Fatal North (33 page)

Tyson uncovered a log book, out of which was torn, he noted, all reference to the death of Captain Hall. Also strangely missing from the chronology, much to Tyson's discontent, was any account of the October 15 separation of eighteen souls left on the ice. He did find this disturbing undated note: “Captain Hall's papers thrown overboard today.”

The old Eskimo chief had a final surprise. He claimed that Captain Buddington had made him a present of
Polaris.
Soon after the white men left, the chief explained, the vessel broke loose from the ice she was tied to in a gale and, after drifting about a mile and a half toward the passage between Littleton Island and the mainland, had foundered. The chief spoke sadly of how he witnessed his prized possession sink.

Polaris
lay at the bottom of the arctic waters she had sought to conquer.

 

Aboard
Tigress,
making a run for home after receiving word at St. John's that the
Polaris
party had been picked up by a whaler, Tyson stood at the rail.

It was a particularly clear, starry night, and he was enjoying a smoke on his pipe, which filled the air around him with a rich hickory aroma.

Next to him was the newspaperman, Frank Commagere, much esteemed by all on board, for his intelligence and good humor had enlivened the voyage considerably. Tyson was relaxed, and at that moment the reporter asked his questions.

“How did this story about Captain Hall being poisoned start? Was there any talk of it on the ship?”

“Well, there was a good deal said on board, one way or another,” Tyson said. “When it was suggested, of course, it set all hands wondering whether there was anything in it or not.”

“When was it first said?” asked Commagere. The reporter was keeping the conversation casual. “Who started it?”

“The first I heard was within an hour after the old man died, when I was in the cabin. Before the body was cold. Buddington came and called me out of the cabin into the little alleyway between the cabin and the rail, and said, ‘Don't you say anything about it to anybody, but that bastard little German doctor poisoned the old man.' I said I didn't believe it. He said again, ‘Yes, he did it. I know it. But don't you say anything.'”

Commagere began writing in a small notebook he kept handy.

Two days after
Tigress
arrived in New York, while Tyson was home in Brooklyn with his wife and children, an article ran on the front page of the
New York Herald
that contained everything he had told the newspaper correspondent that night.

Reporter Frank Commagere had done it again; he had his scoop.

That night at the rail, he'd heard more about poison than had the board of inquiry.

21

Unanswered

A
ll fourteen members of the
Polaris
party were picked up at sea by
Ravenscraig,
a Scottish whaler, on June 23, 1873—twenty days after they had left their winter camp, and a full three weeks before
Tigress
put to sea for the rescue mission. They were found sailing south in two small boats, twenty-five miles southeast of Cape York.

After the rescue
Ravenscraig
continued whaling for nearly three months until her holds were filled with valuable whale oil and bone. She returned to her home port of Dundee, Scotland, in mid-September, with Captain Sidney Buddington and his thirteen officers and crewmen, who had enjoyed the warm hospitality of their genial hosts.

Word of the rescue reached the U.S. via the Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. The Buddington party arrived in New York aboard a commercial steamer,
City of Antwerp
—their passage paid by the U.S. government—on October 7, and were transferred to USS
Talapoosa,
awaiting them at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Talapoosa
sailed immediately for Washington, D.C., where the board of inquiry was gathering to interview the final group
of
Polaris
survivors.
Talapoosa
pulled into the Washington Navy Yard the evening of October 8.

Shortly after noon the following day, Navy Secretary George Robeson arrived at the yard in his carriage, and was received with the customary thirteen-gun salute reserved for cabinet members. He proceeded at once to the headquarters of the commandant of the yard, and after a brief conference was escorted down to the wharf where
Talapoosa
was tied up. He was met on the quarterdeck by Captain D. G. McRitchie, commander of the vessel, and shown into a cabin on the upper deck where Captain Buddington and his party were assembled.

After determining all were present and in good health, the Secretary addressed the group. “You must be exceedingly careful as to any statement you make,” he warned. “You must say nothing but what you are willing to swear to.”

The interrogation of the Tyson party had raised many questions that remained unanswered. The return of the Buddington party offered hope that some of those questions would yet be answered, perhaps enough to stifle the rumors and innuendos circulating in the halls of Congress and in newspaper articles that suggested criminal prosecution might be necessary in the case.

A national expedition had failed, and an expensive Navy ship had been lost amid charges of command negligence. Its herolike commander had died under mysterious circumstances. His death had been compared with that of another famous explorer, Dr. David Livingston, in Africa five months earlier, whose demise had turned British attention once more on the dark continent. Hall was America's Livingston, and his voice had been dramatically heard from beyond the grave through the words of those who had served under him: Charles Francis Hall had died with the charge on his lips that he was being poisoned to death on his own ship. It had all the makings for a high-visibility scandal.

Two weeks earlier, on Friday, September 23, the New York Stock Exchange had suffered a major financial crash that would
usher in what became known as the Panic of 1873—this, nearly four years to the day after Black Friday, early in Grant's first term, when speculators James Fisk and Jay Gould attempted to corner the U.S. gold market and threw the stock exchange into confusion, with prices of commodities fluctuating wildly.

As Grant was entering his second term, a series of new scandals in government had begun to be unearthed. Although the President was not implicated in any of them, the improprieties committed by officials in his government and by members of his party in Congress reflected badly on his ability to govern, as did his continued loyalty to friends whose abuse of public office was well known. The very last thing the beleaguered Grant Administration needed was another scandal, especially one emerging from a glorious expedition—backed solidly by Grant—that was meant to restore national pride.

