Trial by Ice (6 page)

On discovering Buddington's plans, Hall exploded in rage. Vitriolic letters flew back and forth. “I trust neither I nor the Esquimaux will ever trouble your house again,” Hall wrote spitefully. Buddington sailed away without Joe and Hannah.

Hall's tirade highlights two curious things. The first was the possessive attitude of these men toward “their Inuit,” as they referred to the Eskimo. At the very time their countrymen were fighting and dying to free the black slaves in the South, northern whalers and explorers like Hall regarded the Inuit as something subhuman. The Inuit's customs undoubtedly contributed to this impression. Their demonstrations of shamanism, cruel treatment of the elderly with ritual murder, and habits of eating fish and blubber raw seemed barbaric and inhuman to the whalers. However, the Inuit traditions masked a culture highly evolved to survive in a hostile setting. But white men stumbling around in an alien world where one misstep meant disaster often missed these subtleties.

While they would have vigorously denied ownership in the legal sense, the white men felt that their Native acquaintances in some way belonged to them. Not unlike the Southern slave owner, men like Hall assumed total responsibility for the care and feeding of Inuit who, for one reason or another, attached themselves to the whites. In doing so, they robbed their charges of all freedom of action. The Eskimo responded by becoming passive followers when in the “civilized” world. Back in the Arctic, the Natives reverted to their proven ways of surviving and ignored the whites whenever it suited their purposes.

The second thing was that Hall showed himself to be remarkably thin-skinned for an Arctic explorer, especially when events beyond his control blocked his drive. Although he was inured to the cold, darkness, loneliness, hunger, and fear, his feelings could be easily hurt. Buddington's offer highlighted Hall's impotence: not being a whaling captain himself and without a ship or money to charter one, the explorer's return to the North remained uncertain. Perhaps Hall also feared that the whaling captain meant to steal his two Inuit just as Dr. Hayes had stolen Captain Quayle. Ebierbing
and Tookoolito were precious commodities and essential to exploring the North.

Eventually the two men reconciled. But scars from the rift festered below the surface. Still, good sea captains with knowledge of the Arctic were scarce, so Hall offered the job to Buddington, and the captain did accept the position. Slots for captains sailing north were limited. Normally the skipper of a whaler received a share of the profits, sometimes as much as 10 percent. But striking sufficient whales to turn a profit was no sure thing. Bad weather and a bad season meant no money at all. Unlike a whaling venture, this trip guaranteed his salary, a handsome one at that.

Besides, Hall grew desperate to put the pieces of the expedition together as fast as possible. He showered presents on Buddington, promised a pension for his wife should he die, and dangled the carrot of fame before the captain. Had Buddington the ability to look into the future, he would have turned down the offer. When Buddington accepted the position as skipper, ignoring the remnants of hard feelings that existed between the two men, one more piece fell unnoticed into place, one more link added to the chain of events that would drag the expedition to its doom.

Ironically, events linked the three men after all. Tyson's position with the New London whaling fleet fell through, and he moved his family to Brooklyn just as the refurbished
Polaris
sailed into the Brooklyn Navy Yard for its final additions. Hall found him and this time would not accept no for an answer. Again twisting arms, Hall secured a position for Tyson as assistant navigator and master of the sledges, a curious title but one somehow carrying the rank of captain.

Unknown to Hall, dating back many years, Tyson harbored ill feelings for anyone with the name of Buddington. In 1854 Sir Edward Belcher abandoned the
Resolute,
a British Admiralty vessel. One year later, while serving under Capt. James Buddington (Sidney's uncle), Tyson spotted the
Resolute
frozen in the ice miles from where their ship lay. Following a harrowing trek over the ice to the frozen vessel, Tyson found it intact, preserved down to the decanters of wine in the officers' mess. Although Tyson risked his life to reach the
Resolute,
Buddington claimed possession of the ship, cheating the man out of thousands of dollars in salvage money. On
the young Tyson's very first cruise to the Arctic whaling grounds, none other than Sidney O. Buddington had served as first mate. Neither man talked much about their first meeting, and that cannot be construed as a sign of a positive and warm acquaintanceship.

Now the
Polaris
had three captains aboardtwo too many by any count. Like the first ice crystals shifting on a mountainside leading to an avalanche, circumstances, insignificant in isolation, were accumulating that would later imperil the expedition. One after another, undetected yet fatal flaws were being woven into the fabric of the
Polaris
expedition. Facing the harsh cold and darkness of the North, the fabric would start to unravel.

Fate now struck another blow, one far more serious than personality disputes among three captains. Nationality raised its divisive head.

Congress, always wanting the most for its money, had saddled the expedition with two tasks. Not satisfied merely to reach the North Pole, something no one had yet accomplished, the legislators decided the polar expedition would also be the premier scientific exploration of its time. The armchair adventurers under the Capitol dome ordered the undertaking to follow the directives of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps goaded on by Congress, a committee of these august scientists essentially ordered the expedition to study everything conceivable: biology, geology, hydrology, climatic changes, atmosphere, magnetismthe list was endless. Sealed copper cylinders carrying notes on the expedition's progress were to be thrown over the side and buried in caches ashore as the journey progressed. Ever mindful of the Franklin expedition's mysterious disappearance, the committee wanted a paper trail of this expedition. To fully comply with the scientific requirements, a task force would have been needed instead of a converted tug. Both the National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian shared the task of appointing a chief scientist.

Immediately Hall grew uneasyand with good reason. His lack of formal education returned to haunt him. The old division between academics and explorers, first evident with the whaler Captain Scoresby, lived on.

