Fatal North (9 page)

Hall asked Hubbard Chester for his opinion. The experienced first mate, strong in spirit as in body, did not waver. “North, sir,” Chester said without hesitation. “I agree with Mr. Tyson, there is an opening on the east side. I can't say we'll make it, but we should try to get over there and then as far north as we can.”

Buddington turned his back, muttering between clenched teeth. “I'll be damned if we'll move from here.” He stamped from the cabin.

Hall followed him and stood some time talking to him on deck.

When the commander returned, he told Tyson and Chester to see to the landing of some provisions ashore in case something happened during the night. That was all—nothing as to what decision, if any, had been reached concerning the ship's course.

Later that afternoon, Hall approached Tyson on deck and asked him more about going north. While every sign indicated he personally favored it, Hall seemed worried. Tyson could only guess he wished to avoid offending his sailing master.

“Sir, I should gain nothing by our going another two or three degrees,” Tyson said, “but it will be a great credit to you to do so.”

Since he had received his commission papers in Disco, Tyson had felt a stronger sense of responsibility for the expedition. At the same time, he wasn't entirely comfortable speaking his mind about Buddington, so soured had he become on the sailing master, who he knew had neither heart nor soul in the expedition. Tyson did not wish for Hall or anyone to misinterpret him in any way. He did not want to be seen as seeking a position to which he hadn't been rightfully appointed.

Tyson parted from his commander feeling they had gone as far north as they would that year, and his intuition proved correct. The next day
Polaris
was ordered to steam south, nearer inshore to find a safe harbor.

Tyson was disappointed and surprised that Hall had accepted Buddington's advice to turn tail. The extent to which Hall was able to overlook insolence and incompetence in those who owed him duty and allegiance was something Tyson had never before seen from a commander at sea. Was it a strength in this good man, he wondered, or a fatal flaw?

That night, they pushed over to the west shore and got beset by ice and drifted to the south. From the crow's nest, Tyson saw that the wind had opened up the east side, as he had predicted.
Had they headed over there they would have had clear steaming north.

Before they were clear of ice, they lowered a boat, and Tyson joined Hall in trying to get ashore to find an anchorage. They located a natural harbor but could not get into it, and they gave up after several tries. Hall named the place Repulse Harbor.

The ice suddenly set them free, and
Polaris
steamed through open waters, this time heading to the east side. From the crow's nest, Chester hollered excitedly that there was an open channel along the east coast as far north as he could see. But there was no more discussion about heading farther north. The first mate was convinced that had Tyson or someone else been sailing master, things would have been different.

On the east side, they came across an extensive bay and anchored out. As a winter home, it was by no means a snug anchorage. It was, however, inside the line of the main current, and was somewhat sheltered from sea conditions by a cape four miles to the northwest of the ship's position. Immediately before them lay a harbor formed by a large iceberg to the south and a little indentation on the coast to the north.

On September 7,
Polaris
steamed in nearer to shore. The officers held a brief conversation about whether to go over to the other side of the ten-mile-wide bay to look for a better anchorage, but Buddington declared that the ship should not move from where it was, and Hall relented.

Polaris
was brought around behind the iceberg, aground in thirteen fathoms of water, and secured to it. Four hundred and fifty feet long, three hundred feet broad, and sixty feet high, the great iceberg lay about two hundred and fifty yards from shore and about one hundred yards inside the ebb current of the strong tide that would otherwise have tried to push them southward daily.

Their latitude was 81 degrees, 38 minutes. They had been, at one point, nearly fifty miles farther north.

As
Polaris
had approached shore, they almost had a potentially disastrous explosion on board. The fireman on duty had allowed
the water in the steam boilers to get dangerously low. Low water was one of the most serious emergencies that could arise in a boiler room. Safe operation of a fire-tube boiler of the type that powered
Polaris
required that the tubes be submerged in water at all times. If the water level fell below the tops of any of the tubes, they could overheat and rupture. The result would be what old-time steam-plant operators called a “violent rearrangement of the boiler room.” When boilers “blew up,” nobody could say in which direction the red-hot boiler parts would go during an explosion. A vessel's hull could be ruptured as surely as if hit amidships by deadly cannon fire.

