Trial by Ice (16 page)

Tyson shrugged. “I would like to go,” he admitted, biting back his desire. Inwardly he hoped his disappointment did not show. Duty came first, he realized. “But, of course, I'll remain and take care of the ship,” he added.

Hall nodded. “I'd like to reach a higher latitude than Parry did before I come back from this trip,” he said. He then explained to Tyson that this foray would seek out the best route for the main thrust in the spring. He hoped to find the land route that would be better than traveling over the ice floes and pressure ridges of the ever-changing straits.

Under diamond-bright stars the two teams raced off into the velvet night on a northeasterly track. Clouds rolled in later that night, and another snowstorm layered a foot of fresh snow over the sled tracks.

The next morning Hans Christian returned with his empty sled. He carried a note from Captain Hall. In his excitement the meticulous planner had forgotten several vital things. The party camped five miles from the ship, waiting for Hans to return with the items. The letter, addressed to Sidney Buddington, read like a shopping list:

Sir,

Just as soon as possible attend to the following, and send Hans back immediately:

Feed up the dogs (14) on the seal-meat there, giving each 2 pounds.

In the mean time order the following articles to be in readiness:

My bearskin mittens

3 or 4 pairs of seal skin mittens (Greenland make)

8 fathoms lance warp

20 fathoms white line for dog lines

1 pair seal skin pants, for myself

12 candles, for drying our clothing

Chester's seal skin coat

1 candlestick, 1 three-cornered file, 4 onions

1 snowshoe

1 cup, holding just one gill

1 fireball and the cylinder in which it hangs

Have the carpenter make, quick as possible, an oak whip handle, and send the material for 2 or 3 more.

A small box that will hold the 1 pound of coffee which I have

A small additional quantity of sinew

Try and raise, if possible, 2 pairs of seal skin boots that will answer for both Chester and myself

Hall then ordered Bryan to calibrate his watch with the ship's chronometer and send it with Hans. He wrote more detailed instructions for Tookoolito to sew a bag for the timepiece, which Hans was to wear around his neck on the return trip.

As an afterthought, he wrote, “Tell Dr. Bessel to be very mindful that the chronometers are all wound up at just the appointed time every day.”

Whether he meant to or not, Hall's letter surely rankled both Buddington and the good doctor. The long list of demandssome vital, others trivialmade the sailing master appear to be his servant. Who was Buddington to be packing C. F. Hall's things like a
mother sending her boy to summer camp? The men must have muttered below decks. And what was Hall thinking while he sorted his own gear that he should forget so many things? In his efforts to micromanage everyone else's work, was he being overwhelmed? The sailors must have shaken their heads over a commander who would focus on the winding of a watch yet forget his essential mittens and pants.

Overlooking the forest for the trees, the saying goes. Hall's actions must have shaken those of the crew who supported him and strengthened the innuendos cast by Buddington that their commander was dangerously in over his head. The ice's incessant chewing on the ship's hull served as a constant reminder to all aboard that disaster hovered around the corner, waiting for just such an omission or a mistake to destroy them.

Distressingly the reminders to Buddington and Bessel reflect the siege mentality developing aboard the ship. Hall sensed sabotage of his efforts to press northward. Without the dogs and an accurate chronometer, he could not reach the North Pole. The letter's tone smacked of imperialism and treated Buddington like a dolt. Surely he would know enough to feed the dogs before sending them back. But the note also raised questions about Hall's own competence. All those odds and ends for him, yet nothing needed for Hans or Ebierbing. Apparently the Inuit knew how to pack their kits.

Far worse, that offhanded remark to Bessel stung the haughty Prussian. As with the instructions for Buddington, Hall's reminder to wind the chronometers assumed that the doctor would otherwise forget. For a man who had a string of degrees from Heidelberg, Stuttgart, and Jena and served as the head of the scientific corps, it was a deep insult.

