March 1971 National Geographic Asia map supplement

On April 30, 1975, the Vietnam War officially ended with the fall of Saigon to Communist forces. Many Vietnamese fled their country, including one Special Forces officer who painstakingly planned his escape and paid $200 on the black market for a copy of a March 1971 National Geographic map to guide him.

Nguyen Van Canh spent three years amassing the vehicles, fuel, food, weapons and ammunition that he would need to get him and 49 others out of the country. He purchased two boats and stored fuel for them in drums submerged in the sea. They left the city in small groups disguised as merchants and took a train to Phan Thiet near the coast. Then they hid in the backs of trucks, hoping to make it through approximately 20 checkpoints undetected. After that, there was a nighttime hike of eight miles through forest to get to the boats.

The refugees’ troubles were far from over. Fifty-one others had learned of the plan and wanted to join them. Furthermore, one of the boat captains backed out, returning the gold Van Canh had paid for the vessel. There was no turning back so they boarded the remaining boat with only a compass and the National Geographic map to guide them. Battered by a three-day storm and with food running low, they signaled to other boats but no one came to their rescue. Finally spotting a flare from a Malaysian drilling operation, they headed for that beacon and were transported by Malaysian authorities to a refugee camp at Pulau Besar.

Van Canh eventually made his way to Washington, D.C., living in the home of relatives of a Geographic staffer and working for the International Rescue Committee to help refugees like himself. His story was related in a National Geographic staff newsletter in 1982.

Photo by Michael Nichols, c. NGS.

Despite a reputation for being cooperative, one researcher has noted that female elephants observe a strict hierarchy at the watering hole. Working in Namibia’s Etosha National Park, Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell has been studying different elephant families trying to make sense of the complex relations.

For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

From the top of Mount Everest to the depths of the sea, from the world beneath the microscope to the stars in distant galaxies, the National Geographic Society has reported on “the world and all that is in it” for 125 years. On January 13, 1888, thirty-three men attended a meeting to discuss the “advisability of organizing a society for the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge,” and voted to set up such an organization.

During this period, Washington, D.C. saw a flurry of intellectual and scientific societies being established. In the decades after the Civil War, the government funded much scientific work and research, and the city had an especially active community of scientists and their supporters. Among this group was a strong belief that the advancement of the natural sciences would lead to the understanding, management and wise development of the country’s natural resources. Out of this group and their beliefs, the conservation and environmental movements would be born.

The thirty-three founders of the National Geographic Society were an adventurous and accomplished group. They included scientists, explorers, a journalist and a superintendent of the National Zoo. In recognition of the National Geographic Society’s 125th anniversary this series takes a look at their stories.

In 1879, George Melville was aboard the Jeannette for what would become one of the epic stories in early American Arctic exploration. Departing from San Francisco, the Jeannette sailed through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean. Expedition leader George W. De Long had hoped to find a warm current that might take them to the North Pole; instead the ship was caught in the polar ice pack and drifted nearly two years before it was crushed. De Long and the crew abandoned her, dragging three lifeboats with provisions until they found open water. Intending to reach Siberia, the boats were separated. Melville, in command of one boat, managed to reach the delta of the Lena River and was rescued. The others perished. Melville then led an expedition that recovered records of the Jeanette expedition as well as the remains of De Long and his companions.

George Wallace Melville was born in New York on January 10, 1841, the son of Alexander and Sarah Melville, and studied at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In 1861 he was appointed an assistant engineer in the U.S. Navy and served throughout the Civil War, earning high praise for his capture of the Florida in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil. In broad daylight Melville boarded the ship dressed in civilian clothes and ascertained the necessary information to take her the following day. An official assessment by Engineer-in-Chief Loring stated, “…it is no disparagement to his fellows to say that he has not his superior in his corps.”

Almost immediately thereafter, Melville served as chief engineer on the relief expedition, commanded by Winfield Scott Schley that rescued Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely and the survivors of his Arctic expedition to northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island–the other great survival epic of early American Arctic exploration, played out the other side of the pole from the Jeannette saga. In all, Melville was on three Arctic expeditions and his book, In the Lena Delta, recounted many of these adventures.

