In his testimony before the board months earlier, steward John Herron had said that Hall asked him if there was any coffee ready. “I told him there was always [some] in the galley. I asked him if he would have anything else. He said that was all he wanted. I went down the stairs and got a cup of coffee. I did not make the coffee. I told the cook it was for Captain Hall. He drank white lump sugar in his coffee. Never cared for milk.” The English steward said he did not see Captain Hall get sick that evening; he had departed Hall’s cabin soon after delivering the coffee. (Two members of the Buddington party, including fireman Walter Campbell, who sometimes served as assistant steward, would testify that the coffee had been specially prepared for Captain Hall and his returning party. Joe, in his earlier testimony, told of having a cup of coffee from the galley shortly after returning from the sledge journey, and feeling no ill effects.)
Conflicting testimony about the coffee had been given earlier by the cook, William Jackson, who had been confronted at least once by an angry Hall over the quality of the meals he prepared. Jackson, testifying a short time after the steward, brought up the coffee right away, telling the board that it was “taken from the galley the same as everybody else had. It was directly after dinner, and he got the same coffee we had for dinner.” However, the cook’s memory was flawed: dinner had not yet been served when Hall had arrived aboard Polaris at three o’clock and wouldn’t be for several more hours. In his brief appearance before the board, Jackson was asked only three questions. Not one pertained to the coffee that Hall drank.
“Did the steward bring the coffee while you were there?” Robeson asked Morton.
“I don’t recollect. I went to Captain Hall’s private storeroom to get him some clothing, and when I came back he was sick. I was alarmed and asked him what was the matter. He said, ‘Nothing at all—a foul stomach.’ I was not gone more than twenty minutes.”
“Who was with him when you went after the clothing?”
“Hannah was there, and I don’t know whether Captain Buddington was there or not. He came on board also with Captain Hall. There was also Joe, the Eskimo, and the steward. I don’t know of anybody else, except perhaps Dr. Bessels.”
“Who was with him when you came back?”
“The doctor was there at the time he was sick, and I believe while he was taking the coffee. He asked the doctor for an emetic and, as far as I could understand, the doctor said no, that he was not strong enough or it would weaken him too much or something to that effect. Captain Hall got delirious very soon after the second day. He got suspicious of some people, and said they wished to harm him, and he said to me, ‘They are poisoning me.’ I thought he was out of his head. He continued that way for six or seven days, and he then got right smart, and got up. He spoke about his journey, and went about his ordinary business for a day or two, then relapsed.
“The doctor told me, I think the second day, that Captain Hall’s illness was very serious, and that he would not recover. I cannot rightly recollect what the doctor said was the matter with him; apoplexy, I think. Captain Hall was not smart in his movement. He was feeble-like—prostrated. He showed that feebleness very soon, not immediately, but I noticed it the next day, when I put on his clothing.”
“Had he taken any medicine or anything before the vomiting?”
“No, sir. Nothing but the coffee from the galley.” “Who gave him his medicine?”
“Dr. Bessels, although Captain Hall was opposed to taking medicine from the doctor when he was delirious.”
Morton explained that Hall was also suspicious of taking food or drink from anyone, and asked others—usually himself, Hannah, or Joe—to taste everything first.
The second mate told of being at Hall’s side when “he breathed his last.”
He went on, “After Captain Hall’s death, it appeared that there was divided authority. I heard that Dr. Bessels had authority, and Buddington went among the men and made very free with them, and of course, told them he was captain.”
Robeson asked Morton if he had any reason to suppose that there was foul play toward Captain Hall.
“I have not, indeed.”
“Did you think so at the time?”
“I did not. It never struck me.”
“Do you think so now?”
“I do not.”
“Then you consider these expressions of suspicion by Captain Hall the ravings or hallucinations of a man out of his head?”
“I do, sir, and I hope so.”
22
Cause of Death
By special invitation from Secretary Robeson, Surgeon-General W. K. Barnes of the United States Army and Surgeon-General Joseph Beale of the United States Navy were present at the hearing on October 16 for the testimony of Dr. Emil Bessels.
“I was born at Heidelberg, in 1844,” Bessels began in accented English. “Graduated at Heidelberg. Joined the Polaris expedition as chief of the scientific department.” Bessels told of Polaris arriving at Disco, and the “little difference” between Hall, Meyer, and himself.
“Some kind friends wanted to make out that we had a mutiny on the ship,” Bessels said, his tone scoffing. “But the whole amount of it was that Captain Hall wanted Mr. Meyer to write his journal, and Meyer did not want to do it. Captain Hall intended to discharge him, and spoke to me about it. I told him that I did not think Mr. Bryan and myself would be able to perform the whole of the scientific work to be done on the expedition. I told him I preferred to go on shore myself if Mr. Meyer was dismissed. Finally, Mr. Meyer agreed to conform to the orders and instructions of Captain Hall, and the matter was settled. Happily, I am able to produce the original copy of the original instructions belonging to Captain Hall. I found it when the vessel broke adrift, and here you will find a statement on this page in Captain Hall’s own handwriting. I think it explains the matter.”
