Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  After receiving Secretary Robeson's troubling report, President Grant brought the power of his office to bear on the matter. Eyes were looking at him, and he wanted the matter of the Polarises survival resolvedand quickly. Grant met personally with Joseph Henry, president of the National Academy of Sciences; Spencer Baird; Professor Newcomb, of the Naval Observatory; and Professor Hilgarde, of the Coastal Survey Office. The scientists felt that the testimony proved the Polaris was still seaworthy, and they assured Grant that the missing half of the crew still had a good chance of being alive. The president's consulting with these men, each a member of the National Academy of Sciences, with no naval representatives present sent a message to the Navy Department:

  Grant was unhappy with their performance and was prepared to go outside the regular channels to resolve this matter.

  Suddenly red tape dissolved. Secretary Robeson found sixty thousand dollars to purchase the sturdy little Tigress, which had rescued Tyson. Built in 1871, the 350-ton vessel was especially designed for sealing in Arctic waters and had the widely flaring hull that the Folaris fatally lacked.

  With an iron-braced frame, buttressed with heavy beams, and carrying half-inch iron plating along the forward twelve feet of the three-foo>thick bow, the Tigress was exactly the vessel the Polaris should h^ve been. After her boilers had been converted to burn anthracite coal and her quarters modified, the newly acquired naval steamer sailed from the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

  Learring from their mistakes, the navy filled the ship with commissioned officers and men. George Tyson volunteered his expertise and was named ice master, with the rank of acting lieutenant. Ebierbing accompanied Tyson. Hans and his family sailed as far as Disko beiore returning to their village on the coast.

  Unde r the glare of publicity, many of the crewmen from the ice floe bravely volunteered to return with the rescue effort. In the three months since their rescue, all had fully recuperated and were fit to ship aboard a rescue mission for their comrades. However, when the Tigress left, most failed to show up. Only Gustavus Lind-quist, Wi liam Lindermann, and Robert Kruger sailed. Interestingly the rest of the German seamen slipped into the shadows. History has swallowed them.

  Frank Y. Commagere, the noted correspondent of the New York Herald who was covering the story, attempted to join the relief effort but was refused. The navy was leery of what it might find, even if half the rumors were untrue. Undaunted, Commagere enlisted in tie navy as an ordinary seaman and shipped aboard. When Commander Greer, the captain, discovered who Commagere was, long aftei the Tigress was too far north to turn back, he grudgingly promotec the reporter to yeoman in recognition of his ingenuity. Greer also got back at the Herald reporter by quartering him in the forward deckhouse with Hans and his family, whose lack of hygiene offended the noses of all the officers and men.

  Ever mindful of the closing window of summer, Greer made all speed to Upernavik, rendezvousing with the ]uniata on August 10. Two days later the Tigress found the Little Juniata and learned the distressing news that no trace of the Polaris or Buddington had been found.

  Greer then drove the Tigress up the coast, past Cape York to Northumberland Island. Since their abandonment on the ice, a battle had raged between Frederick Meyer and George Tyson as to their exact location when separated from the Polaris. While Meyer steadfastly swore they were off Northumberland Island and based all his calculations on that notion, Tyson believed just as adamantly that the island they saw on the horizon was Littleton. Now Tyson had the satisfaction of seeing that he was right. Northumberland held no signs of the Polaris or its remaining crew.

  Doggedly Greer sailed close by Cape Parry, Cape Alexander, and Hartstene Bay looking for survivors among the rugged out-croppings of the Greenland coast.

  As the Tigress approached Littleton Island, Tyson and his former companions shouted out in recognition. The ragged peaks of Littleton and its smaller island, McGary, remained etched in their minds. Greer dropped anchor and lowered a boat.

  While they pulled for shore, the sounds of human voices drifted across the waters from the land. “Silence!” Greer ordered. Scanning the rocky coast, Greer shouted, “I see their house! Two tents, and human figures are on the mainland near Littleton Island!”

