Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  The animal was starving just as they were. Its stomach was empty, and its hide hung loosely over a bony frame. None of the usual layers of insulating fat remained beneath its skin. The bear had meant to eat them. Instead, it became food itself. Its warm blood and stringy meat revived the men, especially the semicomatose Meyer.

  But the respite was short-lived. Another gale descended upon the straits. In a recurring theme, the wind and waves ate away at their new home until the group was forced to take to their boat once more. For the next three days, they spent more time in their leaking craft than on ice floes. The warming weather favored rotten ice, and the storm shattered most of the weakened pack ice.

  Now a different situation threatened. Little remained of the level places where they could land. Only sharp-faced icebergs that split and capsized incessantly shared the stormy straits with a slurry of slush and brash ice. There was no place suitable to repair their boat. Besides, they had no materials with which to repair it. There was nothing left for them to do but bail the sinking boat and dodge the walls of ice that thundered past.

  At four-thirty in the afternoon of April 28, just when their hopes had sunk the lowest, Ebierbing's sharp eyes spotted a smudge of smoke rising from the horizon.

  “A steamer! A steamer!” a hoarse voice croaked.

  Instantly Tyson hoisted the American flag. Men shouted and waved. The boat rocked perilously while the crew tried everything to get the ship's attention. Through his telescope Tyson made out the steam sealer working its way through the ice on a southwest course.

  Pulling with their last ounce of energy, the crew rowed toward the ship. But fog and ice blocked their way. The steamer vanished from sight. Sobbing from despair as well as exhaustion, the men slumped over their oars. Darkness settled over the small boat just as Tyson found a piece of ice barely large enough to land. Lighting scraps of their oil-soaked clothing, they set watch fires in hopes the steamer would see them.

  Morning found another steamer approximately eight miles off. Hurriedly they launched their boat and paddled for it. An hour of hard rowing saw them gaining on the idling ship. Another hour found their tiny boat blocked by pancake ice. Clambering onto the highest point of a floating cake, those with guns fired them into the air.

  The s:eamer changed course, heading directly for them. Almost delirious with joy, the men fired three rounds. A report of three shots echoed back. Was it a response from the ship or merely the echoes oF the icebergs?

  To their dismay, the vessel veered off, weaving first south, then north and west. Tyson and his men shouted, with no result, until their threats cracked. The captain watched in amazement as the ship zigzagged along the horizon. The vessel was threading its way around the ice. “Strange,” he wondered out loud. “I should think any sailing ship, much more a steamer, could get through with ease.”

  Helpless, the men watched in frustration as hours slipped away while the steamer came no closer than five miles from them. Even more depressing, another ship steamed into sight just as the sun set. Night found the castaways huddled on another sliver of ice, bracketed by unseeing sealing ships. Hans caught a baby seal sleeping on the other side of their base, so the depressed party had a little to eat.

  As he settled into his night watch, Tyson felt warmer air waft past his windburned cheek. The puff of warm air sent a chill through him. Warm air could mean only one thing: fog! The next day would see thick fog, and that would make their discovery more difficult.

  As morning broke on the last day in April, Tyson had just closed his eyes when the lookout cried out, “There's a steamer! There's a steamer!”

  Shimmering through the fog like the ghostly image of the Flying Dutchman loomed a ship.

  Everyone jumped up and fired their rifles. Tyson tied the flag to the top of their mast and joined the others in shouting. Hans launched the kayak and paddled furiously toward the ship. With its funnel bi lowing sooty smoke between its two masts, the ship was less than a quarter mile off. Still, fog rolled about the ship and hid it from view.

  Hans reached the ship and waved his arms as his kayak thudded into the side of the steamer. She was the steam barkentine Tigress, out of Conception Bay, Newfoundland. Curious men lined the rails to look down at him.

  All the while as he paddled, Hans shouted out, “American steamer! American steamer!” Knowing only a few words in English, he could not say more.

  Men aboard the steamer looked down in amazement. Where had this Native come from? He was in the middle of the straits. And what did he want? The Tigress was no “American steamer.”

