Trial by Ice (12 page)

This constant movement fractures the ice and crumples it upon itself. Miles of pressure ridges traverse the ice plain like miniature Rocky Mountains, creating barriers impossible to cross. Sharp-edged
sastrugi
like twenty-foot piles of broken glass litter the journey, cutting dogs' feet, lacerating boots, and shattering sled runners. Deep crevasses and open lees of water mingle among the blocks of ice.

Of course, most of this was unknown to Captain Hall and his companions at the time. His journey north was much like what a trip to Mars would be today. Every mile he moved past where civilized man had gone was a mile into the unknown. Even his instruments were primitive by modern standards. In the 1870s the finest tools with which to measure one's position were the sextant, the magnetic compass, and the hand-wound chronometer.

As far north as the
Polaris
sailed, the pull of the magnetic pole on the compass needle rendered it almost useless, deflecting the needle more than 47° to the west of true north. Measuring longitude accurately required an accurate timepiece. While you could measure
your latitude fairly correctly on the surface of the earth with a sextant by taking a noon sun shot, measuring the sun when it was directly overhead, to calculate your longitude required the accurate time. Every four seconds off the correct time equaled an error of one nautical mile.

Once again the British government, in 1728, rising to a challenge, offered a reward to whoever built the most accurate chronometer, one that met its strict requirements. After all, how was the British Lion to rule the seas if it couldn't tell where it was? As usual, the prize money amounted to twenty thousand pounds. An amateur mechanic and carpenter named John Harrison surprised the Royal Society by building such a timepiece. The Board of Longitude equivocated, so Harrison improved his designs, making them more accurate and, more important, small enough to be carried aboard ship. In 1762 Harrison's number 4 marine chronometer erased all doubts. During a test cruise from England to Jamaica, Harrison's clock showed an error of only five seconds. The problem of longitude was solved. Even so, the government paid Harrison only five thousand pounds at first, holding back on the remainder until 1773.

But for these hardy Arctic adventurers, special problems existed. Cold temperatures played havoc with the lubricating oil and finely tuned springs of the chronometers, affecting their accuracy. Using the sextant was even harder. The cold, bare metal of the sextant instantly froze any exposed fingers, necessitating cumbersome gloves. The slightest wisp of breath will fog the instrument. The Arctic sun by late summer runs low on the horizon and vanishes entirely in October. Without a horizon of open water, a plate of liquid mercury must be used to reflect the sighting. The navigator must lie on his stomach on the ice, sight into the shimmering dish, and try to match the sun or star with its reflected circle in the dish. Using a mercury horizon in the twilight to sight dim stars is almost impossible. This compounds errors in the sighting. Any result is then divided by two to get a reading. And any accidental error doubles.

The whole exercise is akin to trying to align the reflection of two swinging lightbulbs in a saucer of water while balancing on your elbows. Only your life may depend on your accuracy.

Years later Robert Peary, with better chronographs and sextants, would still struggle with this difficult means of measurement. Even today his readings that prove he reached the North Pole trouble some historians.

To solve these problems, Hall planned to use Polaris, the North Star, as his guiding light. When asked by members of the academy how he intended to tell when he reached the North Pole, he blithely answered that he would look overhead at Polaris. When the star no longer moved southward as he trekked north but stayed constantly overhead in the firmaments, he would be directly beneath the Pole Star and standing on the exact North Pole. The scientists accepted his logic, for everyone knew the Polar Star hung in the sky directly over the Pole and never wavered. Had Hall actually reached the North Pole, he would have been puzzled by his findings. To the observer standing beneath it, Polaris oscillates back and forth in a small ellipse while the earth wobbles on its axis.

Whatever misfortune Captain Hall suffered with his officers and crew, good fortune favored his advance up the narrow straits. The floating bergs parted, and no pack ice blocked their way. On the evening of August 27, the
Polaris
steamed past the highest point that Hall's nemesis Dr. Hayes had reached. In 1860 gales and ice had forced Hayes's schooner the
United States
to winter over at a place Hayes named Port Foulke near Hartstene Bay. Dr. Kane's exploration aboard the
Advance
in 1853 nearly met disaster when a sudden storm forced ice around the ship, causing it to take refuge in that harbor. Both Hayes and Kane pressed northward by sled while their ships wintered over. Eventually Kane was forced to abandon the
Advance
and retreat south. Within three more hours the
Polaris
continued past Rensselaer Harbor.