The problem caused by the inattentive water tender was discovered just in time. With that close call in mind, the crew worked through a blinding snowstorm, unloading stores on shore so that if the vessel were struck by a berg or suddenly lost in any other way, they would not be stranded if they had to quickly abandon ship. Also, a fire hole was cut in the ice near the
Polaris
for the ample supply of seawater in event of a shipboard fire.

That Sunday at divine services, Hall announced he had named their winter quarters Thank God Harbor, in recognition of “His kind providence” over them so far. He also named the iceberg to which
Polaris
was protectively fastened “Providence Berg.”

Before long, Hall sought out Tyson and admitted he had erred in not pushing farther north. They were too far from the Pole to reach it by sledge that winter. “Next summer, we shall make desperate exertions to gain the ground we lost,” he promised.

After a week, while one party was out surveying and another off hunting, Tyson went exploring to see what the country was like where they would be spending their long winter night. The landscape was of a dull neutral tint, a sort of cold gray. It would before long, he knew, be all of another color: white from snow and ice.

The coastal hills were from nine hundred to thirteen hundred feet high. They had great scars and cracks in them caused by wind, weather, frost, and ice. At the base of the hills were deposited large amounts of debris—stones, sand, and great scales from rocks that had been split off.

There had been no snow on the hills when they arrived, and what fell the first few days ran off and dried up fast. The mountain ranges, which could be seen in the interior, also appeared clear of snow. The land that surrounded them was bare of ice and snow except for the white ribbon of a distant glacier off to the south that swept around in a wide circuit and fell into the wide bay north of
Polaris.

Tyson found the remains of an Eskimo summer camp, consisting of stones lying on the ground in a circle. While Eskimos lived in igloos in the winter, they used tents in the summer. Their tents were made of sealskin, and the stones were placed upon their outer edges to keep the skin taut over the ridge and to prevent the wind from entering or overturning them. Upon removing their temporary homes, Eskimos were accustomed to taking down the pole that supported a tent and dragging the skin from beneath the stones, while leaving the latter in position. There were several of these circles of stones near each other, proving to Tyson that quite a large party of Eskimos had passed part of a summer here. Nothing indicated the length of time since the camp had been occupied. Perhaps they used to come here for the summer, he speculated, and had since migrated permanently to the south. He found some spearheads made of walrus teeth, some pieces of bone with holes bored in them, and a small piece of copper once used as a needle. Among the ashes in the fire pit he found a piece of meteoric iron, their means of obtaining fire.

Nearby, the scientists had built a small structure out of scrap wood. Equipped with a coal-burning stove, the Observatory was a place where they could conduct weather, geological, and other observations. Its framework had already been reinforced once,
as a stiff gale almost shook it down after only a couple of days. Inside the one-room shelter were various measuring instruments, including a standard thermometer, wet and dry bulb psychrometers, maximum and minimum thermometers, and an ozonometer. The first three were read hourly, the latter three once every twenty-four hours. An anemometer was fastened on an upright post, frozen into a barrel to keep it firm. Solar and dry radiation thermometers were also used, as was a barometer.

On his way back to the ship, Tyson spotted large flocks of brent geese sporting in the water, and occasionally a seal would raise its head in the vicinity of the ship to watch the intruders upon its feeding grounds.

Polaris, the North Star, was seen on September 21, for the first time since the establishment of winter quarters, and a large halo was observed encircling the sun.

Bessels and Chester, traveling in the company of Joe and Hans with a team of eight dogs, returned from a weeklong hunting excursion. They brought back on a sleigh the greater part of a musk ox that they had killed. The meat, when cut into steaks and fried, turned out to be very good, without the strong musk scent that male oxen emit when in rut. It tasted like fine beef.

