Trial by Ice (7 page)

Besides, the flood of thousands of Germans to the United States had changed the mix of the American people from one of mainly Scots-English descent to one with many German and Irish additions. Arriving in the early sixties, both Irish and Germans had earned their rights by shedding their blood in the Civil War. More than two hundred thousand Germans had fought for the North, mainly due to the recruiting genius of Lincoln's friend Carl Schurz. Whole regiments of blue-coated Germans marched into battle with no one speaking English.

A major difference separated those German emigrants from Dr. Emil Bessel. They came to America to escape the tyranny of Otto von Bismarck and to make America their new home. Bessel came for other reasons.

Germany had a spidery relationship with Greenland and possibly with the undiscovered lands to the north. Greenland belonged to Denmark, and Prussia had just defeated the Danes in 1864 in a war over the troublesome areas of Schleswig and Holstein. In another year Bismarck would complete his unification of Prussia and
the German States into a single country. The Danes still seethed over the loss of North Schleswig, an area where the population was predominantly composed of Danes. Anything to keep Denmark off balance suited Bismarck's purpose.

Already Germany was shifting from a rural nation to one whose industrial growth threatened Great Britain. The United States, too, had just emerged from its own war of unification. Rapidly industrializing as well, Germany and the United States progressed along remarkably parallel courses. Did the wily Bismarck worry about rising alliances between Denmark and the United States? Certainly Germany had an interest in the North Sea and the North regions. Its ships and commerce flowed through that area, and its fishing fleet worked the Greenland coast.

In 1869 Germany had mounted another polar exploration on the heels of the Petermann trip. A screw-fitted steamer named the
Germania
and a supply brig, the
Hansa,
departed Bremen on June 15, 1869, to the sounds of a brass band. No less a personage than Kaiser Wilhelm himself saw the ships off. Captain Koldewey, who piloted Petermann's ship, led the expedition. The
Hansa
soon lost sight of its sister ship, got caught in the ice, and was crushed. The unfortunate crew spent the winter drifting south on an ice floe. Eleven hundred miles later they were rescued by a Moravian mission station close to Cape Farewell in Greenland. The
Germania
fared better, with its crew wintering over, mounting land explorations, and naming their farthest point north, a barren cape, after Bismarck.

Even as late as the Second World War, German influence in that region was evident. Iceland, although commandeered by the Allies, still maintained a pro-German attitude.

Petermann's letter was all it took to convince the selection committee. Its members should have looked more closely at their choice. The
Germania
and
Hansa
expedition shipped with “several eminent men of science, provided with every requisite necessary for the successful performance of their duties.” Obviously the Germans were still interested in examining the nature of the Arctic region. Why, then, was Emil Bessel not included in their list of “eminent men of science”? He would seem the ideal choice. He had just been there. He knew the land, the material, and had the scientific tools.

If his bona fides were so stellar as to woo the Americans, why weren't they good enough for his own country? It cannot be assumed that Bessel wanted a break from Arctic studies, for the
Polaris
expedition followed close behind the German one. Was there something that the Germans knew about Bessel that made him undesirable to them? Or was there an entirely different reason Peter-mann placed Emil Bessel among the Americans?

Like any large bureaucracy, the German army, although known for its efficiency on the battlefield, had its own paper-trail nightmares. Yet Bessel's release from the German army came remarkably quickly, possibly with the army's encouragement. President Grant had to approve Dr. Walker's transfer. Did Bismarck himself give his blessing to Bessel's assignment? To add to the mystery, another interesting thing happened. Oelrichs & Company, a German steamship firm, transported Emil Bessel to New York free of charge.

So Emil Bessel arrived as surgeon and chief of the scientific corps, barely speaking any English. He was arriving, not as an immigrant with dreams of a new home, but as an expert from afar, casting his pearls among the swine. He arrived as a German, and he remained a German. Despite the fact that he received a salary as chief scientific officer and served aboard a commissioned United States naval vessel, he took no oath of loyalty to either the United States or the U.S. Navy. Mystery still shrouds this man. Upon his arrival, the composition of the crew began to change.

Hall personally had asked for Hubbard Chester as first mate. A native of Noank, Connecticut, Chester was a longtime whaler with years of cold-water experience. The two men had met aboard the
Monticello.
With large, wide-set eyes, arrow-straight nose, and an exuberant mustache that ran from the corner of one cheek to the next, Chester bore a passing resemblance to the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. The other man Hall requested was William Morton. With more than thirty years in the navy, Morton was trustworthy, solid, and ever-enduring, like the oak planks that now covered the hull of the
Polaris.
Morton had accompanied Hall's idol Dr. Elisha Kent Kane on both of his Arctic explorations more than twenty years before. Gray-haired and bearded, Morton would prove a rock.

R.W.D. Bryan, an enthusiastic graduate of Lafayette College in
Pennsylvania, was appointed to the dual position of chaplain and astronomer for the scientific corps. To the ever practical and penny-wise navy, both positions dealt with heavenly subjects and so could wisely be combined.

But Frederick Meyer, a native of Prussia, secured the position of meteorologist. In fact, Meyer had graduated from the Prussian military academy and served in the Prussian army as a lieutenant. Crossing the Atlantic with an appointment to Maximilian's army in Mexico, he found himself unemployed when the emperor was overthrown. He then enlisted in the United States Army, eventually ending up in the signal corps. Suddenly Germans dominated the scientific staff, holding two of the three positions.

