In addition to Buddington and Meyer, Hobby said, “The doctor was greatly relieved. He did not know what to do when Captain Hall was alive. When Captain Hall would call one of the scientific men, all three of them would jump up, and each one would suppose he was called on. Some of them did not want to behave very well. Captain Hall said he would court-martial the doctor if he kept on in the way he was doing.”
After Polaris had been abandoned, Hobby said that Bessels had concocted a plan that, if successful, would have brought him great personal glory. Bessels’ scheme revealed a kind of chasm of ambition and envy that must have opened between himself and Hall, who certainly had his own plans for glory, both national and personal.
“In the spring [after Hall’s death] the doctor wanted me to go to the North Pole with him on a sledge journey,” said Hobby. “I thought it was a very foolish idea, with fifty pounds of canned meat and sixty pounds of bread on one sled, to go to the Pole from there. As this time we were two hundred miles farther south than we had been the year before, and yet we did not try it then when we were farther up. I was told to go, however, and I said I would go. The doctor promised me one hundred dollars to go to Thank God Harbor with him—what he was going to do there I couldn’t say—and two hundred dollars if I would go with him so that he could reach a higher latitude than Parry had reached. Dr. Bessels was constantly speaking to me about going with him, but before we were able to start, the ice broke and the journey was abandoned.”
Hobby’s testimony, brief as it was, was potentially explosive.
“Joe Mauch, the captain’s clerk, came into the cabin one morning about a week after Captain Hall had been taken sick. He said there had been some poisoning around there. He did not say any more about it. He did not mean to say that Captain Hall had taken this, but that the smell was in his cabin—used there for some purpose or other.”
Hobby was asked only a single question by the board having to do with events after the October 15 separation: “How often did you go to the masthead to look after your companions on the ice?”
“Twice. I stayed there for ten minutes to a quarter of an hour.”
American seaman Noah Hayes came next, and told the board about the shocking statement of a “very lighthearted” Bessels at the observatory, shortly after Hall’s death, that Hall’s death had been the “best thing that could happen for the expedition.”
Astronomer and ship’s chaplain Richard W. D. Bryan, a clean-cut young man who obviously made a good impression on the board, said that during Hall’s illness, “he accused nearly all the officers, at one time or another, of trying to murder him.” But Bryan made a distinction; the emphasis was his and was subsequently preserved by a careful stenographer in the transcript of his testimony: “the doctor was the only one, however, who Captain Hall ever accused of poisoning him.”
“Do you know what medicine Captain Hall took?”
“I do not know all the medicine he took. I know that the doctor at one time wanted to administer a dose of quinine and that the captain would not take it. The doctor came to me and wanted me to persuade Captain Hall to take it. I did so, and I saw him prepare the medicine. He had little white crystals, and he heated them in a little glass bowl; heated the water, apparently to dissolve the crystals. That is all I know about any medicine. I only knew that because I had persuaded Captain Hall to take the injections. It was given in the form of an injection under the skin in his leg. I believe he gave him the medicine at other times, but that was the only time I had any knowledge of it.”
“Did you have any difficulty in persuading the captain to take it?”
“Not very much.”
“Why did he object?”
“He did not like the doctor very much at that time, and he was a little delirious, I think. He thought the doctor was trying to poison him.”
Byran testified he was in Hall’s cabin when the steward returned with the coffee.
“Was this within half an hour of his coming into the cabin or coming on board the vessel?” he was asked.
“Yes. I think it would be safe to say it was within that time.”
“Did he then take the coffee?”
“Yes. I think I saw him then take the coffee, and almost immediately afterward—”
“Within five minutes afterward?”
“I do not know about that because he might have given the cup back, and he might have spoken a little while. But I associated the two facts in my mind, that just as soon as he took the coffee he complained of feeling sick and went to bed.”
The board did not ask him to clarify who else was in the cabin at the time, and Bryan did not volunteer the information.
