“How did you live on the ice?”
“We built our snow huts,” he began, delving into details of their hardscrabble life on the ice during the Arctic winter. He told of the men burning one of the boats for firewood, and the difficulty he had trying to control them. “I endeavored to maintain the discipline of the party as well as I could, but there was little or nothing that could be called discipline. All the men were armed with pistols but myself. I was on the ice without anything, and they did as they pleased. I could merely advise them. They had been under no discipline on the ship, and the ice was no place to establish discipline without assistance. If I had attempted to do it by force, I could have made an example of one of them, but why should I? They were all leagued together. I endeavored to preserve discipline, but I could only do it by advice, and doing the best I could for all of us.”
“Did they get better afterward?” asked a board member.
Tyson considered the question. “They got really no worse. They had many plans of their own, concocted during the winter, but they did not know how to carry them out, and it all ended right. They all had to come eventually to me. I thought they were going to make disturbances, but it was through fright. They were afraid of starvation.”
That was as close as Tyson would get to the overt threat of cannibalism, a word that would not be uttered by anyone at the inquiry.
He described the near-starvation rations they ate during the winter, and how, come March, the natives were able to start catching more seals, which saved all their lives.
After Tyson provided details of their rescue, Robeson backtracked, wanting to know more about any difficulties Hall had with the officers aboard ship.
“Well, the conduct of Sailing Master Buddington—I don’t like much to speak of it, sir, but if I must tell all I know and thought, I must say that he was a disorganizer from the very commencement.”
“How do you mean? How did he disorganize?”
“By associating himself with the crew, and slandering his commander, and in other ways that I might mention.”
“Let us have the whole of it.”
“He cursed his commander and blamed him. On the most frivolous things he would be among the crew and complaining of Captain Hall. His ground of complaint was that the captain was not a seaman.”
“Was he insubordinate to the captain in any way?”
“Oh, he was very subordinate to the captain in his presence.”
“Anything else?”
“He was inclined to take provisions, sir, and privately consume them.”
“When did Captain Hall become aware that he was acting in this way?”
“Just as we were leaving St. John’s, Captain Hall first had difficulty with Buddington, and he threatened to send him home at Disco. It was about taking provisions from the ship’s stores for himself. I don’t mean liquor. It was something to eat.”
Robeson probed some more about Buddington’s drinking habits, then asked, “When you left Polaris, Captain Buddington was in command?”
“Yes, sir. Nobody disputed his command from the time that Captain Hall died until our separation. We were all law-abiding people on board. There was no violence whatever at any time. I believe about everybody thought the command was not a good one, but we still all submitted.”
“Did you know of any difficulty between anybody who was left on board and Captain Buddington?”
“Nothing more than that feeling that will always be between an incompetent man and a subordinate who thinks him so.”
“The criticism you have to make of Captain Buddington is that he would get drunk when he had a chance?”
“The criticism I have to make is that the man had neither heart nor soul in the expedition. It was not his intention to go north if he could help it. His idea was to go to Port Foulke, and spend his time, while the others tried to get to the Pole; while he was taking care of himself the others should go on. And then he would return home with the rest. That was the headquarters he had fixed on; he did not want to go above that. He wanted the ship to lie there, and the rest to go on. That was his whole ambition.”
If Robeson was starting to be sorry for the public comments he had made in support of Buddington, he did not show it. “How did you gather that?”
“I gathered it from his own conversations. He tried to keep the ship from going farther north, and succeeded in stopping her for the winter. As soon as Captain Hall died, he tried to have the ship return farther south. He swore nobody should do anything.”
“Didn’t he let you go off with the boats?”
The question seemed to have been put forth in Buddington’s defense.
“Yes, sir, but I told him we should lose them. He would not advise with the doctor about a sledge journey, and between the two of them there was a mess made of it. If we had started an expedition overland, there would have been a high latitude reached. I told them so.”
“How do you account for the ship’s not coming to you to help you off the ice?” asked the Navy’s most senior officer.
Tyson lowered his eyes and shook his head. Throughout the winter he had asked himself that same question coundess times. It was still a mystery, and a sore point. He had been quoted in the press as saying that he and his party had been turned adrift due to Buddington’s “anger or incompetence”—both possibilities galled him equally.
“That I do not know how to account for. I was surprised that it did not come. It might have been that it was in a sinking condition, but I think not. The vessel that I saw under steam and sail at sea could not be in a sinking condition. He went in there and tied up. She was upright, and appeared to be all right when I looked at her with the eyeglass.”
“Have you any reason to think they saw you?”
“I cannot see how they could avoid it, if they were looking for us. It was daylight, and they were within four miles. I could have seen on board the ship. I could have seen a man if one had been walking on deck. The moment I saw her in safety, I knew we were about to be abandoned for some cause or other.”
“Would not he naturally think that he should save the ship and let you come to him in the boat?”
