The Resolute desk is an important, historical desk that resides in the White House either in the residence or west wing. The desk is cool for a lot of reasons. For one, it is used by the leader of the United States and free world: the President. For some reason Ford, Nixon and Johnson didn’t use the desk. Every president besides Ford, Nixon and Johnson has used the Resolute desk either in the oval office or in the White House family residence.
The Resolute desk is made from timbers taken from the HMS Resolute, a British “exploration” ship which was sent, along with five other ships, to search the eastern Arctic for Sir John Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition. The Resolute became stuck in the ice on its second expedition to find Franklin. It was ultimately abandoned. Nearly a year later, an American whaling ship found the HMS Resolute some 1200 miles from where it initially became ice bound. The Americans freed the ship, rigged its sails and sailed it to New London, Connecticut. When the British government heard that the ship had been successfully freed from its prison of ice, it relinquished all ownership rights of the vessel. The HMS Resolute was then used throughout the American Civil War as a ship in the Royal Navy and continued to sail until 1879 when it was retired and scuttled for scrap. The British government then commissioned Joiner’s Shop of Chatham Dockyard to create at least two desks from the timbers of the HMS Resolute .
The Resolute Desk
One of the desks was given to U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes supposedly by Queen Victoria. The gesture was apparently a thank you gift to the United States for finding and returning the HMS Resolute to England. A plaque on the desk eloquently mentions the reason for the gift. A second desk was constructed from the timbers and given to widow of Henry Grinnell in 1880 for his generous contributions to the expedition to find Lord Franklin and his ill fated crew. This is interesting because in the movie National Treasure they claim that the second desk is identical to or the twin of the desk in the oval office. In reality, the second desk was made as a much smaller desk (closer to a secretary desk size) and is kept in theNew Bedford Whaling museum in New Bedford Massachusetts. There was a third desk made from the Resolute’s timbers. However it was never housed at Buckingham Palace. It was used aboard a royal yacht and later sent to the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, England.
Sources: The White House Museum.org website; The Absolute Astronomy website; Wikipedia – National Treasure.
