Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  Reckless burning of the ship's coal both onboard and in the observatory had squandered the engine's fuel so that only a few days' supply remained. Because the men were too lazy to man the hand pumps, the bunkers held barely enough coal to steam directly south to Disko. Errors and foolishness had reduced their chances of survival and left the expedition with a razor-thin margin for error. Any delay or diversion while steamingwhether from pack ice, gales, or fogwoi Id mean disaster.

  The hip's starboard anchor was lost. Already events had demonstrated the fact that a single anchor could not hold the vessel in a strong gale. A lone anchor would drag through the poor holding ground made up of powdered stone known as glacial flour found in the shallow bays. The backbone of the keel was cracked and splintered beyond repair, disposing the vessel to spring ever-increasing leaks when stressed. Here was a ship destined to sink if it did not run aground first. The status of their lifeboats should have concerned all aboard.

  But three of the rowed boats had been lost. Half the ship's complement c-f boats was gone. The Heggleman and one stout whale-boat lay twenty miles north, covered in canvas and abandoned. Nothing xmained of the other whaleboat but splinters drifting southward. Little was thought of this at the time, but the shortage of whaleboats would soon threaten the lives of all aboard the doomed I olaris.

  RETREAT

  And now there came both mist and snow.

  And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald.

  —SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,

  ”THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER”

  Sensing that the ship might depart at a moment's notice, those men who loved Captain Hall did their best to improve his grave site. Herman Sieman, especially, spent his spare moments tending the mound while he prayed for his former captain's soul. Captain Tyson took the time to rearrange the stones ringing the grave into neat order. The crowbar driven into the frozen earth in the dark of the Arctic winter remained unmoved, but wind and drifting snow had played havoc with the penciled inscription and board Schuman had left.

  Realizing his former commander deserved something more, Mr. Chester secured a piece of pine an inch and one-half thick, planed it with loving care, and cut a more fitting inscription into its face:

  In Memory of

  Charles Francis Hall,

  Late commander

  U.S. Steamer Polaris, North Pole Expedition

  Died

  Nov. 8th, 1871 Aged 50 years

  I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me,

  though he were dead,

  yet shall he live.

  Later one evening while the waning summer sun watched from over his shoulder, Chester carried his work to the grave and planted it deep e lough to withstand the storms. Facedown across the grave lay Schuman's penciled work, while the angled crowbar jutted uprightboth untouched, for good reason. The dirt piled over Hall's mortal remains and everything connected with it had become a sort of shrine, not to be disturbed.

  As conditions aboard the Polaris grew steadily out of control, Hall's fo-lorn grave presented a pilgrimage site for men to sit and think about what might have been. For all his faults in leadership, their dead commander had possessed the ability to travel and survive in the Ar :tic. Had Hall lived, no one doubted that things would now be quite different. His presence once instilled confidence, something even the meanest sailor among them longed for at this moment.

  At odds with the crew's frequent visits were the actions of the two coccmmanders of the disintegrating expedition. Apart from his single failed attempt to photograph the site, Emil Bessel kept well away from the grave, and Buddington never approached it. Perhaps the sea captain already knew that the specter of the dead Hall would haunt him for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was conscience that bothered them both.

  In th-3 early hours of July 11, the ice claimed another irreplaceable smdl craft. Before leaving the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Emil Bessel had ordered a boat built especially for him. Lightweight and flat-bottomed, the craft was affectionately called “the scow” and did useful service ferrying men back and forth from the ship to shore. Bit it was left tied carelessly to the side of the ship, and the night watch neglected to haul it aboard. One can only wonder if this oversight was deliberate, the result of some insult Bessel had inflicted on a crew member.

  Marauding ice discovered the helpless boat, encircled it, and drove it hard against the side of the Polaris. In minutes the relentless piles staved in the skiff's sides with a splintering crash, and the ruined scow sank beneath the clear waters. Morning found the remains of the scow swinging in the current from its bowline like a condemned man dangling from the hangman's rope.

  Insanely the unexpected came on every twist in the winds and cont nued to snare the unwary. Freezing weather struck from the southwest, and warmer weather came with gales from the northeastnot at all what they had expected. Tantalizingly the northern winds cleared the harbor and opened broad gaps in the ice blocking Robeson Straits and, more important, Kennedy Channel to the south. But as soon as the ship made ready, the ice pack drifted back to close the channels. Buddington found himself pacing the foredeck in frustration. “As we cannot move now, we must patiently wait what the ice will do with us,” he wrote bitterly. “A northeaster would indeed be a blessing.”

  Seawater found its way into even the most secure lockers. Two barrels of sugar, one of flour, and another of molasses spoiled when the salty water broached their casks.

  Chester made a valiant attempt to recover his abandoned canvas boat, with no success. In fact, the effort almost claimed the life of Frederick Meyer. Caught in a sudden snow squall while trekking back, the meteorologist lost his way and spent the night hiding under an overhanging rock for protection. Twenty-eight hours later, the weary Prussian stumbled back to the observatory.

  By the sixteenth of July, the plain surrounding the observatory, the ominous overhanging bluff that shadowed it, and the foothills and mountains as far as the eye could see glistened with pure white snow.

  While the year before had proved exceedingly mild, fortune and the warm weather turned their faces from the expedition in 1872. The prior year marked the peak of a warm cycle like that used by Scoresby to advance north. Summer ended abruptly, and rain turned to snow. Although it was still the middle of July, the land took on the appearance of the previous September.

  Providence Berg, drastically altered from the summer melt and rising water temperatures, became top-heavy and lost its stability. Instead of providing shelter, it threatened to crush the ship. Under pressure from wind, it capsized on the eighteenth of July and rolled over. Giant boulders and rocks the size of houses embedded in the ice boiled to the surface as the iceberg's long-submerged foot burst into view.

  All the while Buddington played cat and mouse with the endless armada of ice that entered the bay or streamed southward along the curve of Thank God Harbor. Edging ever closer to shore became a necessary but dangerous defense. Large segments of ice and icebergs calved from farther north would run aground in the shallow bay and split apart before they could wreak havoc on the wounded ship.

  But seeking the safety of shallower water also risked grounding the ship. All went well whenever the keel struck on a flooding tide. Grounding on a falling tide, however, left the Polaris heeled far over with water pouring through the scuppers.

  One hour after midnight on the twenty-first, an ear-splitting crack br^ke the silence. Men tumbled out of their bunks at the noise, which sounded like a cannon shot. On deck they soon discovered the cause of the sound. Providence Berg, long their tormentor and protector, had split in two. While the two halves still dwarfed the Polaris, their separation diminished their ability to screen the ship from the larger icebergs meandering by the mouth of the harbor.

  The first of August brought very alarming news. Scarcely enough coal for six days of running at full steam remained. Only under favorable conditions would there be adequate coal to reach Disko. Faced with thi
s grim reality, Buddington instituted the hand pumping that Tyson had long recommended. Three shifts would work the deck pumps for eight to ten minutes each hour to clear the bilges. To prevent a recurrence of the seacock-opening fiasco, the captain riade it a point to exempt the two engineers from pumping duty. To cover his concession to the engine room, Buddington also excused the cook and the steward under the guise that the exempted persons had no fixed shift.

  Indifferent to the ship's plight, the ice in the passage continued to block her line of retreat south. Each day Alvin Odell, the assistant engineer, rowed ashore and climbed to the base of Observatory Bluff to scan the horizon for open water. With each visit he piled one rock on another to form a stone pillar. After weeks of fruitless searching, a stone monument ten feet high and six feet square at its base attested to his diligence.

  Buddington formulated plans to beach the Polaris in the event the ice kept them imprisoned into winter. “As we will be unable to keep the vessel afloat in her present condition during another winter, we will be compelled to run her on the beach,” he carefully noted in his log. The deepening cold added to his fears. Every night fresh ice formed around the sides of the ship so that the crew awoke to find their vessel encased in ice and the bay iced over. While the thin ice broke apart with the tidal changes, its presence made boating to the shore an added trial.