“That may have been his idea, but at that time I thought the first thought should have been to save the people off the ice. When the wind changed so suddenly, it was his duty to come and save us.”
“Still, the possibility may remain,” Robeson said, “that in securing the ship in the harbor, he may have supposed that you and the Eskimos could reach him?”
Tyson was getting the secretary’s drift; “Abandonment on the Ice” was a scandalous headline.
How difficult it was to sit in a clean, pressed suit on a Navy ship in the safety of a harbor, after a good night’s sleep and a hot meal, and describe desperate times during life-and-death situations. Everything had been so simple to see then, but now events could be obscured and made more complicated by important men asking lawyer-like questions.
Perhaps that is why Tyson held back and did not tell the board of inquiry the story that he had already told several people since his rescue—including Captain Bartlett of Tigress as well as one of that ship’s owners—of Buddington’s “astonishing proposition” to scuttle Polaris in waters frequented by whalers, go ashore in boats, and wait for rescue in the spring; collecting full pay while taking few risks. In any case, the board did not hear of it from Tyson this day, nor did they question him about it, even though the Tigress owner had prompdy passed word of Tyson’s charges on to the American consulate, which in turn advised the owner to keep secret what he had heard.
“Sir, I cannot imagine he would abandon us,” Tyson said, “but that it was a matter of bad judgment and perhaps some indifference. The other people on board would not have been content to abandon us if they had known it was his intention to do so. They might not have known that it was possible to save us, and if they did, they would not have known what to do.”
The questioning turned to the survival prospects for
the remainder of the Polaris crew last been seen aboard her nine months earlier.
“They had enough provisions to last them two years, if they lived with economy,” Tyson said. “Should they stay with the vessel, this should be enough. I think that under almost any other commander the vessel would be all right, but under his command, I don’t know.”
“Was the vessel left in a place where they could get any food?”
“Yes, sir, there was game in plenty—walrus, seals, bears, and in the summer, ducks and eggs. I believe there are salmon there at times. There is an abundance of birds. I think about July they will break out if they have stayed with the vessel. It is about three hundred miles to the nearest permanent Danish settlement. If he had a clear way, he could make it in two days, and in about three days under sail if he doesn’t have sufficient coal. She sails well with good winds. She gets off five or six knots under sail, which is well for the amount of canvas she carries. But she is not easily handled under sail in rough water.”
The commodore wanted to know the latest that a steamer, bent on rendezvousing with Polaris and bringing back her crew, should start from New York.
“It would be well to start by the first of July.”
Someone asked what had become of Hall’s journal and papers after he died.
“I do not know.”
“Was there no examination of his papers in the presence of the officers?” asked the commodore.
“No, sir. His journal was taken around and scanned by one and another.”
“Did Captain Hall keep a regular journal?”
“Yes, sir. It was one of the bound books, one that could not be put in a pocket.”
“Were they not certified and sealed up?”
“No, sir. I saw some of them. I know many remarks were made about them. I understood some were burned. Buddington told me he was glad the papers were burned because they were much against him.”
“When did you see Captain Hall’s journal last?”
“After Captain Hall’s death. Captain Buddington was reading it.”
Robeson removed his rimless spectacles and pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his long, patrician nose. “Have you any opinion of your own,” the secretary finally asked, “as to the cause of Captain Hall’s death?”
“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. There were those that rejoiced in his death.”
Robeson blinked. “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.”
“Why?”
“He was too strict for him, I suppose.”
“Did Captain Hall do anything to interfere with the work of the scientific men?” asked the professor from the National Academy of the Sciences.
“I believe Captain Hall was not allowing them to take all the advantages they thought he should.”
“In what way?” came the follow-up question.
“He wanted them to do as he said, and they wanted to do as they pleased. He wanted them to do their work in his way, and they wanted to do it in their own way. I do not think Mr. Bryan, the astronomer, was included in this. I do not believe he had any difficulty with Captain Hall whatever. I know that Mr. Meyer had some trouble on that score. He wished to do his work in his own way, and Captain Hall wished to have him do it in his. It was settled, I believe, so that Meyer did it in his own way.”
“Did you know of any difficulty in this regard between Captain Hall and Dr. Bessels?” “Nothing serious.”
Asked whom aboard ship he was closest to, Tyson named Chester and Bryan.
“Chester is a peaceable, good man. Bryan was a very fine young man. He was a general favorite, at least I thought so. He was my favorite.”
Robeson was back to asking most of the questions.
“You did not think there was any difficulty between Captain Hall and any of the scientific party that would be an inducement for them to do anything toward injuring him?”
“I did not think so then, and unless a man were a monster, he could not do any such thing as that. He had not sufficient provocation, and no provocation should induce a man to do such a thing.”
“When Captain Buddington told you that he was very much relieved by Captain Hall’s death, what did you understand to be the reason?”
