Resolute (31 page)

Finally the storm shifted; everyone joined the women and the children in the boat and they were able to row to yet another large floe. But although they had survived this latest ordeal, all hope was now fading. Even Tyson felt that the end was near. “Fearful thoughts go through my brain,” he wrote, “as I look at these eighteen souls, without a mouthful to eat.”

IT WAS NOW
April 30 and they had drifted into the commercial shipping lanes off Labrador. It had been some six months since they had jumped off the
Polaris.
Given the vagaries of the currents and winds, they had drifted almost two thousand miles. Suddenly, they spotted first one ship and then another. But in the heavy fog no one was on deck on either vessel to hear their frantic shouts or see the flags they feverishly waved. Then they spotted a third ship that seemed anchored. It was a Canadian sealer, the
Tigress.
Hans Hendrik took to his kayak, paddled to the vessel, and brought back a rescue party.

In his journal, Tyson noted the reaction he got when he told the
Tigress's
crew members that he and his companions had been on the ice for six months. “One of the party looked at me with open-eyed surprise and exclaimed, ‘and was you on it night and day?' The peculiar expression and the absurdity of the question, was too much for my politeness. I laughed in spite of myself.”

Miraculously, they had survived. But what of the
Polaris?
What had happened to the ship and its remaining crew members since Tyson had last seen them six months before? The vessel, Tyson and his companions later learned, had not been as badly damaged as the engineer had believed. It had not, in fact, been taking on more water than its pumps could handle. But it had run out of coal soon after being driven away from the party stranded on the ice and Buddington had been forced to run it aground.

Fortunately, he had beached the
Polaris
close to an Inuit village that in the past had been friendly to Arctic explorers. The natives helped Buddington and his remaining crew survive the long winter. In the spring, they built two boats, sailed south, and were soon picked up by a whaleship out of Scotland, which took them to England. Booking passage on a British steamship, they arrived in New York on October 7, 1873. Buddington had orders to go directly to a navy board of inquiry investigating the death of Charles Hall. Tyson had already given his testimony, including the fact that Hall had told him that he was being poisoned. After listening to all the witnesses, the board admonished Buddington for his failure to maintain discipline aboard the
Polaris
and for drinking while on duty. Even though Buddington had testified that he hadn't seen Tyson and his companions after the
Polaris
began to drift away, the board also criticized the captain for abandoning his shipmates.

On the larger issue of what had happened to Hall, the navy concluded that he had died of apoplexy. Many observers believed that it was a whitewash. The navy, they felt, was determined to avoid the disgrace that would have been attached to admitting that a national hero, the man who had sacrificed so much to search for John Franklin and for the North Pole, had been murdered by one of his own men.

The story does not end there. In 1968, Hall's biographer Chauncey C. Loomis, journeyed to the explorer's grave, where he took samples of Hall's hair and fingernails. Analysis at a Canadian forensic laboratory revealed “an intake of considerable amounts of arsenic by C. F. Hall in the last two weeks of his life.” This fact alone, however, does not prove conclusively that Hall was murdered. As was the case with most vessels of the day, there was a good amount of arsenous compound, a common Victorian remedy for headaches and other ailments, aboard the
Polaris.
Hall himself might have accidentally taken an overdose. The real story will probably never be revealed. What we do know is that no one, including Bessels—who had had such an openly hostile relationship with Hall—was ever charged with murder.

LIKE MANY OF
the mysteries associated with nineteenth-century Arctic exploration, we'll never know what really happened. What we do know is that Charles Francis Hall's accomplishments were considerable. He had made significant discoveries. He had solved parts of the Franklin puzzle. He had stood at a point further north than any other non-native had ever reached. Given his fierce determination, who was to say that he would not have conquered the Pole? And, just as he had been inspired by fellow American Elisha Kane, Hall had lit a spark under other would-be explorers anxious to leave their own mark on the Arctic.

CHAPTER 16.

ONE OF THOSE WHO
had been most inspired by Charles Hall was a man who had already experienced a most interesting career. Born in 1849 in Galena, Illinois, Frederick Schwatka graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1871. As a second lieutenant in the 3rd Cavalry of the army, he served for several years throughout the American West, where, though portly and not in the best physical condition, he earned a reputation as an experienced leader. After resigning his commission, he studied law and was admitted to the Nebraska bar. Then he studied medicine and received his medical degree from the renowned Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York.

