HMS Resolute (1850)

The HMS Resolute was in 1850 acquired by the Royal Navy British polar research ship sails. It was in 1852 part of an expedition in search of the lost Franklin expedition. The Resolute and one of its sister ships remained stuck in the Arctic ice in the Viscount Melville Sound and 1853 were emptied and abandoned. Two years later, the Resolute from the American whaler George Henry was found.

Finally, she remained in the ice of Davis Strait in the Baffin stuck again, 1200 miles away from the place where they had been abandoned. The Americans liberated the Resolute from the ice and brought them to New London, Connecticut, where the Congress of the United States acquired it for $ 40,000 and on 17 December 1856 of the British Queen Victoria as a sign of peace presented.

The HMS Resolute served in the Royal Navy for 20 years until she retired in 1879 and was dismantled. Queen Victoria commissioned a carpenter to be made of the beam of the ship's planks a work desk. This was the U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes paid on 23 November 1880 as a sign of gratitude.

This " Resolute Desk" called desk has since been used by all American presidents with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. John F. Kennedy brought the first desk in the Oval Office of the White House, the official office of the U.S. president. Since then, it most presidents use there; some, such as George HW Bush did, but bring him into her private office in their house.

Queen Victoria made ​​for themselves also produce a desk from the planks of the Resolute, which stood for many years at Buckingham Palace. This table looks but, unlike the fictional plot of the movie " National Treasure: Book of Secrets ", unlike the U.S. donated from. Replicas of the U.S. desk, however, exist in four presidential libraries, such as the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum ( see picture).

• Research vessel ( United Kingdom)