Trial by Ice

by Richard Parry

  Both men reached Hall to find him sitting upright, legs dangling, and his head wobbling from one side to the other. The man's glassy-eyed stare and cadaveric appearance were “frightful to look at,” according to Buddington.

  “How do you spell … murder?” Hall rasped. He kept spelling the word over and over, using different and incorrect spellings. Buddington and Chester could only look at each other in confusion. As Bessel returned and entered the cabin, Hall straightened up. “Doctor, I know everything that's going on,” he whispered. “You can't fool me.”

  Calling for water, Hall choked on the drink, then vomited before collapsing back onto his cot. Bessel immediately diagnosed a second attack of apoplexy.

  Hall remained unconscious. They rolled him onto his stomach to keep him from swallowing his tongue. Then he lay, facedown in his blankets, drooling and breathing heavily. Chester and Morton continued their bedside vigil. Hall's breathing grew heavier.

  For the first time Chester noticed blisters and sores developing around Captain Hall's nose and mouth. Soon blisters encircled his entire mouth. Blisters such as these would not be the skin rashes possible from quinine; however, certain types of poison do produce circumoral blistering.

  All that night and throughout the next day, the stricken explorer lay on his stomach, his face almost buried in his blankets. No words issued from his mouth until evening. Then he raised his head as Dr. Bessel straightened his blankets.

  Recognizing the doctor, Hall murmured, “Doctor, you have been very kind to me, and I'm obliged to you.” He then sank back into his coma. Around midnight the faithful Morton took his turn on the dreadful watch.

  Chester looked up at his relief. “He's asleep, and I don't think he's any better,” the first mate responded to Morton's unspoken query. He shook his head sadly. “He's very bad.”

  Morton slipped into the chair. He watched the sweaty tangle of dark hair and unkempt beard half buried in the pillow. Heavy gurgling sounds came from the body. The shoulders rose and fell as the captain fought for each labored breath. The air inside the cabin tasted stale and reeked with the odors of unwashed bodies. The gurgling grew more pronounced.

  Fearful that the captain might be choking, Morton called out to him. There was no reply. Gently, gingerly as a rough-handed worker might raise a newborn infant, Morton lifted Hall's head. The eyes remained closed, and saliva dripped from the man's half-opened mouth. Moisture matted the mustache and beard surrounding the pallid lips. Morton wiped the crusts and drool away with a cloth and rolled the unconscious man more onto his back. He propped Hall's head against his pillow to give him a better airway. On a table beside the bed rested a glass containing liquid. It might have been medicine left by Bessel or tea, for all Morton knew, but he hoped some fluid might relieve the awful sounds that accompanied the captain's labored breathing. With infinite care the old traveler ladled a spoonful between Hall's lips. His efforts produced little effect. The fluid dribbled between the opened lips onto the pillow. Morton returned to his seat to resume his watch.

  At 2:25 in the morning of November 8, 1871, Hall's breathing stopped. Morton rose and examined him. Leaning over, he placed his roughened cheek close to detect any movement of air. There was none. Morton stepped back and gazed upon his friend.

  Charles Francis Hall was dead. In death his face resumed the sallow complexion it had held in life. Neither blotches nor flushing nor contortions distorted the peaceful face. Sadly the mate roused Dr. Bessel. The doctor confirmed the diagnosis and placed the official time of death at 3:35 a.m. Morton awoke Buddington and Chester. Within minutes everyone sleeping in the cabin was up.

  Word spread to the forecastle. One by one the seamen filed into the crowded room to pay their respects to their fallen leader. Quietly they gazed upon the still face before shuffling out. What feelings Bessel and Buddington had they kept to themselves at this time. Later their true sentiments would emerge.

  For all their rebellious actions, every one of the common seamen professed a genuine grief. Whatever Hall's shortcomings, the men's best interests occupied his central thoughts, next only to his desire to reach the North Pole. Unfortunately some among them believed that his zeal to conquer the Pole threatened their lives.

  The death of any member of a ship strikes hard at the core of the vessel. By the very nature of its small size, the Polaris fostered familiarity among officers as well as crew. Everyone aboard had shared experiences with Hall and felt his touch. Furthermore, his death amid the dark shoulders of the threatening icebergs and icy fingers of the remorseless Arctic served all the more to remind them that death and disaster shadowed every foray into the far North.