  August 12 dawned to a series of unanticipated events. Hans's wife gave birth to a baby boy. The birth took everyone but the tight-lipped Inuit by surprise. Her loose-fitting parka concealed her condition to the end. True to their custom, when labor contractions began, the two women retired to their cabin to deliver the infant. The lusty cries of a healthy male both startled the sailors and alerted them to the addition of a new member of the crew. Somehow the fact that the birth proceeded without the aid of the physician on board tended to accentuate the strangeness of the Natives. Despite Tookoolito's proficient English and their visit to the queen, the secretive nature of the delivery and the custom of burning the mother's clothing after delivery to ensure the safety of the child only confirmed the sailors' belief that the Natives were civilized merely on the surface. That burning of contaminated clothing and items used in the delivery may have evolved to reduce the risk of puerperal fever surpassed everyone's comprehension.

  Even Tyson, who next to Charles Francis Hall held the most sympathetic view of the Inuit, was outraged. Indignantly he wrote:

  These natives have not outgrown some of their savage customs. Like the squaws of our Western Indians and other uncivilized people, the women are left alone in the exigencies of childbirth, and free themselves, like the inferior mammals, by severing the umbilical with their teeth.

  Again the possessive attitude of the white man toward the Natives governed his thoughts. “Our Western Indians,” he had written. He was not alone in his feelings. The ship's complement usurped the responsibility of naming the newborn themselves rather than letting the parents decide, much as they had named the litters of puppies born on the ship. “Charles Polaris” became the infant's name, combining Captain Hall's Christian name with that of the ship. How the parents felt about saddling their new son with the combined Inui, or spirit, of a man who had died under sudden and suspicions conditions, possibly poisoned, and that of a mismanaged and ill-fated ship went unrecorded. Privately they probably gave their son a name with good Inui.

  The irrival of Charlie Polaris changed the luck of the expedition, at least temporarily. The new father returned from the hillside to report that the ice had opened. Hastily Buddington climbed to the ridge to confirm the report. Still, he could not stand on his own two feet. He needed Captain Tyson's second opinion to cement his own judgment that the ship could break through the thin rime that linked the floating blocks of ice. Enthusiastically Tyson agreed with Buddington: they should try to escape.

  Frantic activity followed the order to cast loose. Painfully aware that the fickle nature of the ice might destroy this opportunity, the officers hurried their men. Every second counted. In their haste the men left behind emergency stores that had been moved to the obseivatory in the event the ship sank. The hitherto undiscovered effect of Providence Berg's splitting apart suddenly became apparent and threatened to delay their urgent departure. Their only remainin anchor, the port one, which they had painfully wrenched free from the seabed, lay trapped under one half of the broken berg. Escape required cutting the shackles to their last anchor and drifting free, buddington ordered the links cut. More than one seasoned sailor watched with mixed emotions as the chain from their one remaining anchor rattled over the side to slip beneath the snow-flecked surface of the bay. More than ever, their die was cast.

  With split stem and leaking hull, the Polaris steamed out the opened door of her frozen cage and sallied forth with only ice anchors and ice screws left aboard. In their retreat southward, Buddington and his men would be unable to anchor in the shelter of a shallow bay to wait out a gale. Loss of their ground tackle would force them to grapple to an ice floe or iceberg for moorage whenever they wished to stop.

  Agair destiny appeared to loosen its grip on the ill-fated expedition only to conspire to draw the ship back into its net. Having escaped one iceberg, the Polaris would be forced by circumstances to tie to another one to rest. And this time of year, the available icebergs were rotten mountains prone to capsize, split apart, and turn on any ship foolish enough to be nearby.

