Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  Captain Hall leaned against the railing by the pilothouse and waved, while Captain Buddington shouted orders to the helmsman. Below decks Chief Engineer Schuman stalked among the bright brass cylinders of his new steam engine, oiling fittings and valves, cursing in German under his breath at his two firemen.

  Only weeks before, Hall had hosted a reception aboard the Polaris for President Grant, Navy Secretary Robeson, and the Reverend Dr. Newman. Now the ship headed up to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for finishing touches under the careful eye of Mr. Delano, the navy constructor at that yard. George Tyson was not aboard, however, an absence that worried Hall. Tyson's commission languished on some bureaucrat's desk. Hall made a note to appeal directly to Robeson the minute the ship docked in New York. In their numerous prior meetings, the navy secretary had proved an enthusiastic and helpful friend.

  Even Hall's official orders scarcely reached him before the ship sailed. “Having been appointed by the President of the United States, commander of the expedition toward the North Pole,” the orders read. Thoughtfully, Hall had underlined those words with his pen. The orders gave him two and one half years, but they left the actual length up to Hall. He could stay longer if he had enough supplies or cut it short if disaster struck. Like the directions from the scientists, his naval orders showed an obsession with documentation. Hall and anyone who could write were to keep journals. He was to collect them at the end of the expedition and collate them into his final report. With the bureaucrats ever mindful of the vanished Franklin expedition, Hall was instructed to seal progress reports in bottles and throw them overboard as the sea journey progressed. On land similar notes enclosed in copper cylinders were to be placed in stone cairns as the party moved north. Who came up with the idea of the floating bottles is unknown, but it demonstrates the naivete that pervaded the planning; a divided crew with conflicting goals expected someone in the government to find message bottles floating in the vast ocean.

  Delano put the finishing touches on the Polaris in three days. During the layover the American Geographical Society held a reception. If the primary reason for going north eluded the government, the members of the society had no such misgivings. They were geographers and explorers like Hall, and they supported his lust for the North Pole. What could be placed on a map excited them. Bugs, fish, and shooting stars were secondary.

  Speaking before the members of the society, Tookoolito charmed the members with her soft, accented English, and old Bill Morton brought tears to their eyes as he reminisced about his Arctic travels with Elisha Kent Kane. The good doctor had died in Havana in 1857 but still remained warm in the members' hearts. Even now there is an active Elisha Kent Kane Society.

  Emil Bessel, perhaps recognizing he was among an unsympathetic crowd, muttered a few words of faint praise for Captain Hall's “enthusiasm,” calling that a “stimulus,” and expressed regrets over his limited English. These listeners' hearts were lost to exploration like Hall's rather than minute measurements. “If anything could be an additional stimulus to us during our trip, I think it will arise from the fact that such eminent men of science, such as compose this Society, are watching with interest the actions of our expedition,” he said. For someone who claimed to possess limited proficiency with the language, Bessel managed to come across as articulate.

  There it was againthe reference to “science” as opposed to “exploration.”

  The two men were well on their way to forming a dislike for each other. Hall's exchange of letters with Professor Henry and his complaint to Dr. Newton suggest he worried about Bessel and had even at that point stepped on the “sensitive” man's toes. And already whispers were circulating about Bessel's increasing rudeness to Captain Hall. It was becoming clear that Bessel regarded his commander as an unlettered oaf far beneath him in intellectual matters. His discussions with Hall wavered between condescension and outright insubordination. Bessel, in turn, embodied the threat to reaching the North Pole that Hall feared from the committee's massive scientific requirements, and served as a constant reminder of Hall's lack of formal education.

  Hall rose last, and it was he, their explorer, who brought them to their feet when he spoke. Wisely, he thanked the government, especially mentioning his near worship of Secretary Robeson. Hall was learning to be politic. Uncharacteristically, he bared his soul to them.

  “The Arctic Region is my home,” he confessed. “I love it dearly, its storms, its winds, its glaciers, its icebergs. When I am there among them, it seems as if I were in an earthly heaven or a heavenly earth.”

