Polaris expedition

Polaris, from a wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly, 1873

The Polaris expedition (1871) was led by Charles Francis Hall to explore the North Pole.

Hall received a grant of $50,000 from the U. S. Congress to command an expedition to the North Pole in the ship Polaris. The party of 25 also included Sidney Budington as sailing master, George Tyson as navigator, and Dr. Emil Bessels, a German physician and naturalist, as chief of the scientific staff. The expedition was troubled from the start as the party split into rival factions. Hall's authority over the expedition was resented by a large portion of the party, and discipline broke down.

Polaris sailed into Thank God Harbor (now called Hall Bay) on September 10, 1871 and settled in for the winter on the shore of northern Greenland.

That fall, upon returning to the ship from a sledging expedition with an Inuit guide, Hall suddenly fell ill after drinking a cup of coffee. He collapsed in what was described as a fit. For the next week he suffered from vomiting and delirium, then seemed to improve for a few days. At that time, he accused several of the ship's company, including Dr. Bessels, of having poisoned him. Shortly after, Hall began suffering the same symptoms, and finally died on November 8. Hall was taken ashore and given a formal burial.

Command of the expedition devolved on Sidney O. Budington, who dispatched an expedition to try for the Pole in June 1872. This was unsuccessful and Polaris turned south. On October 12, the ship was beset by ice in Smith Sound and was on the verge of being crushed. Nineteen of the crew and Eskimo guides abandoned ship for the surrounding ice, and fourteen crew remained on the ship. Polaris was run aground near Etah and crushed on October 24. After wintering ashore, the crew sailed south in two boats and were rescued by a whaler, returning home via Scotland.

The following year, the remainder of the party attempted to extricate Polaris from the pack and head south. A group, including Tyson, became separated as the pack broke up violently and threatened to crush the ship in the fall of 1872. The group of 19 drifted on an ice floe for the next six months over 1,500 miles before being rescued off the coast of Newfoundland by the whaler Tigress on April 30, 1873, and probably would have all perished had the group not included four Inuit, among them the skilled hunters Ebierbing and Hans Hendrik, as well as Ebierbing's wife Tookoolito and their adopted daughter Panik.

References

• Parry, Richard. Trial by Ice: The true story of murder and survival on the 1871 Polaris expedition. Ballantine Books (January 29, 2002). ISBN 0-345-43926-0