  The fog parted just as Hans pointed at the people on the floe.

  Instantly the captain shouted orders. The ship slowed and turned toward the marooned party. Three sealing boats splashed into the water, and their crews rowed for the patch of floating ice.

  When he saw the change of course, Tyson doffed his threadbare Russian cap and gave three cheers. His men followed suit. Tears flooded his eyes when three hearty cheers resounded from the steamer. As she hove into sight, he saw a hundred men lining her forecastle, rigging, and topgallant mast, waving and cheering at their rescue.

  Not waiting for their rescuers, Tyson and his group abandoned their dented cooking pot and launched their own boat. Boat hooks caught the battered craft as it reached the Tigress.

  The rescued party climbed shakily aboard. Curious seamen crowded around them. The dirty, haggard group looked less than human. One boatload of sailors from the Tigress had peered into the beat-up tin pot to see what the rescued had been eating. The greasy loop of seal intestine spoke eloquently of their dire straits.

  “How long have you been on the ice?” Captain Isaac Bartlett of the Tigress asked.

  “Since the 15 th of last October,” Tyson answered.

  A murmur of disbelief rippled through the surrounding seamen. It was now the end of April. One wide-eyed sailor blurted out, “Was you on it day and night?”

  In spite of his exhaustion, Captain Tyson chuckled.

  After 195 days drifting in the northern seas, Captain George Tyson and the eighteen members of the Polaris Expedition had survived their hardship on the ice. Frozen water and an overloaded whaleboat had been their only home for nearly seven months. The Tigress snatched them from the jaws of the sea just off the coast of Grady Harbor, Labrador, at latitude 53°35' N. In the process they had floated more than eighteen hundred miles.

  Their trial by ice was over. If they thought they were done with ordeals, tbey were mistaken. Their trial by the United States Navy would soon begin.

  THE INQUEST

  Unshaven since I know not when, dirty, dressed in rags of wild beasts instead of the tatters of civilization, and starved to the very bones, our gaunt and grim looks, when contrasted with those of the well-dressed and well-fed men around us, made us all feel, I believe for the first time, what we really were, as well as what we seemed to others.

  —SIR JOHN ROSS, 1832

  News of the disaster and the rescue reached Washington before the salvaged party did. Two days after the rescue, the Tigress rendezvoused with another sealer, the Walrus. While Captain Bartlett lingered in the Arctic waters to hunt seals for a few more days, Captain DeLange of the Walrus sped southward to Newfoundland with the news.

  Mr. Molloy, the United States consul in St. John's, immediately telegraphed the American secretary of state. The following week, after being battered by a severe storm, Bartlett limped into Bay Roberts, thirty-five miles north of St. John's, to unload his cargo.

  After half a year of starving and subsisting on raw seal meat, the Polaris people found that their sudden return to “civilized” food was taking its toll. Everyone, including the Inuit, suffered from diarrhea, migrating muscle pain, sore throats, and swelling of their faces and feet. The swelling resulted from the lowered protein content in the crew's blood. Suddenly faced with a high level of nutrients, their lymphatic systems were overwhelmed. That combined with the damage to the blood vessels from scurvy enabled the fl
uid and protein to simply leak into the tissues instead of being returned to the vascular system as it normally would have been. Muscle aches and sore throats most probably came from the reintroduction of the isolated band to the host of viruses that plague civilized men. Frederick Meyer's frozen hands and feet blistered and required continued treatment.

  Two days later the swollen-faced Tyson and his crew were surprised by the sudden arrival of MoUoy. By then the entire coast of Newfoundland buzzed with rumors, speculation, gossip, and disbelief. So-called Arctic experts labeled their story a fraud, asserting that no one could have survived on the ice as they had.

  And the blacker side of the expedition bubbled forth to tarnish the gleam of their survival. Tyson's sailors shared the crowded forecastle with the men of the Tigress and talked freely of their ordeal. Tyson vented his spleen to Isaac Bartlett, the master of the Tigress. Tales of Buddington's drinking and the mysterious death of Captain Hall spread like wildfire. When Molloy met them, Washington and New York hummed as well. Why had they failed to reach the North Pole? Had Hall been poisoned? Why had the Polaris not returned to pick up the shipmates who had become separated? Everyone wanted to know.