But in 1877, Schwatka was not interested in practicing either law or medicine. He wanted to “close the book” on the Franklin mystery. Like so many others around the world, he had been captivated by the search for Sir John. He was particularly taken with one of the greatest mysteries that still remained. Scores of Inuit reports of the fate of the lost expedition had been heard. Hundreds of relics had been gathered. Graves and skeletons of members of the
Erebus
and the
Terror
had been found. But, aside from the one note that William Hobson had come upon, no written records of the sad expedition had been discovered. They had to be out there. The full story of Franklin and his men would never be known until they were uncovered—and Frederick Schwatka was determined to find them.

As England's
Nautical Magazine
had declared more than twenty years earlier: “What became of Sir John Franklin and his party…is a mystery; the truth will only be arrived at from the papers which, it is not unreasonable to believe, will be found…at the scene of this dreadful catastrophe.” Schwatka could not have agreed more. His desire had grown into full-blown passion when, in 1876, whaling captain Thomas Barry returned from the Arctic with a silver spoon bearing the Franklin crest and what he swore was a reliable story that he had heard from a tribe of Inuit he had encountered. According to the natives' account, a stranger in uniform, accompanied by several white men, had visited them several years before and told them that a large quantity of papers had been left in a cairn somewhere between King William Island and Melville Peninsula.

Schwatka could not get Barry's report out of his head. If it was true, it could solve one of the most nagging mysteries that still plagued all those interested in the Franklin saga. Why had the cairn that Penny, Ross, and others had found at King William Island more than twenty-five years ago been empty? Here, perhaps, was the answer. It was certainly plausible that, for whatever reason, Franklin's men had built another cairn in the area and deposited the precious papers there.

Schwatka had not been the only one to become excited about Barry's report. James Gordon Bennett, the editor of the
New York Herald
, used his considerable influence to promote an expedition to find the documents. John Morrison, the owner of several whaling vessels, then stated that if Captain Barry would sail the vessel, he would donate the use of his schooner, the
Eothen
, to the project. Joining in, the American Geographical Society, of which Isaac Hayes was an important member, announced that it was anxious to sponsor the expedition. And it was Hayes, impressed with both Schwatka's background and his obsession with finding the papers, who successfully urged the society that the cavalry officer/lawyer/doctor be given command.

ARMY OFFICER
, lawyer, physician passionate explorer—Frederick Schwatka was arguably the most versatile individual involved in the Franklin search. His determined quest for the written records of the Franklin expedition led to what was described as “a journey unparalleled in the history of Arctic travels.”

The
Eothen
sailed out of New York on June 19, 1878. Included in the crew were Henry Klutschak, who was to serve as artist and surveyor, Frank Melms, who had spent many years in the Arctic, and William Gilder, who had been named second-in-command. Hailing from a prominent Philadelphia family, Gilder had served as a major in the 40th New York Regiment, and was now a reporter for the
New York Herald.
Gilder's extensive journal of the expedition would prove to be one of the most valuable records ever compiled by an Arctic venturer, particularly his accounts of Inuit testimony and his descriptions of the various aspects of the natives' ways of life. Also aboard were Joe and Hannah who, having managed to survive the
Polaris
misadventure, were now serving under Schwatka.

On August 9, Captain Barry landed the expedition at Camp Daly near Depot Island, where Schwatka and his crew set up camp. Discovering they were there, several Inuit families soon settled near the encampment. Schwatka immediately took advantage of their presence, and throughout the fall and the winter had his men—most of whom had no experience in the North—learn everything they could from the natives about traveling and living in the Arctic.

Early in the expedition, it appeared that confirmation of Barry's report might indeed be found. In December 1878, Schwatka and his men interviewed an Inuit named Nutargeark, who told them that many years ago his father had brought a spoon with him from King William Island that corresponded in description to the one that Barry had taken to the United States. The Inuit said that it had come from one of the boat places where relics and skeletons had been found. Nutargeark firmly stated, however, that he had not given the spoon to Barry but to the wife of a friend named Sinuksook, who, in turn, had given it to a whaling captain named Potter. “We saw Sinuksook's wife a little later,” Gilder wrote, “and she distinctly remembered having given the spoon to Captain Potter. It was necessary, therefore, to find this officer.”

Fortune was with the expedition, for it was soon learned that Potter, now second-in-command of a whaling vessel, was wintering at Marble Island, only an eight-day sledge journey from where the Schwatka party was located. In the first week of January 1879, Gilder and Klutschak, filled with the anticipation of verifying Barry's story and perhaps even being led to the paper-filled cairn, traveled across the ice to Marble Harbor and found Captain Potter. Gilder described the encounter: