Fatal North (36 page)

He had administered quinine as a kind of
experimentation?

When no one questioned the quinine injection, Bessels continued. The next day, Hall “showed the first symptoms of a wandering mind,” he said. “He accused everyone. He was apparently well, but he did not take anything except canned food, and he opened these cans himself so as to be sure not to be poisoned.”

Bessels told of not being able to see Hall between October 29 and November 4—“he would not allow me to go and see him. On the fourth, he grew more reasonable, but on the fifth, when I tried to give him a foot bath, he said I was going to poison him with the bath. At one A.M. on the seventh I examined him, and found that the pupil of his left eye was dilated and the right contracted. After taking some water, he went to bed. He became comatose, and I could hear gurgling in his throat. He died the next night.”

The two surgeon-generals were given an opportunity to question Bessels.

First came Surgeon-General Barnes of the U.S. Army.

“Give us your opinion as to the cause of his first attack.”

“My idea of the cause of the first attack is that he had been exposed to very low temperatures during the time that he was on the sledge journey,” Bessels said. “He came back and entered a warm cabin without taking off his heavy fur clothing, and then took a cup of warm coffee, and anybody knows what the consequences of that would be.”

Bessels seemed to be suggesting the implausible: that someone who came in from the cold and became overly heated would be inclined to have a stroke.

“What had been his physical condition before he went on the journey?” asked a board member.

“He appeared to be in his usual health. When I first came to him, after his first attack, I asked him how he had been during the last days of his sledge journey, and he said that he had not felt quite well; that he felt a weakness in his legs, and sometimes suffered with a headache.”

If Hall had not felt well on his journey, Bessels was the only person he told. Even those who accompanied Hall on his last sledge journey knew nothing about his suffering any “weakness” or headaches. In fact, according to their accumulated testimony, quite the opposite seemed to be the case: Captain Hall never seem stronger or more energetic.

“What medicine did you administer to him during the course of his sickness?”

“Some castor oil and croton oil, and some citrate of magnesia. During such intermittents I gave him injections of sulphate of quinine. That is all the medicine I gave him.”

Injections of quinine were commonly given in the nineteenth century for relief of fever. The surgeon-generals would have known that quinine was most often given in oral form as a liquid. It was rare to administer it by injection unless the patient was comatose or unable to take an oral medication. However, neither surgeon-general asked a single question of Bessels about the quinine injections. Curiously, Bessels had testified that Hall's fever broke the second day and did not return. That being the
case, why had the doctor continued to intermittently give Hall injections of quinine for two weeks?

That question was never asked.

Surgeon-General Beale of the U.S. Navy came next.

“How did you know that his first attack was a comatose condition and not a case of his having fainted?”

“Oh, he was paralyzed.”

“He was lying in his berth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you ascertain he was paralyzed? Was it paralysis both of motion and sensation?”

“It was only paralysis of motion after the recovery. His paralysis did not leave him until the next day.”

“Motion and sensation both?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you try the sensation in the first attack?”

“Yes, sir. I tried it with a needle.”

“How did you try the paralysis of motion?”

“I lifted his hand, and as soon as his hand was lifted it would fall. He was not able to support it.”

“You have mentioned that there was an interval of four days during which you did not attend him professionally. Did you see him during that time?”

“I saw him in the morning before I went to the observatory, and in the evening before I went to bed.”

“Was there any medicine administered to him?

“Nobody gave him any. He had some in his drawer. I examined it after his death. I found some cathartic pills and some patent medicines. I found no narcotics, no opium.”

Neither surgeon-general had further questions.

The remainder of Bessels' testimony that day, and into the next morning, concerned scientific observations, many of which he documented with original logs.

“How does it happen,” asked a curious Secretary Robeson at one point, “that these records of yours were not put on the ice?”

In other words, why hadn't they been lost like Captain Hall's logs and records?

“I wanted to keep them with me,” Bessels said. “I really saved them.”

“But you know that the box with Captain Hall's papers was put on the ice?”

“I am quite confident of that.”

Bessels claimed that “the records of Captain Hall … there were several diaries,” as well as some astronomical and magnetic records, were thrown over the side of the ship on the night that everyone thought
Polaris
might sink—on October 15.

“I know they were put overboard because I helped myself to take some of the boxes out of the cabin. I saw a large box belonging to Captain Hall, and containing his papers, which was put overboard. I do not remember exactiy who did it, but it was done. It was put on the ice.”

“Did you ever have any difficulty with Captain Hall?” asked Robeson.

“None whatever.”

“Did you have any difficulty with Buddington about liquor?”

“Yes, sir, a slight difficulty. I knew that he had been getting some of the alcohol. I thought it would be to the interest of the expedition to take it away from him. Captain Buddington was in the habit of drinking at times. He did not refuse a drink when he could get it.”

After providing summaries of the scientific findings on the expedition, ranging from astronomy, magnetism, ocean physics, meteorology, zoology and botany, and geology, Bessels was dismissed.

The inquiry in the cabin aboard
Talapoosa
was not a court of law, and its members had as much latitude as to the procedures they wished to follow. Still, there was no recalling of witnesses or cross-examination or much attempt at all to sort out conflicting testimony and contradictory stories. Indeed, the most troubling aspect of the inquiry was the questions they did not ask.

Why, for instance, had they not attempted to pin down the
exact whereabouts of Bessels when Hall drank the coffee that made him deathly ill? Bessels took pains to place himself at the observatory, a quarter mile away, while others testified that he was present in the cabin when Hall first took ill. Why had the discrepancies not been cleared up?

Why had the board, or the surgeon-generals who were attending specifically for the medical testimony, not asked Bessels to address whether Hall, when he first took ill, might have benefitted from an emetic, medicine used to cause vomiting. Given the voluminous testimony concerning fears and rumors of poisoning, why wasn't the issue squarely faced? Vomiting, in cases of acute poisoning, purposeful or accidental, would be desirable to purge the toxin from the patient's system. Testimony from witnesses indicated that Bessels was most insistent in not wanting Hall to receive an emetic.

Why hadn't Bessels wanted Hall to vomit?

 

“There were a couple of officers who were greatly relieved by Captain Hall's death,” said German seaman Henry Hobby, who told the board about Buddington's remark on deck, shortly after Hall's death, that the party “shan't be starved to death now.”

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.