Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  The ship's boilers carried out dual responsibilities. Besides driving the engine, the boilers heated the crew's quarters through a series of steam pipes. Sir John Franklin's vessels also had steam radiators fitted to their ships. What good it did them will never be known. At Hall's suggestion, engineers even modified one of the boilers so it could burn whale or seal oil. With limited space, coal for fuel competed with foodstuffs and scientific gear. In the event of a shortage, blubber could provide lifesaving fuel.

  Other innovations abounded. From the stern hung a life buoy sporting an electric lamp with wires reaching the ship's electric generator. A spring-loaded device allowed the life preserver to be released from the pilothouse. If a man fell overboard or became stranded on the ice, the light and cable attached to the buoy would aid his rescue. In the perpetual winter night and swirling snow, men separated by mere yards vanished from sight. In a storm the howling wind swallowed all sound. Only such a lighted beacon would help.

  For exploration the ship carried four whaleboats and a flat-bottomed scow that could be dragged over the ice from one open lee to another. Roughly twenty feet long with a width of four feet, whaleboats carried oars and a collapsible mast and sail and normally held six to eight men. Designed for speed and durability, they were slim, sharply keeled, and built of heavy wood. A standard but inefficient practice was to use the whaleboats as makeshift sleds for exploring the ice pack. At Hall's urging a special collapsible boat patented by a man named Heggieman was added. Constructed of folding frames of hickory and ash, the twenty-foot-long boat could be packed aboard a sled for easy transportation. Once the frame was assembled, a waterproof canvas covering fitted over it. Theoretically, the folding boat could carry twenty men.

  While in the Arctic, Hall had greatly admired the oomiak used by the Inuit to hunt whales and walrus. Similarly designed of a wooden frame, the oomiak was covered with walrus skin. Had Hall inquired, he might have discovered that the Inuit took special pains to cover their boat in the lighter-weight hides of the female walrus instead of the thick skin of the male. Weight was an inherent problem in a boat that size and shape, especially one intended for hauling on and off ice floes. At 250 pounds, the Americans' folding boat would prove next to useless.

  Extra spare parts that could not be fabricated crammed into whatever space food and coal did not occupy. Spars, line, kegs of nails, a spare rudder were stowed away. At the navy's insistence, the hold held a small mountain howitzer with sufficient powder and shot to intimidate any unfriendly Natives they might encounter. After all, this was a naval expedition. Anyone giving it much thought would have realized that the cannon was a useless and heavy item. If the howitzer were fired on the slick ice, the first shot would either upend it or send it speeding across the ice into the closest patch of open water.

  In the captain's cabin, Hall packed books on Arctic exploration, including a copy of Luke Fox's Arctic Voyage of 1635, In one corner the workers loaded a cabinet organ donated by the Smith Organ Company. No one drew the parallel that Sir John's ill-fated party had carried two organs.

  One thing seriously flawed the newly refitted Periwinkle. The ribs and keel of the old Periwinkle werp kept and used for the ship's back. To do otherwise would have been too costly. But the Periwinkle's keel was not designed to deal with ice. It was too narrow and too sharp-bowed. With a wide, thick-waisted beam, a ship “nipped” in the ice would lie level. As pressure from the floe increased, the wide keel would not the hull to be easily gripped by the ice. Instead, the broad hull would be squeezed literally out of the ice like a seed from a grape to lie comfortably atop the frozen water. The Periwinkle's narrower design doomed it to be seized by the ice. The ice's grip would tilt the ship precariously, while mounting pressure would spring the planking, opening the seams to sea-water. The ship's slender hull would plague the expedition and eventually lead to the vessel's death.

  Hall, the landlubber, transformed from an intrepid explorer into an explorer and a sea captain, now unknowingly did something that no sailor would ever do. He renamed his vessel, a sure sign of bad luck to come. Inspired by the lofty aim of the expedition, he changed the name of the Periwinkle to Polaris.