Secretary Robeson left the yard not long after, leaving instructions that all in the
Polaris
party who so desired were free to go ashore, but that they were expected to return “clean and sober” by eight o'clock the following morning for the start of the inquiry.

Soon after, Dr. Emil Bessels came down the gangplank with a long, leather-covered map case slung over his shoulder. He left the yard, but not before catching the eye of a reporter for the
Washington Evening-Star:

Dr. Bessels is a brisk, natty looking little fellow, apparently about thirty years of age, with a thin, straggling beard, and a sharp, restless gray eye. He wore a black frock coat and gray pants with a black stripe down the side. When accosted by a reporter of THE STAR, he … hurried away, as if desirous of avoiding all questions.

Bessels had also drawn the attention of the press during his stay in Dundee, where he had kept himself apart from the rest of the Buddington party, even residing at a different hotel. Several reporters, including one from the
New York Herald,
went to
great length to draw him out on the subject of Hall's death. They found him, according to the
Herald
reporter, “always ready to receive one with the utmost frankness and politeness” and “ready to enter upon all subjects of conversation save that of the death of Captain Hall.”

The doctor did state at all times, however, that Hall had died a natural death.

Beyond that, “we shall be placed under arrest on our arrival,” a somber Bessels told the
Herald,
“and I prefer, therefore, to reserve what I have to say until I meet the authorities in Washington.”

 

The first witness called before the board the next morning was Sidney Buddington.

“Captain, you are aware that when the party from
Polaris
who were on the ice floe arrived,” Secretary Robeson began, “we thought it proper to examine them and obtain their full statements with a view to preserving everything, not only that the government may be informed of what has been done and what has been omitted, but that whatever there was of value to history or science might be secured at once.”

Robeson had opened the proceedings sounding more like the consummate politician he had become than the state prosecutor he had once been.

Buddington watched the Navy Secretary with sleepy eyes and parted lips, giving the impression he would rather be anywhere but here. His thin brown beard was tinged with gray around the chin, and his gray eyes were plainly marked with crows' feet. That day's edition of the
Evening-Star
had pointedly suggested “his ruddy face and ruby nose indicate that he is a man who would never throw his grog over his shoulder.”

“It seems also proper,” Robeson went on, “that we should go on with your party in the same way, so that we may have the statements of everybody freely and fully made from their own recollection of what occurred. We have sent for you first as the commander of the expedition after the death of Captain Hall,
and we desire you to give a statement, so far as you can, of everything which seems to have any reference to the subject matter. What is your name?”

“Sidney O. Buddington. I live in Groton, Connecticut. My profession is whaling.”

“How long have you been engaged in that business?”

“Since the summer of 1840.”

Buddington listed the ships he had sailed on, and those he had commanded.

“You cruised in what waters?” Robeson asked.

“Baffin Bay and Davis Strait. Several times during the season in sight of Cape York, but couldn't get through.”

“Had you ever spent a winter north in those waters?”

“Ten before this voyage.”

“You had been higher than Cape York before?”

“No, sir.”

Buddington told of shipping aboard
Polaris
as sailing master and, once they departed New York, making their way up the coast of Greenland.

“Did anything of interest happen after you left New York up to the time you reached Greenland?”

“Nothing, except that there was some little difficulty at Disco.”

It had not taken long for Buddington to go on the defensive. He had to have known there was every likelihood that the board had heard about his getting caught by Hall helping himself to extra provisions.

“Captain Hall had a very slight difficulty with me about some of my—well, it was a very careless trick in me, and he gave me a reprimand. I apologized about it in the best way I could, and there was nothing more thought about it by either him or myself.”

Setting the tone for the second round of the inquiry in which a number of logical questions would simply not be asked, the board did not inquire of Buddington the exact nature of his “careless trick.”

Buddington told of the voyage north, and the council of officers held to decide whether to proceed farther. He said he had recommended they turn around and head south eight or ten miles where there was “less risk of getting beset in the ice.”

He then told about Hall leaving on his last sledge journey and returning two weeks later, “appearing lively.” Buddington said he went to Hall's cabin about an hour later and found him sick in his bunk with several other people standing around him. “He said he thought he was having a bilious attack, and the question came up as to whether he should be given an emetic. Dr. Bessels was present, and he said he didn't think it would do for him to take an emetic.”

During the course of his illness, Hall would “at times be perfectly rational and then he would be out of his head,” Buddington explained. He told of Hall getting better for a couple of days a week or so later, then suddenly taking a turn for the worse one evening.

“Do you know whether he took any medicine that day?”

“Nothing but injections, as I understood. I never saw them. I understood the doctor used an injection, as he said, of quinine. He told me so. The doctor, I mean, told me so.”

“Did Captain Hall seem to have an idea that people were poisoning him or murdering him or something of that kind?”

“Yes, sir. He insisted upon it.”

Buddington told of the night Hall had asked him how to spell murder.

“Did he accuse anybody in particular?” asked Robeson.

“Yes, sir.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Bessels. At times he thought everybody was at it. But he appeared to spit out his whole venom on him—he appeared to think that the doctor was the proper one.”

“Did anything occur at that time which induced you to believe that anybody was trying to poison him or trying to injure him in any way?” asked the Navy Secretary.

Buddington shifted noisily in his seat. His bulk was enormous, much too big for the chair creaking under his weight.

“Well, sir, only the doctor came to me one night and said, ‘Captain Hall is quite unwell and won't take any medicine.' I said, ‘Mix up a dose more than you want him to take, and if he sees me take some of it, he will take it then without any difficulty.' The doctor said, ‘It will not do for you to take the first drop of quinine.' That's all the remark I heard. The doctor spoke once about Captain Hall having a very strong constitution.”