  At the reception Henry Grinnell, whose two personally funded expeditions had done so much to foster polar exploration, presented Hall with a flag to be carried by the expedition. The banner was the same one that had been carried to Antarctica by Charles Wilkes on his ill-fated expedition in 1840.

  “This is quite a noted flag,” Grinnell began, “and has seen peril by ice and sea. In 1838 it went with Wilkes' expedition to a higher latitude toward the Southern Pole than any American flag ever went before.”

  Grinnell went on to enumerate the list of explorers who had carried the flag to the far ends of the earth. “Dr. Kane took it, with another expedition, to a still higher northern latitude.”

  Hall idolized the dead Kane, as did everybody assembled. Then Grinnell carelessly mentioned Hall's nemesis, Dr. Hayes, the man who had nearly wrested the expedition from his hands. “When Dr. Hayes went on his expedition I loaned it again to him, and he carried it about thirty-seven miles higher than an American flag had ever been before.” Grinnell held out the standard. “Now, I give it to you, sir. Take it to the North Pole, and bring it back a year from next October.”

  Hall must have seethed inwardly at the name of his enemy. Here was a challenge he would meet. He would beat Hayes's mark or die in the process.

  Hall stepped forward and grasped the weathered banner. “I really feel from the bottom of my soul that this flag, in the spring of 1872, will float over a new world; a new world, in which the North Pole star is its crowning jewel.”

  While members of the Geographical Society warmly applauded what they saw as a heroic link between both ice caps, seasoned salts viewed the presentation as something far different. Insubordination and strife had riddled the Wilkes expedition, leading eventually to Wilkes's court-martial. Bad luck hampered the Wilkes party, and to the superstitious sailors, anything associated with that trip carried the same stigma. Both Kane and Hayes had carried the flag, and they, too, had had problems.

  Deepwater sailors are a highly superstitious lot. Facing the raw power of a storm at sea, a force able to make even the largest vessel seem insignificant, many a mariner has found religion. As Herman Melville wrote: “He who would learn to pray, let him go to sea.” Over hundreds of years of losing to the oceans, seamen learned to grasp at anything that might improve their odds. Traditions and superstitions abound, enough to fill a book. Don't start a voyage on Friday, never ship aboard with a black seabag, fresh-cut flowers brought aboard mean an impending deaththe litany goes on and on. Always stepping on board with your right foot first led to the common phrase, used even by landlubbers, of putting your right foot forward. First the Periwinkle's name had been changed to Po-laris, and now it would fly the colors of an ill-fated predecessor. It did not bode well.

  Without thinking, Grinnell had laid another Jonah upon the Polaris.

  Whether due to that or not, cracks opened in the Polarises organization. As the Polaris readied herself to sail, the cook, one of the common seamen, and one of the firemen jumped ship and deserted. Wilson, the assistant engineer, also vanished. Apparently Wilson and the fireman found working under Emil Schuman too loathsome to bear even for three days. The steward turned out to be consistently drunk and was set on the beach. Last, the ship's carpenter, Nathan Coffin, fell ill with an inflammation of the lungs and was hospitalized when the ship sailed. But at the eleventh hour Tyson's special orders arrived, and he clambered aboard. At this time he simply accompanied Captai
n Hall at the captain's pleasure. He would have to wait for the arrival of the coal tender Congress to receive his appointment as assistant navigator.

  Below strength, the Polaris still steamed out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard on June 29 as the sun set over the land. The slanting rays of the sun flickering over the western landscape of buildings,trees, and squat hills fired the low-hanging clouds to the east. Tongues of crimson and orange licked along the underbellies of the nimbus and altocumulus clouds covering the harbor. So far, so good, many of the sailors sighed: Red sky at night, sailors' delight.

  Seventeen hours later the Polaris anchored at New London, Connecticut. The special stop was made to pick up Alvin Odell. A veteran of naval action during the Civil War, Odell came highly recommended to fill the slot of assistant engineer. John Herron and William Jackson signed aboard as steward and cook, respectively. Adding another fireman and common seaman brought the crew to full complement.

