Trial by Ice (44 page)

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.

T
HE
W
HITEWASH

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.

Buddington admitted growling at Noah Hayes to “save all those shavings and put them in a barrel.” While Hayes looked on openmouthed, Buddington continued his diatribe against Hall's orders to save any combustible scraps, taking the opportunity to jab at Hall's enthusiasm for sledding to the North Pole. Referring to the scraps, Buddington snapped, “They will do for the devilish fools on the sledge-journey.”

Of course, Hall overheard. Studying his clasped hands closely, Buddington admitted to the panel, “It was the worse thing I could have said in his case, as he was very much in favor of sledge-journeys. …”

As to the nature of Captain Hall's death, Buddington confirmed the man's fears of poisoning but remained strangely vague for one who had spent much time watching Hall die. His recollection of Hall's words to him the afternoon before his death raised more questions about the mysterious relapse. “I shall be in to breakfast with you in the morning, and Mr. Chester and Mr. Morton need not sit up with me at night,” Buddington recalled his commander saying. “I am as well as I ever was.”

Buddington's recounting of Hall's sudden relapse that night is chilling:

He was sitting in the berth, with his feet hanging over, his head going one way and the other, and the eyes very glassy, and looking like a corpsefrightful to look at. He wanted to know how they would spell “murder.” He spelled it several different ways, and kept on for some time. At last he straightened up and looked around, and recognized who they were, and looked at the doctor. He says, “Doctor, I know everything that's going on; you can't fool me,” and he called for some water. He undertook to swallow the water, but he couldn't. He heaved it up. They persuaded him to lie down, and he did so, breathing very hard.

About the captain's papers, Buddington was even more evasive. He insisted that Joseph Mauch had charge of Hall's papers. “The clerk had charge of them and stored them in a box … a large japanned tin box.” According to Buddington, Tookoolito held the keys to the box. “The key was among a lot of keys. I think Hannah had the whole of them. She had control of the keys and about everything Captain Hall had.” To suggest that the officers of the
Polaris
expedition would entrust an Inuit woman with important journals and logs that were official records is incredible.

Contradicting Meyer's testimony that the papers had been on BuddingtDn's desk the night of the separation, the captain insisted that the box was thrown onto the ice. He did, however, reveal that Hall's letter criticizing him had been burned:

At one time during his sickness we were having a talk together about one thing and another. He said he had written a letter to me and took it out, and he thought I had better not see it; but if I insisted, he would show it to me. I told him it didn't make any odds. He then said he thought it oughr to be burned, as he did not approve of it, and he held it to the candle and burned it.

Tyson's previous testimony was quite different. Referring to BuddingtDn's conversation with him about the burning, the navigator told the panel: “He told me he was glad the papers were burned, because tiey were much against him; and he got him to burn them.”

Had Buddington influenced the dying Hall to do that? Did he burn the letter himself? Was he responsible for cutting the pages referring to Hall's death and the abandonment of Tyson's party out of the discarded journals and logs? The committee would never ask, and it would never learn the answers to those questions.

The c onfused structure of command now hamstrung the committee as it had Charles Francis Hall. Buddington had surely been insubordnate and weak, but he was a hired whaling captain, not a commissioned officer. The navy could not court-martial him. The scientific advisory panel had no hold over him either. At worst they might sue him for failing to uphold his sailing contract. But even that was doubtful.