  A HEARTY CREW

  There being attached to the expedition a scientific department, its operations are prescribed in accordance with the advice of the National Academy of Science. …

  —GEO. M. ROBESON, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

  Work on the newly named Polaris progressed feverishly throughout the winter and spring of 1871. Any delay extending into the summer months might doom the ship to miss its narrow window for sailing. Then the uncaring pack ice would close its open lees, icebergs calved from the pack and glaciers would choke the seas with deadly, white battering rams, and the fearful nor'easters would whip the seas. By October, when most people were celebrating their harvest, the Arctic sun slipped below the horizon, not to be seen again for months. Timing is critical in the high North, a land of extremes in which success often wobbled on the thin knife's edge of picking the best moment to proceed.

  The refitting scheduled at the Washington Navy Yard progressed rapidly. Once completed, the ship would steam up to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for its final fittings. Time for departure was drawing close.

  Hall now faced another problem. President Grant had appointed him in overall command of the expedition, and Congressman Stevenson, on reading the joint resolution, had referred to him as Captain Hall.

  But Hall was no captain. The title was at best honorary. Still, it stuck. After that he was Captain Hall. At best Hall was a self-taught man with valuable Arctic experienceexperience on land.With the stroke of a pen, the explorer gained a title he was ill suited to carry.

  Wisely, though, Hall realized he needed a stouthearted crew to man the ship. In an interesting departure from the British, Hall and the American navy turned to those sailors with the most experience in the Arctic. To them whaling men were the most obvious choice. Where the Admiralty placed its faith in the traditions and training of its officers and men, the first official American exploration into the Arctic turned to civilians to man the ship, which was still a registered Navy vessel. Perhaps those in the Navy Department with an instinct for self-preservation sniffed a fiasco and were hedging their bets. If so, their waffling would come back to haunt them.

  To a man like Hall, knowledge and experience were everything, so he picked sailors who had served on whaling ships and faced the ice. But such men hold a loose allegiance to their officers, signing on whichever ship pays the best wages. Moreover, military vessels sail under strict, ironclad rules, grounded in years of harsh, swift punishment for disobedience. Such respect for order would hold a crew together in the face of adversity. Nothing but adversity would flow from the far North.

  In the end lack of discipline would drive a knife deep into the heart of the Polaris expedition.

  No expedition would succeed without a good ship's master. Fortunately Hall knew just the man. The fierce storm that had shattered Hall's small sailboat during his first visit to the Arctic also struck the nearby whaling ships. Many were sunk, including the Rescue, which accompanied the George Henry. Another brig, the Georgiana, was driven hard onto the rocks. Commanding this ship was George Tyson, a man with twenty years' experience whaling the Arctic waters. Only Tyson's ingenuity saved his crew and eventually the vessel. As the wind and waves battered his ship, the angle of the stricken vessel prevented launching the whaleboats. Attempting to swim in the frothing waves meant certain death. Tyson, keeping a cool head, ordered his men to secure what they could before floating them ashore using extra spars as life rafts. In the end his ship withstood twenty-four hours of pounding and was kedged free. Here was a captain who was lucky as well as good.

  It also helped that both men were remarkably similar in background and appearance. Tyson had struggled in an iron foundry, dreaming of the Arctic, before escaping to sea. Both lacked formal education and were self-taught, self-made men. While Hall read about the North and gai
ned experience on the land, Tyson followed the humpback whales and learned about the sea. In appearance the two men looked alike. Hall, the larger and more bearlike, could easily have passed for Tyson's older brother. With thick, dark hair and full, curly beards, heavy brows, and dark eyes, the two appeared robust and vigorous. Hall wore his hair parted on the left side and brushed across his forehead, while Tyson pushed his hair straight back, ignoring his receding hairline.

  Unfortunately, when Hall approached Tyson to be the sailing master and ice pilot for the expedition, Tyson told Hall he had other plans. He was scheduled to hunt sperm whales.

