dock. Buddington claimed the right to salvage for HMS Resolute, and sailed it to New London, Connecticut, arriving on Christmas Eve 1855. This all happened during an especially tense time in United Kingdom–United States relations. Then-President Franklin Pierce was prepared to go to war with Britain for what would be a third time. In his third annual message, in 1855, Pierce discussed disputes over fishing rights and the border between British Columbia and Washington Territory as well as Britain's territorial claims in South America, which the United States claimed violated the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty. Regarding the disagreement about Britain's foothold in South America, Britain's then First Lord of the Admiralty stated that "We are fast drifting into war with the United States." Wealthy American philanthropist Henry Grinnell, who had financed an earlier expedition to find Franklin's lost ships to no avail, suggested to the US government that the Resolute should be refit and sent back to England as a token of goodwill. As a way to help calm tensions between the two countries, a bill was introduced to Congress on June 24, 1856, to authorize the purchase and restoration of the Resolute. The United States Government bought the ship from Buddington for $40,000 (equivalent to $1,310,000 in 2023) with plans to return it to the United Kingdom as a gift to Queen Victoria. On September 12, 1856, the Resolute was towed to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it underwent a complete refit, repaint, and restock. The ship set sail on November 13, 1856, out of New York Harbor and arrived in Portsmouth on December 12 of the same year, captained by Henry Hartstene. Hartstene, a member of the United States Navy during the American Civil War, had previously taken part in the Wilkes Expedition to study the Pacific Northwest, and captained a voyage to the arctic to successfully save Dr. Elisha Kent Kane who had gone missing on his own search for Franklin. After arriving in England the Resolute was later brought to Cowes Harbour on the Isle of Wight where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert boarded the ship and accepted it on behalf of all of Great Britain. Hartstene, as part of comments about the ship in a speech, expressed his hope "that long after every timber in her sturdy frame shall have perished, the remembrance of the old Resolute will be cherished." The Resolute continued serving in the Royal Navy for twenty-three years as a supply vessel, but never again left British waters. The ship was decommissioned in 1879 and subsequently broken up in Chatham Dockyard in Chatham, England, in 1880. From the Resolute, three desks constructed from its timbers. Queen Victoria sent one of these desks to American President Rutherford B. Hayes. The Resolute desk was received at the White House on November 23, 1880, and it was used in the President's Office and President's Study until the White House Reconstruction from 1948 to 1952. After the reconstruction, it was placed in the Broadcast Room, where Dwight D. Eisenhower used it during radio and television broadcasts. Jacqueline Kennedy had it brought to the Oval Office in 1961. The desk was removed from the White House after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and went on a traveling exhibition with artifacts of the Kennedy Presidential Library. President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the White House in 1977, where it has remained since. Via Wikipedia
