In 1881, First Lieutenant Greely was given command of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition on the ship "Proteus". Promoted by Henry W. Howgate, its purpose was to establish one of a chain of meteorological-observation stations as part of the First International Polar Year. The expedition also was commissioned by the US government to collect astronomical and polar magnetic data, which was carried out by the astronomer Edward Israel, who was part of Greely's crew. Another goal of the expedition was to search for any clues of the , lost in the Arctic two years earlier.