The Polaris expedition of 1871–1873 was one of the first serious attempts to reach the North Pole after that of British naval officer Sir Edward Parry, who reached 82° 45′ N in 1827. Funded by the U.S. government, the expedition's notable achievement was reaching 82° 29′ N by ship, a record at the time.
The expedition was commanded by the experienced and self-taught Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall, who had previously lived among the Inuit in the Arctic region during previous attempts to determine the fate of Franklin's lost expedition of 1845. Hall possessed the necessary survival skills, but lacked an academic background and had no experience leading men or commanding a ship. He had managed to secure the position of expedition commander based on his authority on the subject of the Arctic.
departed from New York City in June 1871. Barely underway, the expedition already found itself hampered by poor leadership. Insubordination loomed, mainly at the instigation of chief scientist Emil Bessels and meteorologist Frederick Meyer—both German—who looked down on what they perceived to be their unqualified commander. Bessels and Meyer were supported by the German half of the crew, further increasing tensions among a group of men that were already divided by nationality.
By October 1871, the expedition was wintering in Thank God Harbor, Greenland, and making preparations for the trip to the Pole. Hall suddenly fell ill and died, accusing members of his crew particularly Bessels of orchestrating his murder. On the way southward, nineteen members of the expedition became separated from their ship and drifted on an ice floe for six months and before being rescued. The damaged Polaris was run aground and wrecked near Etah in October 1872. The remaining men were able to survive the winter and were rescued the following summer.
A naval board of inquiry investigated Hall's death, but no charges were ever laid. However, an exhumation of his body in 1968 revealed he had ingested a large quantity of arsenic in the last two weeks of his life. Coupled with recently discovered affectionate letters written by both Hall and Bessels to Vinnie Ream, a young sculptor they met in New York while waiting for Polaris to be outfitted, suggests Bessels had a motive, besides the means, to kill Hall.
Preparations Origins
In 1827, Sir Edward Parry led a British Royal Navy expedition with the aim to be the first men to reach the North Pole. In the next five decades following Parry's attempt, the Americans would mount three such expeditions: Elisha Kent Kane in , Isaac Israel Hayes in 1860–1861, and Charles Francis Hall with the in 1871–1873.
Hall was a Cincinnati businessman with no notable academic background or sailing experience. He had previously worked as a blacksmith and as an engraver, and for a couple of years had published his own newspaper, the Cincinnati Occasional (later renamed the Daily Press). Energetic and enterprising, Hall enthusiastically wrote about the latest technological innovations; he was fascinated by hot air balloon travel and praised the new transatlantic telegraph cable. He was also a voracious reader, captivated especially by the Arctic. His focus was directed towards the region around 1857, amid popular speculation about the fate of Franklin's lost expedition of 1845.
Hall spent the next few years studying the reports of previous explorers and trying to raise money for his own expedition. As a result of his charisma and personality, he was able eventually to launch two solo expeditions in search of Franklin and his crew: one in 1860 and a second in 1864. These experiences established Hall as a seasoned Arctic explorer and gave him valuable contacts among the Inuit. The renown he gained allowed him to convince the U.S. government to finance a third expedition: an attempt on the North Pole.
Finances and materials In 1870, the United States Senate introduced a bill in Congress to fund an expedition to the North Pole. Hall, aided by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, successfully lobbied for, and received, a $50,000 grant to command the expedition. He began recruiting personnel in late 1870.
Hall secured the United States Navy tugboat Periwinkle, a 387-ton screw-propelled steamer. At the Washington Navy Yard, the ship was fitted as a fore-topsail schooner and renamed . She was prepared for Arctic service by the addition of solid oak timber all over her hull, and the bow was sheathed in iron. A new engine was added, and one of the boilers was retrofitted to burn seal or whale oil. The ship was also outfitted with four whaleboats, long and wide, and a flat-bottomed scow.
During his previous Arctic expeditions, Hall came to admire the Inuit umiak—a type of open boat made of driftwood, whalebone, and walrus or seal skins—and brought a similarly constructed collapsible boat that could hold twenty people. Food packed on board consisted of tinned ham, salted beef, bread and sailor's biscuit. They intended to prevent scurvy by supplementing their diet with fresh musk ox, seal and polar bear meat.
Personnel In July 1870, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Hall as the expedition's overall commander, to be referred to as captain. Although he had abundant Arctic experience, Hall had no sailing experience and the title was purely honorary. In selecting officers and seamen, he relied heavily on whalers with experience in Arctic waters. This was markedly different from the polar expeditions of the British Admiralty, who tended to use naval officers and highly disciplined crews.