Bessels handed the board the memorandum in Hall’s handwriting signed by Meyer on August 16, 1871, stating that Meyer did “solemnly promise and agree to conform to all the orders and instructions as herein set forth by the Secretary of the United States Navy to the commander.”
Notwithstanding his explanation that he found it on the ice, the fact that Bessels was able to produce this single sheet that had certainly been part of Captain Hall’s collection of personal papers—since missing—was curious, yet the board did not probe.
Bessels rushed on, reading from the log kept by the three scientists aboard Polaris. It presented a dizzying array of geographical references, locations, and times that he recited in a heavily accented monotone for nearly an hour. Finally, he came to something considerably more interesting: Hall’s return from his last sledge journey.
“I was at the observatory, about a quarter of a mile from the ship, at the time he returned,” Bessels said. But even then he found a tangent to veer off onto. “I had fixed the Observatory, and got the instruments ready to take our observations. Up to that time, meteorological observations had been taken every three hours. We noted hourly the height of the barometer, the temperature of the air, and the amount and kinds of clouds.” He finally came back on track. “As I say, I was at the observatory when I heard the sledges approaching, and went out to meet Captain Hall and his party. He shook hands with me, and I accompanied him about halfway to the ship; then I returned to the observatory.”
Contradicting the testimony of Morton and others that placed the doctor in Hall’s cabin when he took ill, Bessels told the board that after returning to the observatory, he stayed there about an hour and a half before coming aboard and finding Hall already sick in bed.
Bessels summarized his medical care of Hall over the two weeks of his illness.
He said he had found Hall’s cabin “rather warm” upon entering it. The doctor said Hall complained of pain in his stomach and weakness in his legs. “While I was speaking to him he all at once became comatose. I tried to raise him up, but it was of little use. His pulse was irregular—from sixty to eighty. Sometimes it was full, and
sometimes it was weak. He remained in this condition for twenty-five minutes without showing signs of any convulsions. While he was in this comatose state I applied a mustard poultice to his legs and breast.”
The nation’s two top military doctors, who were listening to Bessels’ testimony and taking notes, knew mustard was used in a poultice as a counterirritant, and as a method of providing localized heat for relief of pain.
“Besides that,” Bessels continued, “I made cold-water applications to his head and on his neck. In about twenty-five minutes he recovered consciousness. I found that he was taken by hemiplegia. His left arm and left side were paralyzed, including the face and tongue, and each respiration produced a puffing of the left cheek. The muscles of the tongue were also affected. The hypoglossus nerve was paralyzed, so that when the patient was requested to show his tongue and he did so, the point would be deflected toward the left side. I made him take purgatives. I gave him a cathartic consisting of castor oil and three or four drops of croton oil. This operated upon him three times, not to any great extent, however.”
The board failed to ask Bessels about testimony that he had been vehemendy opposed to giving Hall anything to induce vomiting. An emetic would cause poison to be vomited out before further absorption, while a purgative, or strong laxative, would draw that same poison through the system—at least to the lower intestinal tract—before expelling it from the body. It was a vital medical point that was never addressed.
Hall slept that first night, Bessels said, with second mate Morton watching over him.
“The next morning, he experienced some difficulty swallowing. He complained of numbness of the tongue. Sometimes he was entirely incapable of speaking distinctly. Again I gave him a dose of castor oil and croton oil, and he recovered from his paralysis pretty well. He complained of chilliness, and indeed he had some rapid changes of temperature like you find in cases of intermittent fever. His temperature was higher in the evening.”
“What was the state of his mind at that time?” asked a board member.
“The state of his mind was as well as ever before—quite clear. After having experienced these sudden changes of temperature, and having recovered from his attack of apoplexy, I gave him a hypodermic injection of about a grain and a half of quinine to see what the effect would be. He felt better in the evening.”
He had administered quinine as a kind of experimentation?
When no one questioned the quinine injection, Bessels continued. The next day, Hall “showed the first symptoms of a wandering mind,” he said. “He accused everyone. He was apparently well, but he did not take anything except canned food, and he opened these cans himself so as to be sure not to be poisoned.”
Bessels told of not being able to see Hall between October 29 and November 4—“he would not allow me to go and see him. On the fourth, he grew more reasonable, but on the fifth, when I tried to give him a foot bath, he said I was going to poison him with the bath. At one A.M. on the seventh I examined him, and found that the pupil of his left eye was dilated and the right contracted. After taking some water, he went to bed. He became comatose, and I could hear gurgling in his throat. He died the next night.”
The two surgeon-generals were given an opportunity to question Bessels.
First came Surgeon-General Barnes of the U.S. Army.
“Give us your opinion as to the cause of his first attack.”
“My idea of the cause of the first attack is that he had been exposed to very low temperatures during the time that he was on the sledge journey,” Bessels said. “He came back and entered a warm cabin without taking off his heavy fur clothing, and then took a cup of warm coffee, and anybody knows what the consequences of that would be.”
Bessels seemed to be suggesting the implausible: that someone who came in from the cold and became overly heated would be inclined to have a stroke.
