Trial by Ice (9 page)

Trouble reared its ugly head amid the placid waters and wildflower-covered slopes. Several seals on the boilers needed replacement, and the engine required readjustment. Also, the skills of their carpenter, now aboard the
Congress,
were sorely missed. Hall and Buddington tried unsuccessfully to hire a carpenter from the town to fix the battered storage compartments. Summer was the busy season for the fishing fleet, and everyone with the needed skills was either at sea or inundated with repairs on the local vessels. The carpentry work would have to wait until Coffin caught up with them.

The seeds of dissension sowed by the unresolved questions of priority and command now sprouted roots. Bessel forcefully rejected any idea that Hall commanded him or members of his scientific corps, even though Captain Hall's orders specifically gave him
overall
command of the expedition. With his Prussian heritage, the meteorologist Meyer sided with Bessel, as might be expected. Their actions bordered on insubordination. While the two carefully avoided a direct confrontation, they seemed to be waiting, biding their time for the right moment to strike. That moment would not be far off.

Here again the foglike nature of the command structure created problems. If
Polaris
had been a full-fledged military vessel crewed and commanded by naval personnel, Bessel and Meyer would have been clapped in irons and sent home for court-martial when the
Congress
arrived. But they were not commissioned officers. Even Captain Buddington was without commission.

Hall found himself backed by Tyson and Morton, while Buddington and Chester waffled. Worse, the officers' quarrel spread below decks to the men. Soon they, too, dividedand along national lines. Not surprisingly, the Germans sided with Bessel. Reverting to their native tongue, knots of German-speaking crew members congregated in the fo'c'sle, more concerned that their fellow countrymen won the argument than with the goals of their mission.

George Tyson later related to E. Blake Vale:

A point of discussion arose as to the authority of the commander over the Scientific Corps. Strong feelings were mutually exhibited, which extended to the officers, and even
the crew, among whom was developed an unmistakable feeling of special affinity on the score of national affiliation.

Here Hall should have acted decisively. But he didn't. Instead, he chose to bow to the wishes of Bessel. He backed down. “However, matters were smoothed over,” Tyson advised. “The Scientific Corps were left free to follow their own course, and the threatened disruption of the party avoided.” Members of the scientific corps were given a free hand to do what they wished. But the weed of dissension remained alive.

Charles Hall's lack of command experience obviously played a part in his abdication, as did his feelings of inferiority when dealing with the cultured Bessel. In the back of his mind hung the threat detailed to him by the shadowy parties in Washington. In addition, he had a tendency to overreact, and he knew it. On his first trip to the Arctic aboard the
George Henry,
he became convinced the crew thought he was eating their rations and meant him ill. Officially not a member of the crew, Hall had brought his own provisions. Food is a precious commodity in the Arctic and remained constantly in the back of the sailors' minds. Unable to convince the crew members that he ate only his own food, Hall took to his cabin and began a hunger strike. It took the intervention of Captain Buddington to resolve that crisis. Maybe Buddington reminded Hall of that episode.

But another, far darker incident weighed more heavily on his mind and caused him to back off. In the summer of 1869, Hall had killed a sailor named Patrick Coleman. At that time he had contracted with five whalers to aid him in his search for Franklin. An argument broke out on July 31 over whether the men were working hard enough. Presumably Hall was paying their wages and felt he was not getting his money's worth. Hot words flew back and forth, the sailors besting Hall with their experience in swearing. One man in particular, Coleman, fanned the flames and stood out as the leader. Hall implored him to cease his “mutinous talk and conduct” and laid his hand on Coleman's shoulder. The seaman took greater offense, doubling his fists, and prepared to launch himself at Hall. Normally Hall might have been a match for Coleman, but he feared the other four whalers would join the fray. And one of the rebellious
men, Peter Bayne, held Hall's rifle. Sensibly, Hall demanded it back, and Bayne sensibly handed it over. The beleaguered explorer rushed out of the whaler's tent to his own tent with the rifle in hand. That should have ended the affair, but Hall next did something that is hard to excuse.