Everyone was pleased by the fresh meat, no one more so than Hall, who understood from his time with the Eskimos its value in warding off scurvy, a disease caused by a prolonged deficiency of fresh fruits and vegetables in the diet, and a serious threat to the well-being of Arctic explorers. Often fatal, the disease is characterized by bodily weakness, inflamed gums, loose teeth, swollen and tender joints, hemorrhaging, and anemia.

Tyson continued to be amazed by his commander. For all his traits, both good and bad, Hall had a most pleasant way of getting along with the men. When it came to his attention that less food was being served in the enlisted men's mess than the officers' mess—on orders from Sidney Buddington—Hall immediately increased their rations, and instructed that henceforth everyone would eat the same food and in the same amount at
both messes; two hot meals a day were to be served. “The American government is paying for this expedition,” he explained. “We will all live as brothers, and eat and drink alike on this ship.”

Highly pleased, the men prepared a letter of thanks, which they sent to the commander's cabin. Signed by the entire deck force and other enlisted crew, it read:

The men desire to publicly tender their thanks to Capt. C. F. Hall for his late kindness, not, however, that we were suffering want, but for the fact that it manifests a disposition to treat us as reasonable men, possessing intelligence to appreciate respect and yield it only where merited; and he need never fear but that it will be our greatest pleasure to so live that he can implicitly rely on our service in any duty or emergency.

Hall was much pleased at receiving the letter from the men, and in response he wrote a letter of his own and had it posted below:

Sirs: The reception of your letter of thanks to me I acknowledge with a heart that deeply feels and fully appreciates the kindly feeling that has prompted you to this act. I need not assure you that your commander has, and ever will have, a lively interest in your welfare. You have left your homes, friends, and country; indeed you have bid a long farewell for a time to the whole civilized world, for the purpose of aiding me in discovering the mysterious, hidden parts of the earth. I therefore must and shall care for you as a prudent father cares for his faithful children.

Your commander, C. F. Hall

United States North Polar Expedition

In winter-quarters, Thank God Harbor

Sept. 24, 1871

At the same time, Hall had a streak of piety. Not long after this exchange of letters, he overheard one of the men cursing another. Severely condemning the expressions, he issued an order forbidding all profane or vulgar language, probably a first aboard a naval vessel.

A violent snowstorm commenced on September 27 and continued for thirty-six hours. The ice began to pack around the ship. Due to the pressure on the hull, more provisions were taken ashore. They were quickly covered in snow, as were the provisions that had been offloaded earlier. The men were ordered to haul them across the flat ground and place them in the lee of a hill. When the storm abated, a house would be built to shelter them.

Ice piled up about the vessel in all manner of shapes. The giant iceberg, which had up until then steadfastly maintained its position, moved in toward the shore. The ice between it and the vessel was broken by long cracks and raised into hummocks. The pressure brought upon the ship was great, as was apparent from the strain upon her frame. Had
Polaris
not been strengthened and specially fitted for Arctic service, she would have been crushed. When the pressure ceased, it was found that the storm had forced the berg in toward the shore one hundred yards, and the ship fifty yards.

When the storm abated, a few seals were seen, and some of the men went out hunting them but got none. A white fox they saw also escaped them. Arctic foxes were the most cunning animals any of the men had ever seen, and proved difficult to shoot or trap.

The ice became so hardened, even where there had once been open water, that Hall began preparing a sledge party to go north. He intended to probe inland, preliminary to a more extended journey in the spring. Hall wanted to get an idea of the best route north, hoping to find better ways than over the icy floes and hummocks of the straits.

Tyson came across Hall ashore, not far from the ship. It was a rare opportunity to speak to him alone. Ever since Tyson had
advised Hall to head farther north, Buddington always made a point to be alongside them so as to overhear any discussion.