One of the last witnesses was Joseph Mauch, who served as the captain’s clerk and became a favorite of Hall’s.
Mauch weighed in on the whereabouts of Bessels. The clerk remembered going in to see Hall shortly after he had taken ill. “Dr. Bessels was there and Mr. Morton was undressing Captain Hall for bed.” Mauch also had something to say about the cup of coffee; it had been specially prepared “for Captain Hall, or rather, for his party that returned.”
Mauch had an interesting background for a twenty-four-year-old seaman.
“Have you been brought up as a seaman?” he was asked at one point.
“No. I have been a druggist. I passed my examination in New York, in the College of Pharmacy. I did not have seaman experience until this expedition.”
Even with that information, the board did not ask him about Henry Hobby’s claim. They did not ask the former druggist about the smell of poison in Hall’s cabin.
The inquiry into Charles Francis Hall’s death and his ill-fated expedition was over.
WASHINGTON, D.C., DECEMBER 26, 1873
President of the United States
Sir: We, the undersigned, were present by request of the honorable Secretary of the Navy, at the examination of Dr. Emil Bessels, in regard to the cruise of Polaris and the circumstances connected with the illness and death of Captain Hall. We listened to his testimony with great care and put to him such questions as we deemed necessary.
From the circumstances and symptoms detailed by him, and comparing them with the medical testimony of all the witnesses, we are conclusively of the opinion that Captain Hall died from natural causes, viz, apoplexy; and that the treatment of the case by Doctor Bessels was the best practicable under the circumstances.
Respectfully, your obedient servants,
W. K. Barnes
Surgeon-General United States Army.
J. Beale
Surgeon-General United States Navy.
The board of inquiry added nothing to the surgeon-generals’ statement, accepting their medical finding that Charles Francis Hall died from natural causes. Navy Secretary George Robeson and the board recommended no actions to be taken against anyone among the Polaris crew. No further investigations would be conducted, official or otherwise.
As far as the United States government was concerned, the matter was ended.
EPILOGUE
OCTOBER 1968
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
The carefully preserved bodily tissues arrived at Toronto’s Centre for Forensic Sciences, one of the leading pathology laboratories in the world, two months after they had been removed from the remains of Charles Francis Hall.
Dartmouth professor Chauncey Loomis and Dr. Frank Paddock, the internist who had conducted the autopsy of Hall in his ice-bound coffin, submitted the samples to the renowned forensic laboratory for a more detailed analysis after the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety Laboratory conducted tests on a piece of frontal bone removed from Hall’s skull and found an increased level of arsenic, once used extensively as a “criminal poison” because it is odorless and nearly tasteless.
Dr. Auseklis Perkons, a leading researcher at the Centre, sliced the hair and nail samples into numerous sections, and subjected them to neutron activation in the McMaster University nuclear reactor—a highly sensitive test fo
r analyzing tiny amounts of material—together with two chips of bone, two samples of soil from the grave site, and a weighed amount of pure arsenic standard. The gamma activities subsequently produced were measured, and the amounts of arsenic in the samples were calculated by comparison with the standard reference arsenic photopeak.
Assuming the average daily growth rates of 0.4 mm for hair and 0.1 mm for fingernail, the results showed that elevated amounts of arsenic had been deposited in the hair and nails grown during the last two to five weeks of Hall’s life, with the highest amounts being incorporated in the hair and nails within one week of his death.
“These results are fully consistent with the theory of arsenic poisoning being the immediate cause of Hall’s demise almost a century ago,” wrote Dr. Perkons in his report.
In reviewing descriptions of Hall’s symptoms from the eyewitnesses interviewed by the board of inquiry nearly a century earlier, Dr. Perkons and Douglas Lucas, director of the Centre, were in agreement that Hall’s symptoms, during the final two weeks of his life, were “quite in keeping with acute arsenic poisoning.”