In 1887, Melville was appointed Chief Engineer of the Navy. During his tenure, he supervised designs for 120 new ships, essentially ensuring the modernization of the fleet. Such innovations as the triple screw and vertical engines were used for the first time, and Melville himself was the inventor of many mechanical appliances. Perhaps the most successful results were the triple screw ships Columbia and Minneapolis. Amidst all this naval innovation, he somehow found time to join the newly-formed National Geographic Society in January 1888 and served a term as vice president. In 1899, Melville was promoted to rear admiral, and retired with that rank in 1903. He died on March 17, 1912, and a statue to his memory stands in Navy Park at the Philadelphia Naval Base.

From the Arctic to South America, from China to Sweden and seemingly everywhere in-between, Winfield Scott Schley boldly sailed the world’s oceans. Schley was born near Frederick, Maryland, on October 9, 1839, the son of John Thomas and Georgiana Virginia Schley. Although he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1860, it was near the bottom of his class, as he admitted that he held “pleasure and holidays in higher esteem than plodding study.” He served a year in Chinese and Japanese waters before the outbreak of the Civil War whereupon he attached to the West Gulf blockading squadron, serving in all the engagements of that fleet, including the capture of Port Hudson in 1863.

The years after the Civil War found the U.S. Navy stuck in the doldrums, but Schley’s buoyant personality seemed not to mind the endless cruises. Then, in 1884, he was put in command of the third Greely relief expedition, and finally succeeded in rescuing Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely and the remainder of his Arctic exploration party, only days before they would most likely have perished through starvation on the shores of Cape Sabine.

On March 31, 1888, shortly after he helped found the National Geographic Society, Schley was promoted to captain. In 1891, while in command of the Baltimore, he suppressed an anti-American demonstration at Valparaiso, Chile. That same year, he commanded the party that took the body of John Ericsson, inventor of the naval screw propeller and designer of the ironclad Monitor, back to Sweden, for which he received a gold medal from the King of Sweden. Schley was promoted to commodore in February, 1898–just in time to play a pivotal role in the Spanish-American War. Commanding the “flying squadron,” Schley, in the absence of his superior officer, impetuously took direct command of the fleet and destroyed Admiral Cervera’s Spanish squadron in the harbor of Santiago on July 3, 1898. As a result, the war was nearly won and Schley was advanced to the rank of rear admiral.

In recognition of his role in the victory, he received many public testimonials, as well as medals and swords from various public bodies and organizations. But he was also embroiled in controversy over his role in the battle vis-a-vis his superior officer, and he felt compelled to request a court of inquiry to defend himself against charges of misconduct. This court generally frowned upon his conduct, but recommended no action be taken.

Admiral Schley retired in 1901. He was the author of The Rescue of Greely and Forty-Five Years under the Flag. Toward the end of his days, he championed the cause of Frederick A. Cook in the North Pole discovery controversy with Robert E. Peary, an action that often put him at odds with the National Geographic Society he had helped found. Both Schley and Greely, the man he had rescued, were bitter opponents of Peary.

Schley died in 1911 just a week before his 70th birthday and was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. The destroyer USS Schley was named in his honor, serving in World Wars I and II.

Cathedral of the Assumption, circa 1914. Photo by Gilbert H. Grosvenor, NGS.

Since the end of the Soviet era, archaeologists have unearthed a treasure trove of information on the mysteries beneath Moscow’s streets. Mammoth bones have been found beneath the city’s “Golden Mile” and stone tools near the Kremlin.

For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

A.W. Greely’s 1881 Arctic expedition tragically demonstrated the hardships and deadliness of attempts to explore the Far North. Despite his achievements before and after the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, his reputation would forever be tainted.

Adolphus Washington Greely was born at Newbury, Massachusetts, on March 27, 1844, the son of John Balch and Frances Cobb Greely. He graduated in 1860, in time for enlistment for the beginning of the Civil War. He started as a private but was brevetted a captain for gallant service, ending the war as a major.

In 1867, with the return of the peacetime rank structure, Greely was appointed a second lieutenant in the regular Army. From 1876 to 1879 he was on Signal Corps duty, during which time he constructed two thousand miles of telegraph lines in Texas, Dakota, and Montana.

In 1881, Greely was in charge of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition to the Arctic in order to establish one of a chain of international circumpolar weather stations. This expedition began as part of the first International Polar Year, reached the high latitudes of Canada north of Baffin Bay as well as crossing Ellesmere Island for the first time, charting parts of the coast of Greenland, and achieving a new northern record of 83 degrees, 24 minutes. Unfortunately, two relief ships failed to appear. Commander Winfield Scott Schley at the head of a third relief vessel finally made it–but by then it was 1884, and 18 of the 25 men had died.