  Discouraged, Hall turned to his second choice: Capt. Sidney O. Buddington. Buddington, connected to a long line of New England whaling captains, had skippered the George Henry, the ship that first brought Hall to the North. During their voyage the men became friends, and Buddington introduced the novice Hall to the Eskimo pilots and hunters he knew. In his subsequent sorties Hall sailed often aboard Buddington's vessels. Certainly Buddington's expertise, with twenty years' whaling in the Arctic, equaled that of Captain Tyson. Buddington's trade wore more heavily on him than on Tyson, giving him a much older, careworn visage. He resembled a tired version of James Garfield. Tracts of gray streaked his thinning hair and grizzled his beard. Lines furrowed his high brow and encircled his eyes. He looked like a troubled and beaten man.

  And Hall had a problem with his second choice. On one occasion the two men had quarreled bitterly over the two Inuit interpreters, Ebierbing and Tookoolito. The trouble arose during the summer of 1863 as Hall struggled to finance another trip to his beloved northland. But the bloody battles at Vicksburg and Gettysburg held the country's attention that summer, not the Arctic. Without resources Hall simmered in New York.

  Buddington did have a whaling cruise scheduled. Whether he offered passage to Hall is unknown, but the point is moot. Lacking funds for food and supplies, Hall still could not go. Then, without asking Hall's permission, Buddington offered the two Inuit a ride back to their homeland. At the time Ebierbing and Tookoolito were living with Hall in New York and showing signs of homesickness.

  On discovering Buddington's plans, Hall exploded in rage. Vitriolic letters flew back and forth. “I trust neither I nor the Esquimaux will ever trouble your house again,” Hall wrote spitefully. Buddington sailed away without Joe and Hannah.

  Hall's tirade highlights two curious things. The first was the possessive attitude of these men toward “their Inuit,” as they referred to the Eskimo. At the very time their countrymen were fighting and dying to free the black slaves in the South, northern whalers and explorers like Hall regarded the Inuit as something subhuman. The Inuit's customs undoubtedly contributed to this impression. Their demonstrations of shamanism, cruel treatment of the elderly with ritual murder, and habits of eating fish and blubber raw seemed barbaric and inhuman to the whalers. However, the Inuit traditions masked a culture highly evolved to survive in a hostile setting. But white men stumbling around in an alien world where one misstep meant disaster often missed these subtleties.

  While they would have vigorously denied ownership in the legal sense, the white men felt that their Native acquaintances in some way belonged to them. Not unlike the Southern slave owner, men like Hall assumed total responsibility for the care and feeding of Inuit who, for one reason or another, attached themselves to the whites. In doing so, they robbed their charges of all freedom of action. The Eskimo responded by becoming passive followers when in the “civilized” world. Back in the Arctic, the Natives reverted to their proven ways of surviving and ignored the whites whenever it suited their purposes.

  The second thing was that Hall showed himself to be remarkably thin-skinned for an Arctic explorer, especially when events beyond his control blocked his drive. Although he was inured to the cold, darkness, loneliness, hunger, and fear, his feelings could be easily hurt. Buddington's offer highlighted Hall's impotence: not being a whaling captain himself and without a ship or money to charter one, the explorer's return to the North remained uncertain. Perhaps Hall also feared that the whaling captain meant to steal his two Inuit just as Dr. Hayes had stolen Captain Quayle. Ebierbing and Tookoolito were precious commodities and essential to exploring the North.

  Eventually the two men reconciled. But scars from the rift festered below the surface. Still, good sea captains with knowledge of the Arctic were scarce, so Hall offered the job to Buddington, and the captain did accept the position. Slots for captains sailing north were limited. Normally the skipper of a whaler received a share of the profits, sometimes as much as 10 percent. But striking sufficient whales to turn a profit was no sure thing. Bad weather and a bad season meant no money at all. Unlike a whaling venture, this trip guaranteed his salary, a handsome one at that.

  Besides, Hall grew desperate to put the pieces of the expedition together as fast as possible. He showered presents on Buddington, promised a pension for his wife should he die, and dangled the carrot of fame before the captain. Had Buddington the ability to look into the future, he would have turned down the offer. When Buddington accepted the position as skipper, ignoring the remnants of hard feelings that existed between the two men, one more piece fell unnoticed into place, one more link added to the chain of events that would drag the expedition to its doom.