  The blow of Hall's death came even harder since the men had dropped their guard. His wonderful recovery from a malady that Bessel said was fatal had inspired them. Only the previous day, Hall had looked strong and fit. He had walked on deck and resumed his plans. Now he was dead, less than three months into the expedition.

  Morton and Chester dressed Hall in a fresh navy uniform. Dark blue wool with double rows of brass buttons, it looked like official U.S. Navy issue, but like Charles Francis Hall, it was ambiguous, for no gold braid adorned the sleeves. Like Hall, the commander's uniform was incomplete, lacking a full commission.

  Down below, Nathan Coffin, the ship's carpenter, who had struggled so hard to recover from his illness in New York in time to sail with his shipmates, began his grim task. Using his plane and saw, he built a pine coffin from spare wood.

  Morton, Tyson, Chester, and Noah Hayes began digging a grave. Picking a level spot near the observatory and depot of ship's stores, they commenced to dig. The rock-hard frozen ground resisted all efforts. A few shovelfuls of scree and coarse gravel lay beneath the snow. That much was easy. After that there remained nothing but frozen ground, cemented in ice since the first Ice Age.

  An entire day passed while the men battled with pick, crowbar, and ax to chisel a hole deep enough to hold the coffin. While the men labored, Hall received one final viewing before Coffin nailed the lid shut. Progress on the grave proved agonizingly slow. Worried that the dead man might begin to decompose in the warm cabin, Captain Buddington ordered the coffin moved to the poop deck.

  By the end of the second day, a depression barely more than two feet deep existed. That would have to do. Further efforts gained little. Noah Hayes, in frustration, rammed the crowbar he was using into the ground near the head of the grave.

  The burial service took place in the dark. The Arctic sun no longer shone even at eleven o'clock in the morning. The ship's bell rang the departing of the captain, this time forever, and the coffin was loaded onto a waiting sled. Somberly, the line of men hauled the sled and coffin along while Tyson led the procession with his lantern. Shuffling behind the body of their friend walked the Inuit, with Hans's children led by their mother. Chaplain Bryan read a simple service. The men piled the loosened gravel and stones over the half-buried coffin, and the procession wended its way back to the darkened ship. The soft weeping of Tookoolito faded into the distance with the shuffling sound of her mukluks, leaving only the cold, lonely Arctic night.

  The American flag that Charles Francis Hall had hoped to plant at the top of the world now hung at half-mast over his grave.

  DISORDER

  There was good discipline while Captain Hall lived, but we put discipline along with him in his grave.

  —GUSTAVUS W. LINDQUIST, TESTIMONY AT INQUEST

  Captain Hall's sudden death jerked the linchpin from the Polaris expedition. For all his shortcomings, his presence had held the factions together. Even before the lichen crept across Captain Hall's fresh grave, trouble began.

  His old enemies could hardly conceal their delight at Hall's passing. Typically the tactless Buddington spoke first, mere hours after the captain's death and while he lay aboard still warm in his coffin.

  “Well, Henry,” he chortled to Seaman Henry Hobby, “there's a stone off my heart.”

  The grieving Hobby asked, “Ho
w so?”

  “Why, Captain Hall is dead.”

  Startled, Hobby could only stare in disbelief. Their leader, a Christian gentleman, was dead, and the sailor could not imagine the skipper's rejoicing over the death. “How do you mean by that?” he finally asked.

  Buddington rambled on. “We're all right now. We shan't be starved.”

  Hobby fled down the gangway. Over his shoulder he hurled a rebuttal, knowing he teetered on the brink of insubordination. Still, his conscience made him voice the trust he had had in Captain Hall. “I never thought we would,” he said.

  Unwittingly Buddington had let slip to Hobby the overpowering fear that haunted him: dying a long, protracted death on the ice by starvation. Like Columbus's sailors who feared that he might drive them off the edge of the world, Buddington must have feared that Hall's ambition would drive them beyond the limits of their provisions. Even with the tons of provisions stored on the ship, his fears were not totally unreasonable. The sudden crushing and sinking of the ship by a rogue iceberg could leave them destitute. The dark rumors of cannibalism still haunted the tales of the lost Franklin expedition. Buddington and the entire crew were well acquainted with themthose and tales of doomed ships with ghostly white crewmen frozen to the rigging washing ashore off Newfoundland.