“That Captain Hall was too strict for him, and if Captain Hall had lived he would have continued on northward, and Captain Buddington knew it. He did not wish to go any farther north, and so Captain Hall’s death was a relief on the part of Captain Buddington.”
“Did Captain Buddington make these remarks to you alone?”
“He made them publicly, on board the ship. He is a carelessly spoken man, and he certainly should not have made any such remarks. Perhaps he did not mean all he said. I hope he did not.”
With that, the board had no more questions of Tyson and dismissed him.
Frederick Meyer was summoned next.
One by one, over the course of the next four days, every adult member of the ice-floe party testified, but none for the length of time that Tyson had. In all, six persons, including Tyson and Meyer, testified to the inappropriate drinking habits of Buddington, and several to the fact of his having expressed himself “relieved,” and “a stone taken off his heart” by the event of Captain Hall’s death. Others, quoting Hall’s own vociferous charges of foul play, threw serious doubt over the cause of the commander’s death. Some testified that Hall had become suddenly ill upon drinking the coffee upon his return from the sledge journey, and others saw Dr. Bessels administering daily medicine and injections to the weakened commander.
After departing Talapoosa, Tyson walked down the pier to Frolic, where he would continue to berth during the inquiry, and climbed the gangplank. As he crossed the main deck, he passed Meyer, in a Signal Corps sergeant’s uniform, who was heading off.
The two former shipmates, who had survived together on the ice for six months, walked by each other without speaking a word.
20
Return to the Arctic
George Tyson, newly appointed acting lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and ice master of Tigress, was headed back.
Upon completion of the testimony before the board of inquiry, Navy Secretary George Robeson met with President Grant. Both men came to the same conclusion: a search for Polaris and her fourteen missing crewmen must be organized immediately.
Tigress was a 350-ton steamer that had been built in Canada two years earlier expressly for the sealing trade. Due to her hull strength and peculiar adaptation to the Arctic regions—her “flared” hull allowed the vessel to rise upon floe ice and break through it with her sheer weight—Tigress was considered the best ship for the search. In an unusual move, Grant authorized the purchase of Tigress for sixty thousand dollars from her owners, who were granted the right to repurchase the ship from the U.S. government after the rescue mission for forty thousand dollars.
The vessel was brought to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where a few alterations were made to her boiler and cabin, while an all-volunteer , experienced crew was put together. While she lay at the Navy Yard, crowds of visitors, anxious to see the now famous sealer that had rescued Captain Tyson and his company from the ice floe, was constantly streaming through the gates and overrunning the vessel, to the consternation of the workmen, who had been given little time to fit out the ship.
Commander James A. Greer, a professor of seamanship at the U.S. Naval Academy and a renowned sea captain, was given command of Tigress. Few line officers in the Navy stood in higher estimation among their peers for their courage and skill than Greer. His orders were explicit: Tigress was to “find Polaris and
relieve her remaining company” if at all possible. Everything else, whether scientific observations or geographical discoveries, was subservient to that mission.
A naval vessel, USS Juniata, was also assigned to the search, and on June 24 Juniata set sail for Greenland, followed on July 14 by Tigress, amidst the cheers of thousands assembled to witness her departure.
Tigress steamed away through the East River and toward the Narrows, saluted on all sides by the shrill whistles of passing steamers, who recognized her and knew the assignment she had been given. Ironically, her departure for the Arctic rescue mission created far greater interest and attention than had the sailing of Polaris two years earlier.
Tigress, carrying provisions for two years, had a complement of eleven officers and forty-two men, including one Frank Y. Commagere, an energetic correspondent of the New York Herald, who by reputation was ever ready to dive into any story where reportorial honors were to be won. Finding no other way to secure passage, he shipped as an ordinary seaman, but soon thereafter was appointed, considerately so, to the far less strenuous position of yeoman by Commander Greer.
Joining Tyson in volunteering for the search was the indefatigable Joe, who signed on as interpreter after sending Hannah and Punny to stay with friends in Groton, Massachusetts. (Mary Hall, who had requested that her husband’s body be brought back by Tigress if at all possible, had come to Washington to see Joe and Hannah and learn more about her husband’s death, but missed them both.) Joe, who had testified briefly at the inquiry, would prove invaluable in the likely contingency of seeking information about Polaris from natives. Several Polaris crewmen agreed to go but failed to show up at the dock. Three of the German seamen, however, did make the trip: William Nindemann, Gustavus Lindquist, and John Kruger. Also on board were Hans Hendrik and family, who were catching a ride back to Greenland, which they preferred to remaining in the United States, a clime they found uncomfortably warm.
On the afternoon of July 22, Tigress had a narrow escape off Newfoundland, nearly running afoul of a large iceberg, which was fortunately revealed in time off their starboard bow by a sudden lifting of the fog. For many aboard ship, it was the first iceberg they had ever seen, and it attracted great attention as they slipped silently past it.
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