A jubilant Hall paced the decks as the sightings confirmed they had reached
78°5V
N, where Kane had grounded his ship and made his winter camp. Dawn found them passing through the narrowing of Kennedy Channel. Beyond this the channel widened again.

William Morton and Hans pointed and laughed as the ship beat through the water. Here was the place they had reached seventeen years before and reported on only to be ridiculed when Hayes later
found it frozen. Kane's Open Polar Sea, they called it, and their enthusiasm brought them only reproach. Now the
Polaris
cruised where Hayes had declared sea travel was impossible. They were vindicated.

Ahead in the swirling mists, the Open Polar Sea narrowed. It was not a sea after all but another of the basins that populate the passage like a string of misshapen pearls. Expansively, Hall renamed the place after himself, calling it Hall Basin. He could hardly wait to see the look on Hayes's face when the man learned the
Polaris
had sailed where Hayes said no ship could.

Exiting the northern end of the basin, the ship brushed aside slabs of floating ice and entered another channel. Now it sailed where no ship had gone before. With mounting exuberance, Charles Hall began naming everything in sight. The channel became Robe-son Channel, after the secretary of the navy; an indentation along its eastern side became Polaris Bay. Ahead another, larger bay was named Newman's Bay, after the good reverend. Headlands rising from the southern edge of Newman's Bay became Sumner Headlands, after the senator from Massachusetts. For all his excitement, Hall covered all bases, political patrons along with ecclesiastic supporters. A sealed brass cylinder noting their northern progress was thrown overboard on August 27.

While Hall, Morton, and Hans congratulated themselves and laughed like schoolboys, the master of sail failed to share their glee. Each nautical mile the ship sailed north weighed like a pound of lead on Sidney Buddington's mind. Not in his wildest nightmares had he expected to sail this far. When they reached Port Foulke, Kane's winter quarters, he strongly urged Hall to put in. There was a snug harbor where the ship could winter over in relative comfort, and he could raid the pantry and sample his drink while Hall could sled north to his heart's content. If that madman and his allies wished to freeze to death on the ice, so be it. That was not Buddington's cup of tea. He was sailing master, and his responsibility began and ended with the safety of the ship. Port Foulke was a very nice, safe spot. They should put in there and prepare for winter. That was what all prudent whaling captains did when faced with ice.

Yet Hall was no prudent whaling captainin fact, no sea
captain at all. He brushed aside Buddington's pleas and persisted in sailing on. No doubt that recklessness rankled Buddington. No one but a landsman would endanger the vessel and all aboard, especially in these unknown waters. If he wrecked the ship, they would all be lost. The ship was their only means of returning to safety.

But Hall continued his perilous course, and George Tyson encouraged him. Tyson climbed the mast, waved his arms from the crow's nest, and shouted down to Hall and the helmsman that he could see more open water ahead.

Tyson's assistant navigator commission did little to clarify his function. Tyson's acting like another captain must have been a thorn in Buddington's side more than a help. The whaler could only imagine that Hall had brought Tyson along because he didn't trust Buddington. In truth, Tyson had been Hall's first choice to skipper the ship. Probably every man aboard, including Buddington, knew that by now. Buddington would later describe Tyson as a malcontent, always criticizing his handling of the ship while toadying up to Hall.

But the crew knew who had the sea experience, and so did Hubbard Chester, the first mate. Like Buddington, they were mariners with little taste for sinking their home just to climb a few more degrees of latitude north. Every Jack Tar of them knew shipmates who had frozen to death or simply vanished with their ships in these waters, and they were not anxious to join the long list of missing sailors posted on the walls of the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford. The ghastly white faces and clawlike frozen fingers of seamen who had died on the ice surely haunted their nightly dreams.