  Next Frederick Meyer let slip his inner feelings. Since Disko, when he had challenged Hall's orders with Bessel's backing, Meyer had held a grudge. His attempt at insubordination might have worked had it not been for the intervention of that stiff-backed old commander, Captain Davenport of the United States tender Congress. Facing Davenport's threat to take him back in irons, Meyer retreated and signed that humiliating statement, but he never forgot nor forgave the slight. Having to bend to the wishes of a self-made nobody from Cincinnati must have deeply galled Meyer, who had been trained as a Prussian military officer.

  Strutting about the decks, Meyer griped to anyone within earshot that Hall had never followed the proper chain of command. “He consulted with the sailors and not the officers,” Meyer complained, “giving the sailors command.” That was not the Prussian way of doing things.

  With the egalitarian Hall gone, things would return to their proper order, Meyer insisted. The officers would resume their positions of power, and the men would do as they were ordered without having any say. The whole ship would be better off with the chain of command once more forged into continuous links.

  Strange, incongruous words for a man who had bucked his own superior officer when Hall lived. Probably the German sailors understood Meyer's position, but the meteorologist's sudden arrogance went against the grain of the Americans like Noah Hayes and Hobby. But now with the American expedition leader gone, the German element of the assembly, especially the officers and scientists, flexed their muscles.

  Dr. Emil Bessel grew almost giddy with relief. Since they first laid eyes on each other, he and Hall had shared an antagonistic connection. Aristocrat and commoner, academician and self-taught man, the two had nothing in common, not even a mutual respect for the other's accomplishments. Hall's paternalism galled Bessel, while the doctor's condescension needled the explorer.

  Within days of planting Hall beneath the frozen earth, Bessel skipped about his observatory lighthearted and laughing. More than once he remarked laughingly to Hayes that Hall's death was the best thing that could have happened to the expedition.

  Of all the men who didn't mourn Hall's passing, Buddington is the one whose relief is most understandable. More and more the grinding, wallowing walls of moving ice frightened him. Somewhere along the way, he had lost his nerve to sail among the icebergs. Maybe he never had it. Maybe he never had the experience everyone assumed he did.

  For on all his numerous voyages to hunt the whale, Buddington operated his ships in the time-honored way. He would sail as far north as necessary to take the marine mammalsbut no farther than absolutely needed. He would then seek a secure harbor, anchor, and loose his whaleboats to wreak havoc among the migrating humpbacks and California gray whales. If caught by the weather and onset of ice, he would sail closer to land and winter the ship over.

  Blasting through rotten ice, dodging icebergs, and constantly endangering his ship while navigating through shifting leads were not in his repertoire.

  More important, Buddington had never sailed these waters alone. Fleets of whaling ships prowled these waters during the hunting season. Most often they sailed together and anchored together. If one vessel burned or sank, others were close by to rescue the crew.

  Sidney O. Buddington was no William Scoresby. He never exhibited any desire to see beyond the far horizon. Scientific discovery never enthralled him as it did that ancient mariner. He had no imagination for those things, but he did imagine all too vividly what might happen to his ship.

  Regrettably the goal of the Polaris expedition demanded that Buddington now beat northward into the ice on his own, without backup, something he was not prepared to do. Were the ship to founder, only the cold, empty expanses of the Greenland coast awaited those lucky enough to reach shore. To a man used to the sea, this inhospitable land was as fearful as the ice floes. So Buddington resisted moving his ship northward like a man who fears his life is threatened, for that is what he fervently believed. Nothing awaited him on shore, he was convinced, but a slow, painful death by starvation.

  In contrast, Charles Francis Hall loved the moving islands of ice and wind-scoured peaks as much as life itself. He could live on and travel across the wastelands like the Inuit. His incessant pressure on the frightened Buddington served as a constant thorn in the man's side. Not just that, but Hall's enthusiasm only underlined Budding-ton's lack of courage.

  Buddington's release from C. F. Hall's mandate to push farther north meant that he could anchor in the safety of Thank God Harbor and drink himself into a stupor. After all, his work of protecting the ship was done, and Bessel appeared content to investigate from their snug winter camp. No wonder Buddington felt a stone had been lifted from his heart. With ample stores and a secure moorage, his passage back home was assured, and there was no danger of starvation. Perhaps that is what he meant when he commented to Henry Hobby about not starving to death.