Emil Schuman, another German with drafting skills, was appointed chief engineer. Schuman, sporting full muttonchops and a waxed mustache, looked the proper burgher. To the day the ship sailed, Schuman spoke less than a handful of words in English.

Herman Sieman, Frederick Anthing, J. W. Kruger, Joseph Mauch, Frederick Jamkaone after another, Germans signed aboard the
Polaris.
After the roster of ten ordinary seamen was filled, only one man, Noah Hayes, was born in the United States.

Other than asking for Buddington, Tyson, Chester, and Morton, Captain Hall appears to have had little input as to the rest of the crew. The army may have pushed Meyer in order to have a hand in any glory, and the academics picked Bessel and Bryan.

The first American polar expedition would have difficulty calling upon Yankee patriotism to advance the flag, because half the crew were Germans. As problems later developed, trouble mounted when the crew divided along lines of nationality.

It is easy to suggest that rapid migration to the newly opened West occupied the minds of most Americans at the time and that it seriously reduced the pool of mariners from which to choose. But the preponderance of Germans is truly puzzling. Why were there so many? Only one Dane and one Swede signed aboard. And where were those hardy seafaring souls of other seagoing nations? Where were the Norwegians? Where were the Portuguese?

Another equally serious division grew as the time to sail approached. Was the primary goal of the expedition to reach the North Pole or to study every conceivable aspect of the far North?
Joseph Henry appointed a committee to detail the scientific instructions. Besides himself, he selected Spencer Baird and other prominent scientists like Louis Agassiz. In their exuberance they produced a list of instructions almost impossible to complete. Every known field of study filled their catalog.

Scientific study threatened to sink the exploratory aspect. Even at first glance, the two goals were diverse and conflicting. Reaching the North Pole meant dashing northward through a narrow window of opportunity before weather, sea conditions, and the Arctic winter slammed that window shut. To study all that the committee requested meant careful, time-consuming measurements and observations, the kind best done from a static observatory. One goal demanded risk and gambling; the other required restrained contemplation. To accomplish both tasks meant dangerously dividing the thinking and actions of the party in half.

To Hall, reaching the North Pole was paramount. Quickly he wrote to Henry stressing that. But Henry remained adamant: science first. Hall resisted. “Science must be subordinate,” he underlined that phrase in his orders. “The primary object of our Expedition is Geographical discovery,” the captain wrote, “and to this, as the main end, our energies will be bent.”

Then Henry, fearing conflict, appealed to Hall's kindness. “I doubt not that you will give every facility and render every assistance in your power to Dr. Bessel, who, though a sensitive man, is of a very kind heart.” How could Henry make this pronouncement about Bessel? He hardly knew the man. Still, he persisted. “As I have said, Dr. Bessel is a sensitive man; I beg, therefore, you will deal gently with him.”

The last thing any dangerous mission needs is a thin-skinned chief scientist.

Misgivings flooded over Hall. To an old friend in Cincinnati, Judge Joseph Cox, he expressed fears his mission would fail, primarily because of insubordination among the officers and crew. He complained bitterly about the makeup of the scientific side of his party to Dr. Robert Newton. Darkly he hinted that strong-arm tactics compelled him to accept the scientists. Refuse the present arrangements and you will not command this expedition, he was told. To Hall this was his best chance to reach the Pole, perhaps his
only chance. At fifty he was already old for such rigorous pursuits. For him this truly was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Another command might never come his way. Besides, he could never face the humiliation of being replaced, and he was too proud to accept a subordinate role.

Once before he had refused when Lady Franklin suggested that Hall share command of an expedition in search of her husband with Francis McClintock. He might be marginal in the civilized world, but in that harsh, white world he loved so dearly, command was his strong point. There he had the will, the strength, and the flexibility to succeed. He could endure the mind-numbing boredom of sitting cross-legged for days in a darkened igloo while waiting for a whiteout to blow through. He could stand the gnawing hunger that forced him to chew on blackened strips of sealskin, and he could press on while his vision burned from the thousand tiny flashes of sunlight-fired ice crystals suspended in the air.

Command he could, but he forgot that prior to this he had commanded only himself and a few Inuit, mainly Tookoolito and Ebier-bing. Captain Hall had no experience leading larger parties.

In the end he bowed to the bureaucrats. Unknown to him, he was right in one respect. This was to be his final passage to the North.

All persons attached to the expedition are under your command, and shall, under every circumstance and condition, be subject to the rules, regulations, and laws governing the discipline of the Navy, to be modified, but not increased, by you as the circumstances may in your judgement require.

Geo. M. Robeson, Secretary of the Navy, Instructions to Capt. C. F. Hall, June 9, 1871

In theory, Congress had passed a bill authorizing funding for the expedition and the use of a naval vessel and “public service” officers where available. In theory, those military men were ultimately under the command of President Grant, the commander in chief. In reality, only Morton and Meyer were in service. The rest of the crew and officers were civilians to be paid at the end of the journey. Hall was ordered to assume command of mainly foreign whalers
and a haughty duo of German scientists who themselves had separate instructions from the American scientific community. Never having held a naval commission, Charles Francis Hall had no idea what the “rules, regulations, and laws governing the discipline of the Navy” were. Neither did the scientists and seamen he was expected to command. No better recipe for a confused command could be devised.

Even the mission's top priority remained unresolved. What was the primary goal to be: exploration or science? On the day it sailed, the
Polaris
carried a divided crew on a divided mission.

F
LAGS AND
F
ANFARE