Seizing his Baylie pistol (a six-shot revolver) from his tent, Hall rushed back to confront Coleman. Again, he demanded to know whether Coleman still felt mutinous. The results were predictable. Coleman's blood was up, and he would not back down. The man's response grew more threatening, and Hall shot him.

Most seamen carry a knife for utility work aboard ship, so Coleman and the others might not have been completely unarmed. When faced with an unruly crew, a prudent sea captain would collect the men's blades and have the blacksmith strike off the pointed tips. Thus “tipped,” the knives could not be used to stab the officers yet still retained their function to cut line. A sailor carrying a tipped knife bore the stigma that he might be trouble. But no mention is made of any knife drawn during the argument. In a modern court of law, Hall's actions would constitute manslaughter, possibly even murder.

Hall then turned on his heel, walked out of the tent, and handed his pistol to one of the startled Inuit who crowded outside. Returning to the fallen Coleman, Hall dragged the wounded man over to his own tent, half expecting the sailor to gasp an apology with his last breath. But Coleman refused to die, much less repent.

Stricken now with guilt or remorse, Hall resolved to nurse the critically wounded Coleman back to health. Only moments before, he had aimed directly at this same man's heart, resolved to kill him. The avenging angel had instantly transformed into Florence Nightingale. Days passed as Hall tried everything he knew to save Coleman. Coleman died two weeks later, on August 14, having endured a slow and painful demise from infection and probably peritonitis and pneumonia. Two days after Coleman's death, the whaling ships returned to Repulse Bay. On the day the ships left to hunt whales, Hall awoke to find himself alone. His remaining whalers had deserted. Again, he was alone with the Inuit.

Killing a man quickly is bad enough. Killing one of your own companions is even worse. Watching someone's protracted demise
from your bullet, hearing his labored, gurgling breath, changing his fetid dressings in the close confines of a small tent, and watching his skin pale and mottle as his life slowly drains away must be horrendous. No doubt it seared deeply into Charles Francis Hall's mind.

No official action came of the shooting. Judge Roy Bean might have been the only law west of the Pecos, but that far north there was no law at all. What authority visited this desolate notch along the western edge of Foxe Channel came and went with the whaling ships that wintered there. And that authority related only to the captain's law aboard his own vessel. That summer the whalers had long since sailed in search of the humpback.

On his return to New York, Hall dutifully confessed his actions to his patron Henry Grinnell, who found that no one wanted authority for that desolate region. Repulse Bay, where the shooting had taken place, lay beyond the territorial borders of the Dominion of Canada. Years later Peter Bayne claimed that Coleman and he had discovered evidence as to the whereabouts of Sir John Franklin's grave from Eskimo and thus earned the enmity of Hall for their meddling, possibly adding revenge to the cause of the shooting.

One thing is certain: The cold, isolation, alien landscape, and unforgiving ice make even the smallest slight grow out of proportion. In a place where the endless sky and boundless white land merge into one colossal landscape that assaults and overwhelms the senses, the value of a single human life diminishes to nothing. A person's very soul is threatened, so the mind turns inward in self-defense. Imagination and fear go hand in hand. Since everything is in short supplyfood, firewood, shelter, and warmthsurvival becomes the main preoccupation. The land dispenses with cockeyed optimists quickly. A hidden crevasse, fragile ice, a sudden storm and the unwary vanish forever. No doubt Hall reacted as he did because he knew that in the Arctic the glass is always half-empty, never half-full.

Stepping back from this confrontation only weakened Hall's command. The Germans aboard now saw their fellow countryman
Bessel as stronger than Hall, and the science projects vaulted to equal importance with the quest for the North Pole.

Up to this time, Hall had regarded Bessel as lower in the command structure than the man's title of chief scientific officer implied. As late as June 20 Hall referred to Bessel's role as “naturalist and photographer” and “most likely … the surgeon” in a letter he wrote to astronomer Henry Gannett of the Harvard College observatory. Now Bessel had challenged his command, and Buddington had refused to support Hall.

In a quandary, Hall spent his days away from the ship, climbing the hills while the engine was repaired.