  But the Fates had far different plans for the new commander of the Polaris expedition.

  And why was Bessel so delighted? In his constant clashes with Hall, the doctor had got what he wanted. Essentially the scientific corps acted as an autonomous unit within the Polaris group. His haughty attitude and the shadowy threat of intervention from Hall's superiors in Washington had kept the explorer at bay.

  Still, by his very disposition to micromanage, Charles Hall had constantly interfered with the scientists. His practical knowledge of the far North greatly exceeded theirs, and he used every opportunity to inject his suggestions into their work. Bessel's one trip to Spitzbergen accounted for the sum total of the scientific corps's prior experience. Neither Meyer nor Bryan had ever visited the Arctic. Even George Tyson, an ardent supporter of Hall, sensed that the captain had prevented them from doing their work. If Hall had been a thorn in Buddington's side, he had been a stone in Bessel's shoe.

  Yet was there more to Bessel's elation than the removal of a meddlesome opponent? The impression lingers that Bessel actively strove to keep Hall from reaching the North Pole. By his constant support of Buddington, he thwarted Hall's intention to sail farther north. Perhaps Bessel harbored ambitions beyond mere scientific discovery. Later he would offer Henry Hobby two hundred dollars to help him be the first to reach the North Pole. Perhaps Bessel's motive was more sinister. Perhaps the former Prussian officer followed orders to scuttle the trip or took it upon himself to do so. Just as the men aboard the Polaris faced a formidable foe in the natural elements that threatened their survival, they also faced a fight with their own human nature and its darker elements.

  If Emil Bessel thought he was the one chosen to reach the top of the world, the Arctic soon demonstrated its reluctance to award that prize.

&
nbsp; Within days of Hall's demise, the mechanism to devolve the Polaris command took effect. The Navy Department, so lax in so many other ways, had spelled out what to do if Hall died:

  You will give special written directions to the sailing master and ice master of the expedition, Mr. S. O. Buddington, and the chief of the Scientific Department, Dr. E. Bessel, that in case of your death or disabilitya contingency we sincerely trust may not arisethey shall consult as to the propriety and manner of carrying into further effect the foregoing instructions, which I here urge must, if possible, be done. In any event, however, Mr. Buddington shall in the case of your death or disability, continue as the sailing and ice master, and control and direct the movements of the vessel; and Dr. Bessel shall, in such case, continue as chief of the Scientific Department, directing all sledge journeys and scientific operations. In the possible contingency of their non-agreement as to the course to be pursued, then Mr. Buddi igton shall assume sole charge and command, and return with the expedition to the United States with all possible dispatch.

  Navy Secretary Robeson's orders were quite specific. Control of the vessel fell to Buddington, and Bessel assumed complete control of all scientific studies and journeys overland. If they disagreed, the whaling captain was to sail home immediately. Dutifully the two men issued a written notice to that effect. There it was: both men got just what they wanted. Officially the Polaris expedition now had two heads. It would be only a matter of time before this two-headed chimera quarreled with itself.

  Mean while strange happenings continued to occur.

  One cold midnight, cries from the forward compartment drew the men to Nathan Coffin's bunk. Since he had fashioned Captain Hall's coffin, the carpenter showed increasing signs of instability. Described as “sensitive,” Coffin had taken the captain's death hard. That night they found the carpenter cowering beneath his blankets in the corner of his berth. Wide-eyed and shaking with terror, Coffin babbled that voices were calling to him from the adjacent storage locker. The sailors unlocked the room and searched it to pacify Coffin, but to no avail. He continued to hear the voices. A rapid bedside consultation diagnosed the man's problem to be related to the isolated and exposed nature of his bunk, which was far forward of the main sleeping quarters, cold and damp. A change of sleeping arrangements was prescribed. Showing an astonishing lack of sensitivity, Caotain Buddington moved the unbalanced Coffin into the dead Captain Hall's old bed. As might be expected, Coffin recalled Hall's ravings about murder and naturally assumed he was next on the list. Within days the carpenter began to fear that unknown persons aboard ship would kill him.