Controversy over whether the men had resorted to cannibalism would linger for years, but Greely moved on with his career. In 1886 he was promoted to captain, and then further promoted to brigadier general, being the first volunteer private of the Civil War to reach this rank in the regular Army. During the next few decades, as head of the U.S. Signal Service, he supervised the installation of telegraphic communications for the army in such places as the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Alaska. In 1888, he was one of six to issue an invitation to a meeting to discuss the advisability of founding a society for the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge and contributed many articles to its new journal, the National Geographic magazine.

Promoted to major general in 1906 and given temporary command of the Pacific Division, he had hardly been at his post when he left San Francisco for the East Coast to attend his daughter’s wedding. Upon receiving word of the catastrophic events of the morning of April 18—a massive earthquake measuring the equivalent of 8.3 on the Richter scale and a resulting fire that ravaged the city–he turned around immediately. When he arrived to what remained of the city on April 23, he assumed command for, as he states in his official report as well as his own memoirs, “the largest force – army, marine, and navy- that ever worked together in peacetime.”

Greely and his staff in San Francisco. Photo from the National Archives & Records Administration.

By April 26, after meetings with the mayor and other authorities, Greely and the Army were not only responsible for keeping civil order, they had also taken full control of the relief efforts and were responsible for the food, clothing, and shelter of well over 300,000 refugees, working closely with the fledgling Red Cross.

Greely retired in 1908 but lived on for many years, passing away on October 20, 1935. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Gardiner Greene Hubbard was not a scientist, but he was a forward-thinking man in a still-young country brimming over with promise and a belief in the marvels of the industrial age. When he met Alexander Graham Bell, something new and bold was bound to result.

Hubbard was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1822, and his ancestors figured prominently in the colonial era. The young Hubbard earned a degree in law and also feverishly pursued various business interests, such as establishing the first trolley line between Boston and Cambridge in 1856. And raise a glass to him the next time you enjoy a craft beer. His farm in Washington State was one of those which pioneered hop growing in the Yakima Valley, now the source of much of hop production in the U.S.

Hubbard’s progressive ideas encompassed education, and when confronted with the challenge of a deaf daughter, he did not shirk from the challenge. Young Mabel lost her hearing at age five after a bout of scarlet fever, and many children like her would have sidelined for the rest of their lives, kept out of society if not actually put in an asylum. However, Mabel received the best of educations, and when she was a teenager, a friend introduced her to a new teacher of the deaf in Boston. Alexander Graham Bell immediately took Miss Hubbard on as a pupil. Bell was a gifted teacher and Mabel thrived even though they had only a few lessons before Bell transferred her to the care of a colleague. For he was falling in love with Mabel. His explanation to her mother, Gertrude Hubbard, was somewhat evasive, but one suspects she grasped the situation immediately. She was sympathetic to the somewhat shabby professor, making sure he was a frequent guest at the house. One night, while seated at the piano, Bell turned to Mabel’s father and said, “Mr. Hubbard, sir, do you know that if I depress the forte pedal and sing ‘do’ into the piano, the proper note will answer me?” His performance produced an instant partnership that would change the world.

Bell’s demonstration of sympathetic vibration that evening was meant to show how the telegraph system could be improved. However, his restless mind hopscotched from one idea to another, including one of a “speaking” telegraph that Hubbard initially deemed less promising. Despite his exasperation over the young man’s seeming inability to finish a project, as well as the inventor’s pining after Mabel, their dreams came to fruition a few years later. Ever the savvy lawyer, Hubbard wasted no time filing the patent for the telephone in 1876, and his careful shepherding of the project insured that every one of the more than 600 challenges came to naught. Bell, for his part, was overwrought when Mabel agreed to marry him. As a wedding gift he signed over most of his telephone stock to his new bride.

Marriage to Mabel meant that Bell naturally fell into the orbit of the National Geographic Society. So when his father-in-law passed away on December 11, 1897, he could not ignore the family’s pleas for him to step in and save the struggling organization. The society had meant so much to Hubbard, and Hubbard had meant so much to Bell. Despite his preference to bury himself in his inventing, he took the helm. As the Society’s second president, Bell set the young society on a stable and profitable course, and one that would bring readers “THE WORLD AND ALL THAT IS IN IT.”