  As the excited rescuers waded ashore, their hearts sank into their rubber boots. The figures were Inuit. Running to meet them were natives wearing scraps of clothing discarded by Buddington and his men. Tyson recognized a half-rotted hawser belonging to the Polaris tied to a rock by the shore. The frayed end of the line floated loosely in the churning surf.

  Through Ebierbing and Tyson, Greer learned from the chief that Captain Buddington's group had built two boats and set sail “about the time when the ducks begin to hatch.” Greer bristled when the village leader informed him that Buddington had made him a present of the Polaris before the men left. The ship was a commissioned naval vessel and belonged to the United States.

  To the great distress of the new owner, however, the Polaris had attempted to follow her crew. Breaking loose during a gale, the ship drifted a mile and a half after her men before sinking. Now she belonged completely to the Arctic, like Charles Francis Hall, and that cold territory had no intention of giving her up. When Greer rowed to the spot where the ship had foundered, he found her grave marked by two icebergs that had grounded on the sunken vessel.

  Examining the wooden and canvas house that remained proved unsettling. While the wooden bunks, galley, and carpenter's bench remained intact, the floor was strewn with stores and broken instruments. The naval officers along with Tyson gasped at the disorder. Riggng, bags of potatoes, corn, tea, pork, and meal covered the floor, interspersed with broken compasses and medical supplies. The ship's bell lay beside a pile of broken firearms. As Tyson bitterly noted, “There is one thing certain; these men did not suffer from the want of food or fuel, as discarded provisions were lying scattered all among the rocks, and, of course, the natives had eaten all they wanted in the interval besides.”

  This wanton destruction cannot be blamed on the Inuit. No Native would destroy a coveted rifle or pistol, and anything metal, such as the instruments, would be kept for trade. The frenzied destruction bore the stamp of frustrated men venting their rage on their own things as they departed a camp that might have been unbearable 1 o them.

  Shakiig his head, Greer walked among the mess, collecting torn books and manuscripts and broken instruments. Not only was this deliberate destruction of government property, but maintaining records of the expedition and its scientific findings was one of the highest priorities of the mission, next only to reaching the North Pole. Examining the mutilated papers aboard the Tigress, Tyson and Greer found many pages missing from the logs. The defacing of the logs and journals was carefully done, something entirely different from the random scattering of the supplies. All references to the death of Captain Hall were torn out. “I had an opportunity last evening,” Tyson wrote in another journal he had started on boarding the Tigress, “of looking over the mutilated diaries and journals left in the deserted hut off Littleton Island. Not one but has the leaves cut out relating to Captain Hall's death.” In fact, no mention of the separation of Tyson's group on the night of October 15 existed either.

  It appeared as if someone had taken great pains to systematically eliminate any notation of those two events. Tellingly, on one scrap of torn paper, Tyson found the written words “Captain HalVs papers thrown overboard today.”

  As Greer's men searched further, no evidence of the ship's scientific papers could be found. The captain decided to return at once. No survivors were at the winter site.

  Leaving the ruined camp astern, Commander Greer next steered the Tigress across the straits and hunted down the eastern side of Baffin Island, just in case the currents had carried Budding-ton's boats to the west, as they had Tyson's ice floe. As Greer and Tyson traced the coastline to the east, the ]uniata left Upernavik and resumed combing the western side of the bay. By running both sides of the bay, they hoped
to find Buddington and his men.

  One night as the ]uniata steamed through the dark waters far from the Tigress, the horizon ahead exploded with signal rockets and flashing lights. The ]uniata hove to and prepared to meet the oncoming vessel. It was the Cabot, a swift steamer, hired by the U.S. consul Molloy, bearing the news that the rest of the Polaris survivors had finally been found. Hurriedly the captain of the Cabot related the events surrounding the rescue of the remaining group from the Polaris debacle.