  Word also reached Hall that the carpenter, Nathan Coffin, had recovered from his illness and survived the navy doctors as well, no mean feat given the state of medical knowledge at that time. Coffin would join them in Greenland when the Polaris rendezvoused with the Congress. The newly graduated chaplain, Bryan, also would arrive on the Congress. The Reverend Dr. Newman, never missing a chance to save souls, would ride along to administer his final blessing on the ship and crew when it left that last vestige of civilization. Now a full complement had signed on, twenty-five brave souls. Loyally following Hall on board the Polaris were “his Eskimo,” Ebierbing, Tookoolito, and their young adopted daughter, Puney. During his stay in New York, Ebierbing had drunk heavily, as have too many Inuit under similar circumstances. Both Hall and Ebier-bing's wife, Tookoolito, hoped the return to his homeland would effect his cure.

  In regard to his own wife, Mary Hall, and his two children, young Charles and Anna, Charles Francis Hall essentially abandoned them in Cincinnati. Business and family were a closed chapter to him now. His burning desire to reach the North Pole left little room for anything else. They lived on the meager remnants of his liquidated business. For all her quiet suffering, Mary Hall retained her pride. When Lady Franklin learned from Henry Grinnell that Hall's wife was in financial need while Hall was missing in the Arctic in 1869, the lady sent Mrs. Hall a gift of fifteen pounds. Mary Hall refused to accept the money. Just before Hall's crucial lecture at Lincoln Hall, his wife traveled from Cincinnati to Washington to visit him. She brought along his son, whom Captain Hall had only seen for a total of three months of the boy's ten years.

  One day before Independence Day, July 3, the Polaris weighed anchor and left New London. Departing at four p.m. to take advantage of the tide, the ship headed north. As night fell, a sudden squall struck the vessel, tested the strength of the new refitting, and shook out those men without sea legs.

  Summer storms occur when low-pressure cells crossing the Atlantic from Africa warm along the Gulf Stream and pick up moisture before colliding with colder air from Canada and the Arctic. Strong winds and sheets of rain drive the seawater before them. When that block of water, rolling along like the world's largest and heaviest freight train, hits the continental shelf, especially the shallow underwater table called the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, steep, short breaking waves form. Such waves are unsettling and damaging.

  The Polaris proved a sound ship. No seams sprang, and no hands were lost overboard. Some poorly stowed supplies broke loose and battered several storage holds, but that was all. Lightning flashes lit the night sky and claps of thunder smote the air, yet nothing struck the ship. Undamaged, it sailed on to its first port of destination, St. John's, Newfoundland. For all its Jonahs, the little tug turned Arctic explorer would deal kindly with all of its crew except one.

  In 1870 St. John's existed for one reason only. It was the finest natural harbor on the eastern side of the island of Newfoundland. Ever since Europeans came to the New World, the thick schools of cod drew fishermen to the waters of the Grand Banks, and those men needed a protected shelter. The natural topography surrounding St. John's fit the bill nicely. Completely encircled by hills and mountains tall enough to deflect the raging winds, the harbor can be entered only through a narrow channel that blocks most entering waves. A mile long and half a mile wide, the calm waters within this rocky circle are ideal for anchorage. At that time commerce and community roughly divided the town in half. Oil storage tanks, ships' chandlers, and red-painted warehouses dotted the east, while the hills to the west sprouted fashionable clapboard houses and shingled-roof cottages.

  Trouble reared its ugly head amid the placid waters and wildflower-covered slopes. Several seals on the boilers needed replacement, and the engine required readjustment. Also, the skills of their carpenter, now aboard the Congress, were sorely missed. Hall and Buddington tried unsuccessfully to hire a carpenter from the town to fix the battered storage compartments. Summer was the busy season for the fishing fleet, and everyone with the needed skills was either at sea or inundated with repairs on the local vessels. The carpentry work would have to wait until Coffin caught up with them.