The presenting symptoms that could be expected from acute arsenic poisoning, according to references such as Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products and Gradwohl’s Legal Medicine, include:
• sweetish metallic taste
• within thirty minutes to one hour after ingestion, constriction in the throat and difficulty in swallowing; burning and colicky pains in esophagus and stomach
• feeble pulse and cold extremities
• vertigo, frontal headache; in some cases, stupor, delirium and even mania
• numbness and tingling of the hands and feet
• coma, occasionally convulsions, general paralysis, and death
The Centre’s director, Lucas, an amateur history buff, found the old case enthralling and spent many hours on his own time reviewing the evidence and trying to piece together what had happened from both a medical and legal standpoint.
It seemed likely to Lucas that the first dose of arsenic was contained in the cup of coffee Hall received on boarding the vessel from his sledge journey—coffee Hall described as “too sweet.” Beyond that, the lab results clearly indicated that Hall continued to ingest lethal amounts of arsenic during the last two weeks of his life, proving, first, that Hall had a strong constitution to be able to last that long while being slowly poisoned, and second, that someone was very determined to finish him off.
After he became familiar with the makeup of the expedition party, Lucas had to include sailing master Sidney Buddington as a suspect in Hall’s death. But no one was as tempting to accuse as Dr. Emil Bessels, who had motive, knowledge, material, and access.
Arsenic would have been available aboard Polaris, Lucas knew. It was a commonly administered medicine in the nineteenth century in the form of arsenious acid, which was prescribed for a great variety of diseases, such as headaches, ulcers, gout, chorea, syphilis, even cancer. Used in a popular patent medicine called “Fowler’s Solution,” it was a well-known remedy for fever and various skin diseases. It would have been a standard part of any sizable medical kit, and the North Polar expedition, records showed, had a large medical store assembled by Dr. Emil Bessels for the long journey.
Lucas knew that arsenic could have been administered in the nineteenth century in one of two ways: liquid—probably used in the cup of coffee and perhaps later mixed in medicines given orally—and in the form of a white powder. There had been ample testimony of witnesses observing Bessels melting down a white powdery substance to inject into Hall by hypodermic needle; that could certainly have been an efficient delivery system for the poison.
As for Loomis, when he received the lab reports, he finally had the evidence that he had sought in disinterring Hall’s remains. Toxic amounts of deadly poison had been administered to the expedition commander, but the question remained: by whom and for what reason? The professor was a careful, studious man, and he resisted the temptation to call it murder. He allowed himself to consider the possibility that Hall had dosed himself, although he knew suicide was inconceivable for a man of such ambition and strength. Hall did have his personal medical kit, however, which Bessels testified had contained, among other things, “patent medicines” that may well have included Fowler’s Solution. And Hall certainly could have gained access to the ship’s medical supplies. Had he overdosed himself, resulting in fatal arsenic poisoning? That scenario did not, Loomis knew, account for Hall’s condition markedly improving for the several days that he refused the ship doctor access to him. He had gotten better without Bessels’ medicines and services.
Loomis knew if it was murder that Bessels was a prime suspect. Buddington was a sad, pathetic figure; a coward who was probably too much of a desperate drunk and incompetent to pull off such a venal plan without bungling it or bragging about it later. While other members of the crew, including Frederick Meyer, had their own documented gripes with Hall, Bessels was a trained scientist with the necessary knowledge, and as the ship’s doctor, he had at hand the material he needed to administer arsenic. Also, he had access to Hall much of the time.
There were other “straws in the wind,” as Loomis came to call them: Bessels’ refusal to administer an emetic, which would have emptied Hall’s stomach, when the captain first took ill; the unexplained persistence of his quinine injection treatment after Hall’s fever broke the second day of his illness, and Bessels not allowing Buddington to take Hall medicine’s first as an inducement to the then-suspicious captain.