  Ironically, events linked the three men after all. Tyson's position with the New London whaling fleet fell through, and he moved his family to Brooklyn just as the refurbished Polaris sailed into the Brooklyn Navy Yard for its final additions. Hall found him and this time would not accept no for an answer. Again twisting arms, Hall secured a position for Tyson as assistant navigator and master of the sledges, a curious title but one somehow carrying the rank of captain.

  Unknown to Hall, dating back many years, Tyson harbored ill feelings for anyone with the name of Buddington. In 1854 Sir Edward Belcher abandoned the Resolute, a British Admiralty vessel. One year later, while serving under Capt. James Buddington (Sidney's uncle), Tyson spotted the Resolute frozen in the ice miles from where their ship lay. Following a harrowing trek over the ice to the frozen vessel, Tyson found it intact, preserved down to the decanters of wine in the officers' mess. Although Tyson risked his life to reach the Resolute, Buddington claimed possession of the ship, cheating the man out of thousands of dollars in salvage money. On the young Tyson's very first cruise to the Arctic whaling grounds, none other than Sidney O. Buddington had served as first mate. Neither man talked much about their first meeting, and that cannot be construed as a sign of a positive and warm acquaintanceship.

  Now the Polaris had three captains aboardtwo too many by any count. Like the first ice crystals shifting on a mountainside leading to an avalanche, circumstances, insignificant in isolation, were accumulating that would later imperil the expedition. One after another, undetected yet fatal flaws were being woven into the fabric of the Polaris expedition. Facing the harsh cold and darkness of the North, the fabric would start to unravel.

  Fate now struck another blow, one far more serious than personality disputes among three captains. Nationality raised its divisive head.

  Congress, always wanting the most for its money, had saddled the expedition with two tasks. Not satisfied merely to reach the North Pole, something no one had yet accomplished, the legislators decided the polar expedition would also be the premier scientific exploration of its time. The armchair adventurers under the Capitol dome ordered the undertaking to follow the directives of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps goaded on by Congress, a committee of these august scientists essentially ordered the expedition to study everything conceivable: biology, geology, hydrology, climatic changes, atmosphere, magnetismthe list was endless. Sealed copper cylinders carrying notes on the expedition's progress were to be thrown over the side and buried in caches ashore as the journey progressed. Ever mindful of the Franklin expedition's mysterious disappearance, the committee wanted a paper trail of this expedition. To fully comply with
the scientific requirements, a task force would have been needed instead of a converted tug. Both the National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian shared the task of appointing a chief scientist.

  Immediately Hall grew uneasyand with good reason. His lack of formal education returned to haunt him. The old division between academics and explorers, first evident with the whaler Captain Scoresby, lived on.

  Even before Congress had finalized the bill, an old nemesis of Hall's, smelling blood in the water like a shark, had emerged from obscurity to strike at Hall's appointment. Just as details of the polar expedition were being finalized, Dr. Isaac Hayes materialized in Washington and testified before the Committee on Foreign Relations that he had an expedition of his own in the works and deserved the allocated government funding far more than Hall did.

  Hayes and Hall had crossed ice axes at various lectures as the two jousted for the unofficial title of the American most knowledgeable about the Arctic. Notwithstanding the fact that Hayes had not set foot in the Arctic for ten years, he almost wrested command of the party away from Hall. Hayes's doctorate and his book, The Open Polar Sea, gathering dust in the Library of Congress, nearly capsized the self-made explorer's dream. Here, after all, was an explorer with letters after his namejust what the academics wanted.

  Hall fought for his life. He scoured Hayes's book, looking for errors and evidence of intellectual dishonesty. He stressed that he had also written a book, Arctic Research and Life among the Esquimaux, published in 1865. In the end he even tried humility. He stood before the Committee on Foreign Relations to refute Hayes's claim. “I confess I am not a scientific man,” he admitted. It must have hurt him deeply to say that. All his life he had struggled to be just that, a Renaissance man, versed in the natural sciences. All his adult life he had been weighing, measuring, and sketching. His self-worth was bound up in his view of himself as a scientist. “No, I am not a scientific man,” he argued. Then he hit the nail on the head. “Discoverers seldom have been.”