  Molloy questioned the party, gathered their statements, and gave Tyson sixteen dollars to divide among the crew. If this was a sign of things to come, it rudely shattered the Germans' dreams of being handsomely rewarded for their travail on the ice. Furthermore, the nature of Molloy's questions put the crew on their guard. While the people of St. John's cheered them wherever they went, the breeze from Washington blew considerably colder.

  Within two days of receiving Molloy's telegraphed report, the United States Navy steamer Frolic charged out of New York, making full steam to St. John's. On the seventeenth of May, Navy Secretary Robeson reported to President Grant on “the matter of the disaster to the United States exploring expedition toward the North Pole.” Sirce Grant read the newspapers, he undoubtedly was quite familiar with the rumors.

  Those rumors reaching Washington were not good, and Robe-son and all involved moved quickly to protect their interests. No one could deny that something had gone terribly amiss. The strange death of Charles Francis Hall, who had embodied the heart and soul of the expedition, troubled everyone. No one forgot the fact that President Grant looked favorably upon Hall and had given his personal blessing to the expedition. The Polaris disaster touched even the president. In his report to Grant, Robeson wrote:

  As was obviously proper, in view of the prompt and responsible action which might be required, that the Government should, as soon as possible, be in possession of the fullest and most reliable information upon all the circumstances of the case, the Frolic was ordered to bring directly to Washington all the persons having personal knowledge on the subject.

  Robeson at long last linked Tyson into the chain of command that had eluded him. His telegraph placed Tyson in charge of the crew and the Inuit until they reached Washington. Correcting that oversight came far too late.

  If the Navy Department had hoped Molloy would cooperate in keeping the crew isolated, it was disappointed. After all, the State Department's hands were clean in this matter. Molloy made no effort to insulate the survivors.

  Throngs of people visited the Inuit. As a result, all the Natives contracted severe colds, and their children suffered from the cakes and candies fed to them. Citizens took up collections for the crew. Tyson dined with the governor of St. John's and freely expressed his view of the treachery that had swamped their expedition. Harper's Illustrated Weekly arranged to photograph the castaways. Its dark lithograph of the somber-faced survivors clustered around their battered boat appeared on the front page under the heading the COMPANY WHO WERE ON THE ICE-DRIFT WITH CAPTAIN TYSON, adding fuel to the speculations.

  Washington quickly wanted control of the loose tongues. The Frolic steamed into St. John's on May 27, loaded the survivors, collected their diaries and Hall's writing desk, and hastily departed the next day. The ship sailed directly to the nation's capital, arriving at the Washington Navy Yard at precisely 1:15 p.m. on June 5, 1873. Its commander had to apologize for slowing down when he encountered ice.

  If the survivors had expected a heroes' welcome, they were sorely mistaken. Their return differed greatly from their departure. No one was allowed to disembark. No crowds thronged the wharves, no bands played, and no flags waved. No press was allowed aboard. These members of the Polaris expedition, having escaped their icy prison in the far North, found themselves captives of their own government.

  At four o'clock that same day, George Tyson appeared as the first witness before a hastily drawn board of inquiry. Tyson was haggard and thin, his face tanned and hardened like leather from months of exposure to the wind, cold, and sun. Transferred from his virtual prison ship, the rescued captain was taken aboard the USS TalLpoosa for questioning. Besides Secretary Robeson, the board consisted of Admiral Goldsborough and Commodore Reynolds, representing the navy. Since Frederick Meyer belonged to the signal corps, the army insisted that Capt. Henry Howgate of the signal corps sit on the board. Prof. Spencer F. Baird represented the National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian. It was these two august bodies that had carefully chosen Emil Bessel. The reputations of the navy, the army, and the scientific community hung in the balance, and each entity wanted to ensure that it was not made the scapegoat for this fiasco.