If Bessels had the opportunity and skill to poison his commander, what was his motive? Unlike Buddington, who had come under Hall’s scrutiny and was close to being suspended from duty upon Hall’s return from his last sledge journey, Bessels gained nothing as concrete from Hall’s demise. Also, Buddington was frightened that Hall would take them farther north and wanted to retreat south at first opportunity. Bessels was an ambitious man, and he certainly had his sights set on future glory for himself through major scientific and geographical discoveries. Testimony revealed he had even, after Hall’s death, tried to bribe crewmen to accompany him north so he could be the discoverer of the North Pole. Had he thought ridding the expedition of its ambitious commander would allow such glory to fall on him? Had he simply wanted full credit? Was outsized ambition motive enough for murder?
No careful person could rule out the possibility that Hall suffered a stroke upon returning from his sledge journey, as Bessels claimed he had and as the board of inquiry had “conclusively” accepted as the cause of death from “natural causes.” But the modern-day lab results proved another cause of death; a most unnatural one.
As Charles Francis Hall had feared those last two frightening weeks of life, he was being poisoned to death aboard his own vessel and by someone from among his small, handpicked crew. It hadn’t been done with one massive dose of poison in the cup of coffee, administered perhaps in a fit of anger, bitterness, or envy. Rather, it was done systematically. Hall had been killed a little bit at a time over the course of two weeks. The nature of the act strongly suggested cold-blooded, calculating, premeditated murder by a diabolical killer who had gotten away with his crime.
Doug Lucas would never forget the case. Some twenty years later and by then retired from his position as head of the Centre for Forensic Sciences, he made a presentation called “Arsenic and Old Ice” to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences’ Last Word Society, a group of professional scientific sleuths.
“The story I am about to tell you,” Lucas began, “has a little bit of science, a bit of mystery, a dash of history, but in the end—there is no real last word.”
AFTERMATH
Ulysses S. Grant’s two terms as president of the United States are regarded by many historians to be the most corrupt in the country’s history due to his picking of numerous old friends for cabinet-level positions who would provide the nation with neither competent service nor stature. The former Civil War hero who wished to
see the U.S. flag planted at the North Pole during his presidency died near Saratoga, New York, in 1885, shortly after finishing work on his acclaimed memoirs, Personal Memories of U. S. Grant, which highlighted his military, not political, service.
George M. Robeson, Grant’s second Secretary of the Navy and a strong supporter of the North Polar Expedition, was fond of good living and true to his friends, but he did not have much aptitude for the reins of administration or the details of naval business. A second investigation into his stewardship of the Navy Department in 1876 revealed that he had personally profited by nearly half a million dollars from payments received from shipyard contractors awarded naval work. As Secretary of the Navy, Robeson spent millions of government dollars in repairing and rebuilding ships, but at the end of his reign the Navy had nothing to show for his work but an obsolete fleet in poor condition. Following his cabinet-level service, Robeson was twice elected to the House of Representatives, then returned to the practice of law in Camden, New Jersey, until his death in 1897.
Tigress and USS Tallapoosa. The civilian steamer Tigress, whose name passed into polar history for rescuing the ice-floe party and her subsequent trip to the coast of Greenland in search of the remaining Polaris crew, was repurchased from the government by her original Canadian owners and put back into service as a commercial sealer. On April 2, 1874, Tigress was working through the ice pack near St. John’s, Newfoundland, when a fiery explosion occurred, badly damaging the vessel and instantly killing ten of her crew. Eleven others were so badly injured that they died the next day. The Navy gun ship Tallapoosa, upon whose deck the official board of inquiry met, was patrolling off the coast of Rhode Island shortly before midnight on August 24, 1884, when she collided with a schooner and sank.
Sidney O. Buddington, who had been regarded as one of the most experienced whaling captains of his time, never returned to sea. His career was over following his testimony before the board of inquiry, which revealed his lack of discipline and uninspired leadership. “In my judgement Buddington merited the condemnation of the public in this world and the damnation in the world to come, for I believe him to be an unmitigated scoundrel,” wrote, in 1874, another experienced New England whaling captain by the name of James M. Buddington, who was Sidney Buddington’s uncle.
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