Here was another example of Hall's attempting to micro-manage his expedition. Even before he left on this first overland trip, he presented Buddington with a long, detailed list of instructions on how to manage the ship in his absence. It ranged from instructing Buddington (the experienced sea captain) as to what to do in an emergency to how to feed the newborn litter of puppies with canned pemmican. Too much coal was being burned to heat the
ship, he complained. Only enough to keep the temperature at 50°F was to be used. All lights were to be out by nine p.m. except for a single candle forward for the night watch, and nothing was to be burned without the permission of Noah Hayes, who was to record every scrap.

Tellingly he appointed William Morton as quartermaster and ordered that only Morton could open supplies. For a final slap in the face, he commanded Buddington to keep a journal of any and all violations of this fiat, as if Buddington would be stupid enough to report his own pilfering. Nothing survives of the response that Buddington or Bessel made to either of Hall's letters. No mention is found in any of the recovered journals or diaries. One can easily assume, however, that their bitterness toward Hall only increased.

The requested supplies raced back with Hans, and the men worked at banking more snow and ice against the sides of the ship. On October 17 the sun sank behind the mountains of Greenland, not to be seen again until February. From then on each shrinking hour of daylight would be marked only by the rosy glow that shimmered along the southern horizon. Blackness and gloom began to permeate everything, slowly sapping the expedition's strength.

Captain Hall's party mushed northward along the foot of the mountains until they struck a frozen river. Since the river drained northward, they traveled along its relatively smooth surface, following the twisting riverbed until it emptied into the head of a bay. There Hall read a special prayer written for the occasion by John Newman and named the bay after Newman. He must have reflected bitterly over the lines in Reverend Newman's prayer that said: “And here in this far-off northern clime Thou givest snow like wool and scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes. Who can stand before Thy cold?” For a cleric who had not sailed north of Disko, Newman's words proved remarkably accurate. Already the trip was bogging down. Although Hall had planned to travel a hundred miles, the sleds had made less than fifty.

Sledding over the frozen water, they reached the mouth in two days and turned north again. Scaling a mountain, Hall and Chester viewed the surrounding land. Below lay the ice-choked Robeson Channel. Across the straits Ellesmere Island ran north by west in a curving arc while the earth beneath their feet rounded to the east.

Hall correctly surmised he was standing on an island and looking at the northern ends of both Ellesmere Island and Greenland. Here was the end of land. Ahead lay the Lincoln Sea and the North Pole. No solid earth remained above water between the tips of these two islands and the top of the world.

Hall's viewpoint of the top of the world was dutifully named Cape Brevoort, after his generous benefactor J. Carson Brevoort of Brooklyn. Hall sat among the rocks on a windswept portion of the mountain to draft a dispatch to Secretary of the Navy Robeson.

Below him stretched a missed opportunity, one that might never come again. Sanguinely he wrote:

On arriving here we found the mouth of Newman's Bay open water, having numerous seals in it, bobbing up their heads. This open water making close both to Sumner Headland and Cape Brevoort, and the ice of Robeson Strait on the move, thus debarring all possible chance of extending our journey on the ice up the strait.

The collusion between his troublesome Captain Buddington and the ever-shifting sea ice had cost him dearly. With his own eyes he watched the fading light fingering across the open water.
The route farther north by sea still lay open!
Had Buddington the stomach, they could have laid to, set the ship in irons, or anchored while the storms passed, then steamed on! At the very least they might have pushed their way into this fine bay to winter over. Deeper than Polaris Bay and guarded by the sheer headlands, Newman Bay offered far better shelter than the shallow scallop of Thank God Harbor. By whatever quirk of nature, Newman Bay remained open, even now, where thick ice gripped the
Polaris
fifty miles farther south.

Most disheartening was the fact that the open water now blocked any farther progress by dogsled. From the speed of the icy cubes sweeping south in Robeson Channel, Hall realized that the current of more than two knots would keep the straits open for days to come. It would do no good to wait for ice to seal the sea. Weeks might pass before the ice grew thick enough for safe sledding.

He was blocked by land and by sea. Clouds the color of hammered pewter, reflecting the dark mood, closed in as the men descended. Like Moses, Hall had been to the mountain and had seen the promised land. Like Moses, he would never set foot on it.