  If Tyson realized that Commander Schoonmaker, the captain of the Frolic was sizing him up during the voyage, the navigator made no mention of it. But Schoonmaker reported in private to the board before it saw Tyson. When asked by Robeson about his report, the commander responded more like a warden involved in a prisoner transfer than a rescuer.

  “I found these people in charge of the consulate St. Johns. I received them on the 27 th of May. I had no trouble with any of them. They are ill well-behaved, orderly people; and all seem to be good men.” Schoonmaker went on to provide his assessment of Tyson: “Captain Tyson seems to be very intelligent; I have seen him more than any of the rest; I have had him with me in the cabin. He has made a very favorable impression on me.” Surprisingly Schoon-maker's response implied that his mission was more than it appeared. Besides being a warden, the captain had obviously been asked to nake a judgment of the character of his passengers. No doubt all oi the survivors were on their best behavior.

  If the board had thought Tyson would dispel the evil rumors under oath, he surprised them. The forty-four-year-old Tyson lost no time in venting his spleen once more. In the first minutes of his testimony, he named Buddington as the cause the ship had not got farther north. Referring to Hall, Chester, and himself, he said, “Our decision was to go north, but it was overruled by Captain Budding-ton.” For good measure, he added, “Captain Buddington, with an oath, said he would be damned if she should move from here.” The astonished secretary for the inquiry duly recorded each bitter statement.

  Buddington's drinking came to light, as did the suspicious nature of Captain Hall's death. Tyson spoke of Hall's fear that he'd been poisoned. Now the specter of murder raised its ugly head, and Tyson's testimony pointed to two likely suspects: Captain Buddington and Dr. Bessel. This revelation especially shocked Professor Baird. He had helped select the German scientist.

  “How did Captain Hall and the doctor get along?” the panel asked.

  “Not very well.”

  Tyson also gave them a motive for Buddington: “Before his death there had been some little difficulty between Captain Buddington and himself. Captain Hall was about suspending Captain Buddington from duty. …”

  A second whole day of testimony revealed the fiasco that had put Tyson and half the crew on the ice. The angry navigator took great pains to describe how the Polaris had steamed close to them before turning away. Without their prompting he also detailed the deplorable existence he and his party had suffered after being left. His statements drew questioning looks from the board.

  A third, equally worrisome detail emerged while Tyson talked. What had
become of the expedition's records? Both Meyer's and Bryan's scientific records had been tossed onto the ice and lost. Not only did the expedition fail to reach the North Pole, but the majority of its scientific measurements lay at the bottom of the sea.

  And there was the matter of Captain Hall's journals and records. Other than the writing box that his faithful Inuit had carried throughout their drift on the ice, the leader's documents had disappeared. Tyson intimated that they were destroyed on purpose because they implicated someone.

  “Was there no public examination of his papers in the presence of the oHcers? Were they not certified and sealed up?” the board asked incredulously.

  “No, sir.”

  “Did anybody suggest that the papers should be sealed up?”

  “I did myself; that they should be sealed, boxed, and screwed down, and suggested it to Captain Buddington.”

  “What did he say?” Robeson leaned forward, resting on his elbows.

  Tyson shrugged. “He did not make any remark whatever, or merely his usual ‘Damn his papers.’”

  The board pressed cautiously onward. “While [Captain Hall] was deliiious did Captain Buddington get him to burn up some papers?”

  Tyson nodded. “He told me he was glad the papers were burned, because they were much against him; and he got him to burn them.”

  The ine of questioning drifted back to Hall's demise. “Have you any Dpinion of your own as to the cause of his death?” Tyson was asked.

  “I thought at the time that the man came to his death naturally; it has been talked on board ship that it was foul; but I have no proof of it, and I could not say much about it.” Then Tyson dropped a bombshell.

  “There were those that rejoiced in his death.”

  The panel looked at each other. “Who rejoiced in his death?”

  “Captain Buddington.”

  “Did anyone else?”

  “I thought it relieved some of the scientific party of some anxiety. They did not mourn him, at least. I know Captain Buddington so expressed himself, that he was relieved of a great load by the death of Captain Hall.”