  Another ominous and disturbing loss marked the ship's departure. Just as the Polaris lurched forward, one of the sled dogs named Tiger broke free and jumped over the railing to land on the ice. No amount of coaxing could entice the barking animal to return to the ship. The large Newfoundland was highly regarded as a fine sled dog and was well liked by all the crew. Hearts grew heavy as the men watched their friend and companion shrink into the distance as the ship steamed away. Without food the animal would slowly starve unless a polar bear ate him.

  The superstitious among the crew could not help but wonder if the dog could read their future. What terrible ordeal awaited them that would make a Newfoundland prefer an agonizingly slow death to what lay ahead?

  They would not have long to wait for their answer.

  Threading her way between the floating hummocks and hills, the Polaris turned tail on the brooding rise of Observatory Bluff, swung her nose toward the leaden clouds filling the sky to the west, and churned the pewter-colored water with her screw. With a mixed sense of relief and apprehension, Captain Buddington directed the helmsman. He was heading back, a fact that pleased him, but more than a thousand miles of dangerous water lay between them and their home port. Leaving Thank God Harbor exposed him to the dangers of being stranded in the ice that he so greatly feared. All around him the floating ice waited. To deal with his fears, Budding-ton went below and refilled his tin cup with specimen alcohol.

  What Emil Bessel felt as he watched the clapboard shack he called the observatory recede into the watery mist he never recorded. His eyes could not help but notice the solitary mound rising from the level ground near the hut. That lone grave caught his eye whenever he approached his workshop. The image of the frozen crypt wavered constantly in the corner of Bessel's sight, while the specter of the dead commander hovered in the back of his mind.

  Fastidious and haughty from the start, the German scientist had withdrawn even further into himself since the death of Captain Hall. His manner and actions had set him apart from the rest at the very beginning of the voyage, and the closeness of the crew, coupled with the lack of proper sanitary conditions, only heightened his alienatioi.

  Imperious as well as aloof, Bessel had openly striven to make himself the overall head of the entire expedition. While he never said so directly, his actions further tagged him as wanting to be the first to reach the North Pole. Only Captain Hall appeared to stand in his way. With the demise of Hall, Bessel believed he had achieved both objectives: he could reach the Pole and direct the expedition. The lion s share of the glory would be his. Of course, the
official orders split the command between the German and Captain Bud-dington, but Bessel expected the drunken sea captain to be happy to follow his directives.

  Two things conspired to frustrate Bessel's ambitions, however. Buddington not only hindered any plan to reach the North Pole after Hall died but steadfastly refused to consider any undertaking other than retreating farther from their objective. Second, the Arctic forced a harsh reality on Emil Bessel: he was not physically strong enough to be an Arctic explorer, much less make the trek to the top of the world. Whenever he had tried to act the explorer, snow blindness struck him down. Why he never used the carved, slitlike goggles the Inuit wore for protection is another mystery. Perhaps he considered it beneath him. Perhaps he believed his will wou d see him through. But his eyes failed him at every turn. To the German, who considered himself superior in every way to Captain -[all, this weakness, which had never bothered the dead commander, must have been particularly galling. In any event even brief exposures to the constant glare of the snow and ice disabled him for weeks at a time.

  It must have been a bitter experience for Bessel to hide from the light with his eyes swathed in bandages while men he considered inferior to him trudged about with impunity. In the end he buried himself beneath mountains of scientific measurements and collection specimens, piling those things around him for a barrier. Eventually he became even more withdrawn and brooding. Faced with his failures, Emil Bessel the man ceased to exist and was replaced by the two-dimensional Bessel the scientist. In all the testimony later taken from the crew and all the written journals, little is found that describes his human side.

  While the Inuit mother nursed her infant son below decks, the Polaris crept cautiously southward, following the twists and turns of the open channels that beckoned. Crozier Island and Franklin Island hove into view like hostile monoliths. Because the ship was without anchors, the two islands offered neither shelter nor comfort. While they passed Franklin Island, a thunderous roar overrode the whine of the wind and rattled off the distant cliffs like the shot of a cannon. The report came from an enormous landslide that greeted them, spilling down the island's rocky side to set the sea boiling amid crashing boulders and tumbling clouds of milky glacial dust.