  The seeds of dissension sowed by the unresolved questions of priority and command now sprouted roots. Bessel forcefully rejected any idea that Hall commanded him or members of his scientific corps, even though Captain Hall's orders specifically gave him overall command of the expedition. With his Prussian heritage, the meteorologist Meyer sided with Bessel, as might be expected. Their actions bordered on insubordination. While the two carefully avoided a direct confrontation, they seemed to be waiting, biding their time for the right moment to strike. That moment would not be far off.

  Here again the foglike nature of the command structure created problems. If Polaris had been a full-fledged military vessel crewed and commanded by naval personnel, Bessel and Meyer would have been clapped in irons and sent home for court-martial when the Congress arrived. But they were not commissioned officers. Even Captain Buddington was without commission.

  Hall found himself backed by Tyson and Morton, while Buddington and Chester waffled. Worse, the officers' quarrel spread below decks to the men. Soon they, too, dividedand along national lines. Not surprisingly, the Germans sided with Bessel. Reverting to their native tongue, knots of German-speaking crew members congregated in the fo'c'sle, more concerned that their fellow countrymen won the argument than with the goals of their mission.

  George Tyson later related to E. Blake Vale:

  A point of discussion arose as to the authority of the commander over the Scientific Corps. Strong feelings were mutually exhibited, which extended to the officers, and even the crew, among whom was developed an unmistakable feeling of special affinity on the score of national affiliation.

  Here Hall should have acted decisively. But he didn't. Instead, he chose to bow to the wishes of Bessel. He backed down. “However, matters were smoothed over,” Tyson advised. “The Scientific Corps were left free to follow their own course, and the threatened disruption of the party avoided.” Members of the scientific corps were given a free hand to do what they wished. But the weed of dissension remained alive.

  Charles Hall's lack of command experience obviously played a part in his abdication, as did his feelings of inferiority when dealing with the cultured Bessel. In the back of his mind hung the threat detailed to him by the shadowy parties in Washington. In addition, he had a tendency to overreact, and he knew it. On his first trip to the Arctic aboard the George Henry, he became convinced the crew thought he was eating their rations and meant him ill. Officially not a member of the crew, Hall had brought his own provisions. Food is a precious commodity in the Arctic and remained constantly in the back of the sailors' minds. Unable to convince the crew members that he ate only his own food, Hall took to his cabin and began a hunger strike. It took the intervention of Captain Buddington to resolve that crisis. Maybe Buddington reminded Hall of that episode.

  But another, far darker incident weighed more heavily on his mind and caused him to back off. In
the summer of 1869, Hall had killed a sailor named Patrick Coleman. At that time he had contracted with five whalers to aid him in his search for Franklin. An argument broke out on July 31 over whether the men were working hard enough. Presumably Hall was paying their wages and felt he was not getting his money's worth. Hot words flew back and forth, the sailors besting Hall with their experience in swearing. One man in particular, Coleman, fanned the flames and stood out as the leader. Hall implored him to cease his “mutinous talk and conduct” and laid his hand on Coleman's shoulder. The seaman took greater offense, doubling his fists, and prepared to launch himself at Hall. Normally Hall might have been a match for Coleman, but he feared the other four whalers would join the fray. And one of the rebellious men, Peter Bayne, held Hall's rifle. Sensibly, Hall demanded it back, and Bayne sensibly handed it over. The beleaguered explorer rushed out of the whaler's tent to his own tent with the rifle in hand. That should have ended the affair, but Hall next did something that is hard to excuse.

  Seizing his Baylie pistol (a six-shot revolver) from his tent, Hall rushed back to confront Coleman. Again, he demanded to know whether Coleman still felt mutinous. The results were predictable. Coleman's blood was up, and he would not back down. The man's response grew more threatening, and Hall shot him.

  Most seamen carry a knife for utility work aboard ship, so Coleman and the others might not have been completely unarmed. When faced with an unruly crew, a prudent sea captain would collect the men's blades and have the blacksmith strike off the pointed tips. Thus “tipped,” the knives could not be used to stab the officers yet still retained their function to cut line. A sailor carrying a tipped knife bore the stigma that he might be trouble. But no mention is made of any knife drawn during the argument. In a modern court of law, Hall's actions would constitute manslaughter, possibly even murder.