“What had been his physical condition before he went on the journey?” asked a board member.
“He appeared to be in his usual health. When I first came to him, after his first attack, I asked him how he had been during the last days of his sledge journey, and he said that he had not felt quite well; that he felt a weakness in his legs, and sometimes suffered with a headache.”
If Hall had not felt well on his journey, Bessels was the only person he told. Even those who accompanied Hall on his last sledge journey knew nothing about his suffering any “weakness” or headaches. In fact, according to their accumulated testimony, quite the opposite seemed to be the case: Captain Hall never seem stronger or more energetic.
“What medicine did you administer to him during the course of his sickness?”
“Some castor oil and croton oil, and some citrate of magnesia. During such intermittents I gave him injections of sulphate of quinine. That is all the medicine I gave him.”
Injections of quinine were commonly given in the nineteenth century for relief of fever. The surgeon-generals would have known that quinine was most often given in oral form as a liquid. It was rare to administer it by injection unless the patient was comatose or unable to take an oral medication. However, neither surgeon-general asked a single question of Bessels about the quinine injections. Curiously, Bessels had testified that Hall’s fever broke the second day and did not return. That being the case, why had the doctor continued to intermittently give Hall injections of quinine for two weeks?
That question was never asked.
Surgeon-General Beale of the U.S. Navy came next.
“How did you know that his first attack was a comatose condition and not a case of his having fainted?”
“Oh, he was paralyzed.”
“He was lying in his berth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How did you ascertain he was paralyzed? Was it paralysis both of motion and sensation?”
“It was only paralysis of motion after the recovery. His paralysis did not leave him until the next day.”
“Motion and sensation both?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you try the sensation in the first attack?”
“Yes, sir. I tried it with a needle.”
“How did you try the paralysis of motion?”
“I lifted his hand, and as soon as his hand was lifted it would fall. He was not able to support it.”
“You have mentioned that there was an interval of four days during which you did not attend him professionally. Did you see him during that time?”
“I saw him in the morning before I went to the observatory, and in the evening before I went to bed.”
“Was there any medicine administered to him?
“Nobody gave him any. He had some in his drawer. I examined it after his death. I found some cathartic pills and some patent medicines. I found no narcotics, no opium.”
Neither surgeon-general had further questions.
The remainder of Bessels’ testimony that day, and into the next morning, concerned scientific observations, many of which he documented with original logs.
“How does it happen,” asked a curious Secretary Robeson at one point, “that these records of yours were not put on the ice?”
In other words, why hadn’t they been lost like Captain Hall’s logs and records?
“I wanted to keep them with me,” Bessels said. “I really saved them.”
“But you know that the box with Captain Hall’s papers was put on the ice?”
“I am quite confident of that.”
Bessels claimed that “the records of Captain Hall … there were several diaries,” as well as some astronomical and magnetic records, were thrown over the side of the ship on the night that everyone thought Polaris might sink—on October 15.
“I know they were put overboard because I helped myself to take some of the boxes out of the cabin. I saw a large box belonging to Captain Hall, and containing his papers, which was put overboard. I do not remember exactiy who did it, but it was done. It was put on the ice.”
“Did
you ever have any difficulty with Captain Hall?” asked Robeson.
“None whatever.”
“Did you have any difficulty with Buddington about liquor?”
“Yes, sir, a slight difficulty. I knew that he had been getting some of the alcohol. I thought it would be to the interest of the expedition to take it away from him. Captain Buddington was in the habit of drinking at times. He did not refuse a drink when he could get it.”
After providing summaries of the scientific findings on the expedition, ranging from astronomy, magnetism, ocean physics, meteorology, zoology and botany, and geology, Bessels was dismissed.
The inquiry in the cabin aboard Talapoosa was not a court of law, and its members had as much latitude as to the procedures they wished to follow. Still, there was no recalling of witnesses or cross-examination or much attempt at all to sort out conflicting testimony and contradictory stories. Indeed, the most troubling aspect of the inquiry was the questions they did not ask.
Why, for instance, had they not attempted to pin down the exact whereabouts of Bessels when Hall drank the coffee that made him deathly ill? Bessels took pains to place himself at the observatory, a quarter mile away, while others testified that he was present in the cabin when Hall first took ill. Why had the discrepancies not been cleared up?
Why had the board, or the surgeon-generals who were attending specifically for the medical testimony, not asked Bessels to address whether Hall, when he first took ill, might have benefitted from an emetic, medicine used to cause vomiting. Given the voluminous testimony concerning fears and rumors of poisoning, why wasn’t the issue squarely faced? Vomiting, in cases of acute poisoning, purposeful or accidental, would be desirable to purge the toxin from the patient’s system. Testimony from witnesses indicated that Bessels was most insistent in not wanting Hall to receive an emetic.
Why hadn’t Bessels wanted Hall to vomit?
“There were a couple of officers who were greatly relieved by Captain Hall’s death,” said German seaman Henry Hobby, who told the board about Buddington’s remark on deck, shortly after Hall’s death, that the party “shan’t be starved to death now.”
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