For his selection of sailing master, Hall first turned to , then to George Emory Tyson. Both initially declined due to prior whaling commitments. When those commitments—Budington's first, followed by Tyson's—fell through, Hall named Budington as sailing master and Tyson as assistant navigator. Budington and Tyson had decades of experience captaining whaling vessels between the two of them. In effect, Polaris now had three captains, a fact which would weigh heavily on the fate of the expedition. To further complicate matters, Budington and Hall had quarrelled before, in 1863, during Hall's earlier search for the Franklin expedition. At the time, Budington had denied permission for Hall to bring north his Inuit guides, Ipirvik and Taqulittuq, whom had taken ill and were in Budington's care.
The remaining personnel was composed of Americans and Germans, as well as a Dane and a Swede – both of whom closely associated with the Germans. The first mate, Hubbard Chester; second mate, William Morton; second engineer, Alvin Odell; and astronomer and chaplain Richard Bryan—among others—were American. Chief scientist and surgeon Emil Bessels and chief engineer Emil Schumann were German, as were most of the seamen. Meteorologist Frederick Meyer was a German-born U.S. Army Signal Corps sergeant.
In addition to the 25 officers, crew and scientific staff, Hall brought along his native companions whose assistance he had relied on during his earlier expeditions; guide and hunter Ipirvik, interpreter and seamstress Taqulittuq, as well as their infant son. Later, at Upernavik, also joining their ranks would be Hans Hendrik, the esteemed Greenlandic Inuk hunter previously employed by Kane and Hayes on their respective expeditions, and whose expertise had been crucial to their survival, helping ward off starvation. Throwing his weight around, Hans Hendrik, wrote Bessels, "refused to see that his [wife] and their children were extremely unwelcome extras on such an undertaking." Reluctant to increase their number with "four useless mouths," Hall acquiesced so that now, besides Hans Hendrik's wife, added to their complement were three young children.
Expedition New York to Upernavik
Even before leaving the Brooklyn Navy Yard on June 29, 1871, the expedition ran into personnel troubles. The cook, a seaman, a fireman and assistant engineer deserted. The steward turned out to be a drunk and was left in port. The ship stopped in New London, Connecticut, to pick up a replacement assistant engineer, and left on July 3. By the time the ship reached St. John's in Canada, there was dissension among the officers and scientific staff. Bessels, backed by Meyer, had openly rejected Hall's command over the scientific staff. The dissension spread to the crew, which was divided by nationality.
In his diary, Tyson wrote that by the time the expedition reached Disko Island, "[...] expressions are freely made that Hall shall not get any credit out of this expedition. Already some have made up their minds how far they will go and when they will get home again." Hall asked Captain Henry Kallock Davenport of the supply ship to intervene. Davenport threatened to have Meyer shackled for insubordination and sent back to the United States, at which point all of the Germans threatened to quit. Hall and Davenport were forced to back down, although Davenport delivered a strongly worded speech on naval discipline to the crew.
In another open display of dissent, Polariss boilers had been tampered with by one of the crew. The special blubber-fired boilers had disappeared, apparently thrown overboard. On August 18, the ship reached Upernavik, where they picked up Hendrik. Polaris proceeded north through Smith Sound and the Nares Strait, passing the previous furthest north by ship records held of Kane and Hayes.
Polar preparations and Hall's death By September 2, Polaris had reached her furthest parallel north, 82° 29′ N. Tension flared again as the three leading officers could not agree on whether to proceed any further. Hall and Tyson wanted to press north, to cut down the distance they would have to travel to the Pole by dogsled. Budington did not want to further risk the ship and walked out on the discussion. In the end, Polaris sailed into Thank God Harbor on September 10 and anchored for the winter on the shore of northern Greenland.
Within a few weeks, Hall was making preparations for a sledging trip with the aim of beating Parry's furthest north record. Mistrust among the men in charge showed again when Hall told Tyson that, "I cannot trust [Budington]. I want you to go with me, but don't know how to leave him alone with the ship." There is some evidence that Budington was an alcoholic; on at least three occasions he raided the ship's stores, including the alcohol kept by the scientists for the preservation of specimens. Hall had complained about Budington's drunken behavior, and it came fully to light in the crew's testimony at the inquest following the expedition. With Tyson watching over the ship, Hall took two sleds with first mate Chester and the native guides Ipirvik and Hendrik, leaving on October 10.
The day after leaving, Hall sent Hendrik back to Polaris to retrieve some forgotten items. Hall also sent back a note to Bessels, reminding him to wind the chronometers at the right time every day. In his book Trial by Ice, Richard Parry postulated that such a note from the uneducated Hall must have rankled Bessels, who held degrees from universities in Stuttgart, Heidelberg and Jena. It was another example of Hall's micromanagement of the expedition. Before he left on the overland trip, Hall gave Budington a detailed list of instructions for the management of the ship in his absence. This likely did not sit well with a sailing master with over twenty years' of experience.