Huddled inside an igloo hastily built by Hans and Ebierbing before the storm broke, Hall finished his dispatch. He neglected to mention two close calls that had nearly spelled disaster for the probing mission. One night in particular almost proved deadly as they sat inside a snow house. Expertly crafted by Ebierbing and Hans to retain the warmth of a single seal-oil lamp yet block the howling Arctic wind, the house matched the Inuit's usual specifications of being airtight. With everyone inside, the Natives dutifully sealed the door with a block shaped for that purpose. Tired, preoccupied, or perhaps careless, no one had bothered to cut a vent hole in the top.

While Hall calculated his dead reckoning and star sights, the kerosene lamp flickered and went out. Assuming it had run low on fuel, Hall continued by the light of the one candle while Chester and the Inuit dozed. Then the candle sputtered and died. Exasperated, Hall struck a match to relight the taper. Match after match extinguished as soon as it was struck. Puzzled by this, Hall suddenly became dizzy. The candle and lamp had consumed all the oxygen in the sealed igloo, he realized. They were out of air.

“Kick down the door!” he ordered Ebierbing, who was closest to the entrance. The Inuit obeyed, and fresh air rushed into the room to revive them. It had been a close thing. Had they been sleeping, they would have suffocated.

Danger and death lurked at each turn. Back at the ship, Chester picked up a pot of coffee boiling on the portable metal stove, called a conjurer because it resembled something a magician might use to brew a potion. Finding the pot handles too hot to hold, the first mate dropped the pot and splashed boiling coffee over his face. Blisters immediately formed. Luckily Chester's eyes were spared, and his burns responded to Cosmoline, the rust-inhibiting grease, wiped from the rifles and metal tools and applied to his burned skin.

If anyone on the trip needed a reminder of the harsh nature surrounding him, he had only to look about. Grim evidence abounded.

During the sled passage one of the dogs had given birth to a full litter of pups. As the animals slept in harness, tied to the sled, the tracings kept the mother from moving her babies to safety. In the night the other dogs killed and ate all the puppies.

“Up to the time I and my party left the ship all have been well, and continue with high hopes of accomplishing our great mission,” Hall wrote the next morning. In his heart he knew he could not account for the actions of Captain Buddington or Emil Bessel while he was absent from the ship.

Hall must have feared that Buddington would sail the ship south at the first opportunity. The skipper had wanted to winter over at Kane's winter camp, farther south. Perhaps the fact that Kane had survived the winter at that location provided Buddington with assurances, whereas their advanced position did not. Bessel, however, appeared happy collecting and measuring where the ship now lay anchored. With his feet on land and overseeing the construction of his observatory, the Prussian scientist seemed fully occupied. But his apparent contentment worried Hall. The man detested him, he and Tyson realized all too well. Bessel hated taking orders from someone he rated far beneath him. Since the episode at Disko, Bessel looked as if he were biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Up to the time Hall had left, everything was fine. But what mischief awaited his return he could only guess.

Nothing of Hall's concerns survived, but George Tyson's diary and testimony as well as that of the men paint a picture of growing acrimony between the chief scientist, the skipper, and Captain Hall.

Trying to end on a positive note, Hall added:

I have omitted to note that our sleeping-bags, our vestments, everything that we wear, are all saturated with the moisture, and frozen stiff. But these kinds of difficulties we do not mind much. So long as we can forward the service we are engaged in, so long will we laugh at such obstacles as these mentioned.

Reluctantly they turned back in the morning. Before departing the men scraped away the snow until they found enough rock to
build a cairn of stones. Placing the dispatch inside a copper cylinder as prescribed by his orders, Hall sealed the opening and trudged away. His dispatch was written on a form instructing the finder in six different languages to forward the message to the secretary of the navy. Chester further marked the site with an empty two-pound meat tin and a condensed-milk can filled with sand. The rough draft of the letter Hall cached remained inside his portable writing desk and so survived for us to read. His scribbled notes tightly fill all four corners of the printed official paper.

The pack ice and icebergs jostling within Robeson Channel mocked any idea of crossing by sled. The rugged slate-gray mountains lining the tip of Greenland blocked farther travel overland. He would have to wait until spring, Hall realized. Already this short trek was proving more arduous than expected.