Buddington recruited them to his side whenever he could. Not openly, of course, but with subtle gestures and snide remarks, and always behind Hall's back. Direct insubordination could lead to losing one's master's papers, something Buddington feared. He had to admire the craftiness of the German, Emil Bessel. The chief scientist bested Hall at every turn. Disdainful, aloof, almost imperial in his actions, Bessel unnerved Hall with a combination of ridicule and contempt.

Tyson's shout caused the helmsman to spin the wheel and head the ship back across the channel to where Tyson pointed. Ahead
Buddington saw only forests of floating bergs, shifting and grinding against one another in the failing light.

Even if George Tyson realized that his exuberance nettled Captain Buddington, he couldn't have cared less. Hall's passion to reach the North Pole had infected him. While Buddington fretted, Tyson enjoyed the danger of zigzagging up the channel. Every nautical mile they made brought them closer to their goal and spared them sledding an equal mile over the rugged
sastrugi.
When Mr. Chester informed him just before midnight that an impassable barrier of ice lay ahead, Tyson went aloft and proved him wrong. Spending his entire watch in the rigging, Tyson piloted the
Polaris
through a narrow lee and along that channel until open water reappeared.

By now they had sailed farther north than any white man had ever gone. Here the differences between Buddington and Tyson grew obvious. Like Hall, George Tyson enjoyed the unmarked chart, the undiscovered land. And especially like their commander, Tyson had adapted to dogsled travel with the Inuit. For him the fields of unbroken ice and barren, snow-covered land held no special terror. Other than Hall, no one else aboard felt that way. To the rest, the ship meant safety. To Hall, Tyson, and the Inuit, the ship was only a means to move them higher before they took to their sleds.

Carried along on the ship's rolls in a position that ill suited his rank as captain in his own right, Tyson felt like a fish out of water. Buddington, Chester, and even old Morton fit neatly into the ship's chain of command. But he did not. What exactly did an assistant navigator do if the navigator was sound?

However, as master of the sledges, he had a role, albeit a role off the ship. Like Hall and quite unlike Chester, Buddington, or Bessel, Tyson felt comfortable driving a dogsled over the crackling ice. His heart did not leap into his throat when his sled skated across water overflowing on the ice or hurdled across opened cracks in the floes. He could handle a team almost as well as Hall, a tall accomplishment for a white man. Hans Christian, Ebierbing, and even Tookoolito had run sled dogs from the day they could walk, and Hans handled the teams like the master he was. But Hall and Tyson could steer and control the dogs and eagerly anticipated
venturing away from the
Polaris
on sledding explorations. In that they were quite different from the rest of the crew.

To most mariners, their ship is their home, their substitute wife, their mother, and at most times their strong-willed mistress. Demanding, unforgiving, but always supportive, each vessel has its own personality. Ships are always referred to as “she” or “her” and described as “tender” or “forgiving,” terms applied to women. In a faceless, heartless ocean, a sailor's vessel provides food, warmth, shelter, and his only means of survival.

For these reasons most seamen are reluctant to step off their vessel except in port. Even in dire emergencies with the ship afire or sinking, many refuse to abandon the only security they know even if staying aboard means certain death.

Extrapolate that mind-set to the
Polaris:
a well-found ship, strong and modified with the latest modern equipment to survive in the Arctic. What sailor in his right mind would exchange that security for the shifting ice fields and wind-whipped whiteout conditions surrounding them? There a man might vanish in a second into a crevasse, and shelter meant a cold, dark igloo heated by a single, sputtering seal-oil lamp.

So in the end three divergent groups rode aboard the
Polaris
as the ship beat northward. Buddington, Chester, and the English-speaking seamen saw their future in the safety of the vessel. The scientific corps with Emil Bessel, Frederick Meyer, and the German crew believed they could study the Arctic from the ship or nearby land. No need for them to risk life and limb in lengthy forays away from the
Polaris.
Only Charles Francis Hall with George Tyson, a few exuberant sailors like Noah Hayes, and the Inuit desired to leave the ship once the ice locked around it. Tyson ridiculed the others' fears. “I see some rueful countenances,” he noted in his diary. “I believe some of them think we are going to sail off the edge of the world, or into ‘Symme's Hole,’” he wrote, referring to a mythical whirlpoollike aberration in the ocean that sailors feared could suck down an entire ship, leaving no trace.