With the rift widening, the
Polaris
steamed north into the Labrador Sea and headed for the western coast of Greenland. Proceeding along that serrated coast, it took advantage of the northerly flowing West Greenland Current, which hugs the coastline. The usual banks of fog and walls of mist and drizzle greeted the ship, while the air grew cold and heavy with the reek of salt and rotting sea grass.

Reaching Holsteinsborg (now called Sisimiut after the modern tendency to restore the Inuit names to Greenland), the
Polaris
anchored. Here Hall hoped to purchase additional coal for his boilers and reindeer hides to clothe his crew. During his visits with the Inuit, Hall had recognized the value of using reindeer hides for outer clothing. The waterproof, hollow shafts of each reindeer hair provide natural buoyancy that aid the animals in crossing rivers and furnish superior insulation against the cold. At a time before synthetic fibers, no finer winter clothing could be found. The pullover style of the Eskimo parka with matching pants retained body heat much better than European dress, with its buttonholes and loose flaps. Wool loses its insulating property when it becomes wet. Hypothermia, frostbite, and death rapidly follow. Hall did not plan to repeat Franklin's mistake of requiring his men to wear wool and canvas coats.

Unfortunately he was thwarted on both accounts. The remote settlement of Holsteinsborg had little coal to spare, and reindeer skins were scarce. The warming trend that favored thin ice for his expedition had also altered the annual migration of the reindeer.

Warmer weather meant less need to wander south in search of the lichens and moss the herbivores ate.

Meeting an old friend, Frederick Von Otto, who headed a returning Swedish exploration, Hall did receive good news. Von Otto's crew had sailed as far north as Upernavik.
Baffin Bay was open.
The ice field had receded. Only an occasional iceberg dotted the leaden water between Disko and Upernavik. Hall was elated.

In an instant he changed his route of attack. Originally he had planned to sail as far west as he could into Jones Sound, the gap between the saw-toothed fingers lining the bottom of Ellesmere Island and the top of Devon Island. Once the
Polaris
encountered ice too thick to drive past, the expedition would take off overland for the elusive Pole. That was the plan he'd presented to the academy and to the government.

But Von Otto's report changed everything. Smith Sound, directly north of Baffin Bay, might be breached. With skill and luck Hall could sail the
Polaris
through that narrow gap into Kane Basin and on into the Kennedy Channel. Only sixteen miles of water separated Greenland from Ellesmere Island at that spot. The Humboldt Glacier, with its towering columns of ice, flanked the eastern shores of Kane Basin. He would slip north of that devilish ellipse on the charts marking the eightieth parallel. Within six hundred miles of the North Pole!

He must act swiftly, he realized. The ice could re-form at any minute. He could not wait for his supply ship, the
Congress,
to arrive. Putting aside his feelings, Hall left word of his change of plans and ordered the
Polaris
to make for the island of Disko, the sharp-edged lump of rock jutting into Baffin Bay roughly halfway between Holsteinsborg and their final jumping-off port, Upernavik. Driving the engines full-out, the ship made the village of Godhavn on Disko in twenty-four hours.

For six anxious days, Hall and his crew fretted over the absence of the
Congress.
Every day they waited meant a missed opportunity. The captain used the time to purchase the precious furs and extra sled dogs the party would need. Disko had no reindeer hides either, so sealskins and dog skins were substituted. He also secured the services from the Danes of another Inuit named Hans Christian,
whose renown as a dog handler and hunter were without equal. With Hans and Ebierbing, the dog teams now had expert handlers.

But Hans Christian was at Preven, 60 miles south of Uper-navik. To the first mate fell the yeoman's duty of taxi driver. First, Chester searched among the fjords in an open whaleboat for Karrup Smith, the district inspector of Disko and ranking Danish official. Paddling more than 175 miles up and down the coast, the mate returned with the inspector only to be sent off to fetch Hans Christian, the new Inuit addition.

On August 10, cheers rang across the deck of the
Polaris
as the black smoke and funnels of the
Congress
hove into sight. Larger than the
Polaris,
the supply ship carried much-needed coal and extra stores. Karrup Smith, delighted to be furthering diplomatic ties with the United States, readily allowed the extra coal and food to be stored in the government warehouse.