Even before Congress had finalized the bill, an old nemesis of Hall's, smelling blood in the water like a shark, had emerged from
obscurity to strike at Hall's appointment. Just as details of the polar expedition were being finalized, Dr. Isaac Hayes materialized in Washington and testified before the Committee on Foreign Relations that he had an expedition of his own in the works and deserved the allocated government funding far more than Hall did.

Hayes and Hall had crossed ice axes at various lectures as the two jousted for the unofficial title of the American most knowledgeable about the Arctic. Notwithstanding the fact that Hayes had not set foot in the Arctic for ten years, he almost wrested command of the party away from Hall. Hayes's doctorate and his book,
The Open Polar Sea,
gathering dust in the Library of Congress, nearly capsized the self-made explorer's dream. Here, after all, was an explorer with letters after his namejust what the academics wanted.

Hall fought for his life. He scoured Hayes's book, looking for errors and evidence of intellectual dishonesty. He stressed that he had also written a book,
Arctic Research and Life among the Esquimaux,
published in 1865. In the end he even tried humility. He stood before the Committee on Foreign Relations to refute Hayes's claim. “I confess I am not a scientific man,” he admitted. It must have hurt him deeply to say that. All his life he had struggled to be just that, a Renaissance man, versed in the natural sciences. All his adult life he had been weighing, measuring, and sketching. His self-worth was bound up in his view of himself as a scientist. “No, I am not a scientific man,” he argued. Then he hit the nail on the head. “Discoverers seldom have been.”

Congress agreed. Those who pressed past their fears to disappear into the ice fogmen like Frobisher, Hudson, Franklin, and Parryneeded a special madness. Reaching the Pole demanded someone like Hall, someone with fire in his belly.

Hall's argument saved his job as head of the exploration, but it cost him the role of chief scientist. Congress hedged its bets. Only someone with letters after his name would do for that. Despite Hall's love for science, another would oversee that task, someone with the necessary credentials. Hall's place was to discover the North Pole; it would be left to someone else to subject to scientific analysis what was found there.

With animal cunning, Hall moved to block the appointment of
Dr. Hayes as chief scientist. Having his adversary within the ranks would be intolerable. He suggested Dr. David Walker for the post. Walker, young and well conditioned, had served aboard the
Fox
on its trip to the Arctic in 1857 and gained considerable expertise during the voyage. A combination of surgeon and naturalist, Walker served in the medical corps of the army with experience fighting Indians as well as the Arctic ice pack. Still on active duty in the army, Walker could be reassigned by order of President Grant, Hall suggested, and his salary still paid out of army funds. To sweeten the deal, Hall slyly hinted at donating the trove of relics and artifacts he had amassed on his Arctic tours if Walker were selected.

Spencer Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian, liked the idea. As he was always battling with Congress for funds, not having to pay for Walker appealed to the tightfisted Baird. Besides, an exhibition of the last fragments of Franklin's doomed party would draw packed crowds. Morbid curiosity was as strong then as it is today.

George Robeson, secretary of the navy, and Joseph Henry, president of the National Academy of Sciences, agreed. So did the surgeon general of the army. Walker was the right man to go.

Elated, Hall directed his attention back to the
Polaris
itself, basking in his newfound glory. While in Washington, his spirits soared when President Grant recognized him in a crowd and made it a special point to shake his hand and inquire about the progress of the expedition. Hall should have watched his back during this tranquil period.

Unknown to Captain Hall, the fates were conspiring against him. A letter arrived from August Petermann, a highly noted geographer residing in Gotha, Germany. During the summer of 1868, Petermann had completed a successful scientific expedition north of Spitsbergen aboard the vessel
Albert,
which belonged to a walrus hunter named Rosenthal. Petermann's assistant during that trip was a young man named Emil Bessel. In his letter Petermann extolled the virtues of Bessel and urged that he be appointed as chief scientist instead of Walker.

Emil Bessel's credentials were impressive. From the wealthy upper class, Bessel obtained his doctorate of medicine from Heidelberg and then went on to study zoology and entomology at Stuttgart and Jena. Letters attesting to Bessel's skill as a surgeon flowed
to the selection committee, but it was the fact that he was primarily a scientist that impressed Spencer Baird and Joseph Henry. Dr. Walker was essentially a physician with a scientific bent. And Bessel had all those credentials after his name that everyone loved.

The committee did an about-face. Emil Bessel replaced Walker.

At twenty-four, Emil Bessel would have been called handsome by his contemporaries. Thick, wavy brown hair rose to an extravagant pompadour that added inches to his short stature and framed a broad, flat forehead and low-set ears. His sideburns blended with a trim, square-cut beard. Dark, deep-set eyes stared imperiously from beneath straight, even brows. A small hump marred the bridge of his otherwise straight nose. Slightly flaring nostrils overrode a trim mustache. On close inspection the downward curl of the right side of his lower lip hinted of cruelty.

Size was Bessel's main problem. A contemporary description of him states that he “would pass for a handsome man, built on rather too small a scale.” Strange praise, indeed. Quick, nervous in temperament, or high-strung, Bessel moved about in short, twitching steps, while his eyes darted and flashed. If Charles Francis Hall might be described as a bear of a man, Bessel was a bantam rooster. Definitely not a “people person,” Bessel loved to study insects.

To further complicate matters, Bessel was not even in the United States at the time.
He was serving as a surgeon in the German army.

The impulsive shift from Walker to a German to head the first
American
polar exploration might seem strange until one considers the times. Germany was regarded as the foremost home of modern scientific knowledge. Anyone who wished to establish his credentials went to Germany to study. With Theodor Bilroth and Emil Theodor Kocher advancing the field of surgery, the Allemagnkran-kenhaus was deemed the finest hospital in the world. America's dean of modern surgery, William Stewart Halsted, studied in Germany before establishing the department of surgery at Johns Hopkins. Scientific degrees from a Teutonic university inspired awe.