In 1899, a 23 year-old Gilbert H. Grosvenor was finding his way as the first employee at an institution known as the National Geographic Society, which was barely keeping its head above water, and he seemed to have had a soft spot for one of our lesser-known founders, Otto Tittmann. After Tittmann’s passing in 1938, Grosvenor wrote to his son, Charles, describing him as “a gallant gentleman and one of the outstanding geographers and scientists of our period, but I shall always think of him just as the ideal friend.”

Otto Hilgard Tittmann, a geodesist, was superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and a president of the National Geographic Society. Born in Belleville, Illinois, on August 20, 1850, he was the son of Edward Tittmann, a German revolutionary who immigrated in 1848, and his wife Rosa Hilgard. He was educated in the public schools of his hometown and in St. Louis, Missouri, and although lacking university training, he was nevertheless appointed at the age of 17 an aide to the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.

For nearly five decades Tittmann was associated with the Survey, and was in charge of many important expeditions as well as being delegated to several international conferences. In 1874 he was assistant astronomer on the expedition sent to Japan to observe the transit of Venus, and from 1889-1893 he was in charge of weights and measures. In this capacity he was chosen in 1890 to bring from Paris the standard meter now kept in the National Bureau of Standards, and inspected governmental weights and measures offices in London, Paris, and Berlin. For many years he served as the principal U.S. Commissioner in the negotiations between the U.S. and Great Britain to precisely determine the boundary line between the United States and Canada. He was also the U.S. delegate to the International Geodetic Conference, held at Berlin in 1895, and from 1895-1899 was assistant in charge of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1900 he was appointed the superintendent, serving until 1915, when he resigned to devote more time to his new position as president of the National Geographic Society, in which capacity he would serve for the next four years.

However, illness plagued him and his wife, Kate Trowbridge Wilkins, in their later years. Tittmann suffered periodic falls and fainting spells and worried that he might be a drain on the family, and Charles wrote that, “He has kept a rather cheerful frame of mind, but I do know that he has been anxious about his situation and that of my mother.” Charles helped where he could; however, it was Grosvenor who quietly came to the family’s rescue, pulling strings to have a relief bill submitted to Congress to pay Tittmann $150 per month for the rest of his life. He also made sure that the Geographic gave him a grant of $100 per month, noting that, “It is not possible to measure the benefits conferred on The Society by your faith in the purposes of The Society and your wise counsels given these forty-seven years without remuneration.”

In response to Charles’ profuse thanks, Grosvenor wrote, “The encouragement and warm-hearted understanding which your father and mother invariably gave me from the first day I arrived in Washington and began my life here has remained one of the most happy experiences of my life.” Describing his father’s passing on August 21, 1938, Charles wrote, “His end was remarkably peaceful and harmonized in that respect with his later years. It was Sunday afternoon, about 3:45 p.m. the day following his birthday. My oldest daughter, her husband, their little boy, and I had just left Leesburg by automobile for Washington, and five minutes later in crossing the parlor floor, he suddenly stumbled, was supported by the housekeeper, said he was all right, with a smile, and the next instant was gone.”

One of our least-known founders, Herbert Gouverneur Ogden, was long associated with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Over the course of his career he compiled several U.S. Coast Pilots for the Atlantic, providing lists of lighthouses, fog signals, and information regarding tides.

Ogden was born in New York on April 4, 1846, the son of Morgan Lewis and Eliza Glendy (McLaughlin) Ogden. After being educated in private schools and by private tutors, he was appointed an aid to the Survey on April 22, 1863. Because this was during the middle of the Civil War, he first worked with the Union Army on the defenses of Washington; and then, a year later, with the U.S. Navy in the region of the North Carolina sounds.

After the war, Ogden remained with the Coast and Geodetic Survey. He accompanied an 1865 expedition to Nicaragua, and in 1870 served as topographer with the first naval expedition to explore the Isthmus of Darien in Panama. On May 28, 1872, he took time off from his work to marry Mary A. Greene of Brooklyn.

In 1893 he was in charge of one of the survey parties marking the boundary line between British Columbia and Alaska, and two places are named in his honor: Ogden Peak, Alaska-Canada and Ogden Passage, Alaska. In 1898 he became the Survey’s inspector of hydrography and topography. As a vice-president of the young National Geographic Society, he contributed a piece entitled “Survey of the Coast,” which appeared in the magazine’s inaugural issue. Ogden died in 1906 and is buried in picturesque Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.