  On June 3 the Scottish whaler the Ravenscraig, out of Dundee, had spotted Buddington's two boats beached on an ice floe. Their flag waving atop one of the boat's masts clearly marked them as white men in distress. The watch in the crow's nest first thought the men on the ice were whalers from another Scottish vessel. But those on the ice were waving hats, and all the Scots wore woolen caps. Someone suggested that the group they watched might be survivors of the Polaris, and a rescue party was hurriedly formed. As the ice beset the Ravenscraig, a party of eighteen volunteers trekked over the ice to rescue the exhausted men.

  Due to shortage of space, half the rescued crew was transferred to another whaler, the Arctic. On July 17 the Ravenscraig crossed paths with a steamer, the Intrepid, and transferred Bryan, Booth, and Mauch to that ship. The remnants of the Polarises crew sailed about in :hese three ships while the whalers continued their hunt. By August 10 the Arctic filled her hold with whale oil; picked up Buddington, Morton, Odell, and Coffin from the Ravenscraig; and sailed for home, arriving there on September 19.

  The three men aboard the Intrepid were transferred to another whaler, the Eric, on September 13. After a stormy and prolonged voyage, the last of the Polaris survivors stepped ashore in Dundee, Scotland, on October 22, 1873.

  More than three months after the rescue of Buddington's group, a weary Charles Tyson arrived in St. John's aboard the Tigress on October 16, to watch the harbor pilot climb aboard. The first words ou: of the pilot's mouth were, “The Polaris party is safe.”

  After two years, the last of the Polaris expedition had finally escaped from the grasp of the Arctic. Miraculously, only one man their leader, Charles Francis Hallhad died.

  THE WHITEWASH

  The Polar field is a great testing ground. Those who pass through the winters of darkness and days of trial above the circle of ice know better than others the weaknesses of human nature and their own insufficiencies.

  —ANTHONY FIALA, 1905

  On September 19, 1873, a telegram from William Reid, the United States vice consul to Great Britain, via the new transatlantic cable, broke the news that Buddington had been found. That day the New York papers, including the Herald, spread the word to the anxious people of New York. “The Dundee whaling-steamer Arctic had arrived at Dundee, having on board Captain Buddington and the remainder of the Polaris crew,” read the quote from the telegram. Better than the best mystery novel of the time, the events of the Polaris expedition had captivated the public's attention and fueled its desire for more of the sordid facts.

  Little more was known save the fact that Captain Allen of the Ravenscraig had divided the crew and transferred them to two other ships. All of the rescued men landed at Dundee aboard the Arctic except Chaplain Bryan, Joseph Mauch, and John Booth. These last three men reached Scotland aboard the whaling vessel Intrepid some days later. While the separation was undoubtedly prompted by limited space aboard the Arctic, why those three men were chosen is unclear. Perhaps the guilt-ridden Bryan could no longer stay with the others.

  Although telegrams flew back and forth between England and the United States, not one of them came from Emil Bessel. Bessel sent no messages to Professors Henry, Baird, or any of those at the Smithsorian who had sponsored him. Curiously Bessel chose to send his telegram to Professor Petermann in Germany and not to his family or friends in Germany or to any friends he had in the United States. Why? Was the Prussian physician informing the German government of news that it had hoped to hear? That the United States expedition had failed? If anything, the doctor's actions sigiify that his loyalties were still to the fatherland rather than to America in general or to those who had appointed him in particular.

  While the public clamored for more details, the board of inquiry dragged its heels, hoping the controversy would quiet down. Six days passed before Buddington and the ten men in his group caught a steamship from London to New York. They arrived in New York on October 4. There the navy tug Catalpa conveyed them to the waiting USS Tallapoosa. Unlike Tyson's party, who had been whisked before the board, the second group was allowed one whole week to prepare for questioning.

  Mr. Bryan, perhaps recognized by all involved as an innocent, was permitted two additional weeks to travel abroad before returning home. Mauch and Booth waited for him, so the three men were not questioned until the day before Christmas. Their testimony would be taken more as an afterthought, appended to the report to become a mere footnote. Consciously or unconsciously Bryan had moved to separate himself from his shipmates.

  Once more the board of inquiry met aboard the Tallapoosa. Significantly this time the board was smaller. Admiral Golds-borough extracted himself from the proceedings, as did Spencer Baird. Both men sensed that nothing good lay ahead. Keeping the Smithsorian and the rest of the navy at arm's length suited their purpose. Robeson, Reynolds, and Howgate plodded on. While these mea desperately wished to close the book on this unhappy matter, the spreading rumors prevented them from doing so. Whispers of rrutiny and murder persisted.

  Captiin Buddington came first. Tyson had labeled Buddington as disruptive: “I must say that he was a disorganizer from the very commencement.”

  Well aware of Tyson's damning testimony, Buddington approached the board with a mixture of bluster, denial, and anger. Immediately he attacked the credibility of George Tyson, his most vociferous critic:

  Captain Tyson. He is a man that was rather useless aboard, and complained bitterly about the management generally. He did not appear to be satisfied with anything that was done. I would consult him on the subject and he would perhaps agree to it, and then afterward would say that he thought it was no use to do anything of that kind; that he knew it was of no use. He generally acted that way. I got so that after a while I did not pay much attention to him.

  Portraying Tyson as a malcontent weakened the navigator's charges but only stirred the muddy waters. Rightly worried that he would be blamed for the failure to reach the North Pole, especially after Hall's death, Buddington denied having opposed Hall's desire to sail farther north when the ice once more cleared:

  No conversation occurred in which Chester and Tyson expressed a desire to go north while I expressed a disinclination to do so. I never so expressed myself. I have seen that report printed in the papers, but it is not correct. No man in the ship would ever so express himself to Captain Hall and get along with him.

  Lamely, Buddington added, “I did my very best to get the ship north. I never said anything about never going further north.”

  Chester and Tyson said otherwise. Someone was lying. As the first mate and Tyson had little love for each other, it appears the liar was Buddington.

  On the defensive from the start, Buddington slowly came to realize that he would escape the tribunal without punishment but his career was ruined. Gradually he lost his animation and slipped into mumbled, lethargic answers.

  Yes, he “did not see any chance to get north” of Repulse Harbor, and no, “no formal survey of the ship was held” before he abandoned her. To the officers of the panel, failure to carefully document the problems of the Polaris before abandoning her was unthinkable. A survey in which the other officers and the ship's carpenter oamined the damage to the ship, including its weaknesses as well a> its strengths, would have determined whether the vessel was still sound. Now they had only Buddington's word on the matter. Unlike the tradition in which a captain goes down with his ship, Buddington appeared to have lost his will to fight the ice and a leaking hull and chosen to “go from his ship” rather than
risk going down with it.

  On the matter of his drinking, Buddington admitted to only two episodes, including the one when Dr. Bessel had caught him.

  “I went to the aft hatch to get something to drink,” he admitted. Referring to Bessel's trap, he continued matter-of-factly, “He was down there at the time and made some remarks about it.” Trying to gauge the response of the secretary, Buddington shrugged and added, “I just took him by the collar and told him to mind his own business.”

  The captain underestimated Robeson's reaction. “Was not the alcohol pat on board for scientific purposes?”

  “Yes, sir,” Buddington answered sullenly.

  “What did you drink it for?”

  Buddington tried for sympathy. “I was sick and down-hearted, and had a bad cold, and I wanted some stimulant.” When he saw the frown on Commodore Reynolds's face, the whaling captain waffled. “That is, I thought I did.”

  The frown deepened. “I do not suppose I really did,” Buddington finally admitted.

  But hi refused to admit that the problem was chronic. When asked if he was “in the habit of drinking alcohol,” he lied. “I make it a practice to drink but very little.”

  Ringing in the ears of the panel was Frederick Jamka's statement that “Captain Buddington was drunk very often” and the words of John Herron that “Captain Buddington if he drinks at all must get drunk.”

  Inch ty inch Buddington retreated, confirming the picture painted by the ice floe survivors of his undermining Hall's authority at every opportunity and his vehement opposition to pressing farther north while Hall had lived and even after he died. While Buddington never disobeyed a direct order, his opposition hamstrung the pliable Hall's efforts.