Fatal North (32 page)

“I thought at the time that the man came to his death naturally. It has been talked on board ship that it was foul, but I have no proof of it, and I could not say much about it. There were those that rejoiced in his death.”

Robeson blinked. “Who rejoiced in his death?”

“Captain Buddington.”

“Did anyone else?”

“I thought it relieved some of the scientific party of some anxiety. They did not mourn him, at least. I know Captain Buddington so expressed himself, that he was relieved of a great load by the death of Captain Hall.”

“Why?”

“He was too strict for him, I suppose.”

“Did Captain Hall do anything to interfere with the work of the scientific men?” asked the professor from the National Academy of the Sciences.

“I believe Captain Hall was not allowing them to take all the advantages they thought he should.”

“In what way?” came the follow-up question.

“He wanted them to do as he said, and they wanted to do as they pleased. He wanted them to do their work in his way, and they wanted to do it in their own way. I do not think Mr. Bryan, the astronomer, was included in this. I do not believe he had any difficulty with Captain Hall whatever. I know that Mr. Meyer had some trouble on that score. He wished to do his work in his own way, and Captain Hall wished to have him do it in his. It was settled, I believe, so that Meyer did it in his own way.”

“Did you know of any difficulty in this regard between Captain Hall and Dr. Bessels?” “Nothing serious.”

Asked whom aboard ship he was closest to, Tyson named Chester and Bryan.

“Chester is a peaceable, good man. Bryan was a very fine
young man. He was a general favorite, at least I thought so. He was my favorite.”

Robeson was back to asking most of the questions.

“You did not think there was any difficulty between Captain Hall and any of the scientific party that would be an inducement for them to do anything toward injuring him?”

“I did not think so then, and unless a man were a monster, he could not do any such thing as that. He had not sufficient provocation, and no provocation should induce a man to do such a thing.”

“When Captain Buddington told you that he was very much relieved by Captain Hall's death, what did you understand to be the reason?”

“That Captain Hall was too strict for him, and if Captain Hall had lived he would have continued on northward, and Captain Buddington knew it. He did not wish to go any farther north, and so Captain Hall's death was a relief on the part of Captain Buddington.”

“Did Captain Buddington make these remarks to you alone?”

“He made them publicly, on board the ship. He is a carelessly spoken man, and he certainly should not have made any such remarks. Perhaps he did not mean all he said. I hope he did not.”

With that, the board had no more questions of Tyson and dismissed him.

Frederick Meyer was summoned next.

One by one, over the course of the next four days, every adult member of the ice-floe party testified, but none for the length of time that Tyson had. In all, six persons, including Tyson and Meyer, testified to the inappropriate drinking habits of Buddington, and several to the fact of his having expressed himself “relieved,” and “a stone taken off his heart” by the event of Captain Hall's death. Others, quoting Hall's own vociferous charges of foul play, threw serious doubt over the cause of the commander's death. Some testified that Hall had become
suddenly ill upon drinking the coffee upon his return from the sledge journey, and others saw Dr. Bessels administering daily medicine and injections to the weakened commander.

After departing
Talapoosa,
Tyson walked down the pier to
Frolic,
where he would continue to berth during the inquiry, and climbed the gangplank. As he crossed the main deck, he passed Meyer, in a Signal Corps sergeant's uniform, who was heading off.

The two former shipmates, who had survived together on the ice for six months, walked by each other without speaking a word.

20

Return to the Arctic

G
eorge Tyson, newly appointed acting lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and ice master of
Tigress,
was headed back.

Upon completion of the testimony before the board of inquiry, Navy Secretary George Robeson met with President Grant. Both men came to the same conclusion: a search for
Polaris
and her fourteen missing crewmen must be organized immediately.

Tigress
was a 350-ton steamer that had been built in Canada two years earlier expressly for the sealing trade. Due to her hull strength and peculiar adaptation to the Arctic regions—her “flared” hull allowed the vessel to rise upon floe ice and break through it with her sheer weight—
Tigress
was considered the best ship for the search. In an unusual move, Grant authorized the purchase of
Tigress
for sixty thousand dollars from her owners, who were granted the right to repurchase the ship from the U.S. government after the rescue mission for forty thousand dollars.

The vessel was brought to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where a few alterations were made to her boiler and cabin, while an all-volunteer
, experienced crew was put together. While she lay at the Navy Yard, crowds of visitors, anxious to see the now famous sealer that had rescued Captain Tyson and his company from the ice floe, was constantly streaming through the gates and overrunning the vessel, to the consternation of the workmen, who had been given little time to fit out the ship.

Commander James A. Greer, a professor of seamanship at the U.S. Naval Academy and a renowned sea captain, was given command of
Tigress.
Few line officers in the Navy stood in higher estimation among their peers for their courage and skill than Greer. His orders were explicit:
Tigress
was to “find
Polaris
and relieve her remaining company” if at all possible. Everything else, whether scientific observations or geographical discoveries, was subservient to that mission.

A naval vessel, USS
Juniata,
was also assigned to the search, and on June 24
Juniata
set sail for Greenland, followed on July 14 by
Tigress,
amidst the cheers of thousands assembled to witness her departure.

Tigress
steamed away through the East River and toward the Narrows, saluted on all sides by the shrill whistles of passing steamers, who recognized her and knew the assignment she had been given. Ironically, her departure for the Arctic rescue mission created far greater interest and attention than had the sailing of
Polaris
two years earlier.

Tigress,
carrying provisions for two years, had a complement of eleven officers and forty-two men, including one Frank Y. Commagere, an energetic correspondent of the
New York Herald,
who by reputation was ever ready to dive into any story where reportorial honors were to be won. Finding no other way to secure passage, he shipped as an ordinary seaman, but soon thereafter was appointed, considerately so, to the far less strenuous position of yeoman by Commander Greer.

Joining Tyson in volunteering for the search was the indefatigable Joe, who signed on as interpreter after sending Hannah and Punny to stay with friends in Groton, Massachusetts. (Mary Hall, who had requested that her husband's body be brought back by
Tigress
if at all possible, had come to Washington to see
Joe and Hannah and learn more about her husband's death, but missed them both.) Joe, who had testified briefly at the inquiry, would prove invaluable in the likely contingency of seeking information about
Polaris
from natives. Several
Polaris
crewmen agreed to go but failed to show up at the dock. Three of the German seamen, however, did make the trip: William Nindemann, Gustavus Lindquist, and John Kruger. Also on board were Hans Hendrik and family, who were catching a ride back to Greenland, which they preferred to remaining in the United States, a clime they found uncomfortably warm.

On the afternoon of July 22,
Tigress
had a narrow escape off Newfoundland, nearly running afoul of a large iceberg, which was fortunately revealed in time off their starboard bow by a sudden lifting of the fog. For many aboard ship, it was the first iceberg they had ever seen, and it attracted great attention as they slipped silently past it.

“Is it as large as the one you drifted on so far?” Tyson was asked in awe.

Like the old Arctic hand he was, Tyson explained the difference between a floe—“comparatively flat”—and an iceberg, with “an elevated structure like a mountaintop.”

Some pronounced the giant berg “beautiful,” and others thought it “looked cold.”

“You'll see many a beautiful, cold berg before we get back,” Tyson laughed.

At Disco, Hans and family—the children outfitted in colorful dresses, sacques, and shawls given them by Washington donors—disembarked amid many good-byes. Hans had in cash his back pay for two years: six hundred dollars, a veritable Eskimo fortune.

On the way up the coast of Greenland in a light rain,
Tigress
found herself surrounded by whales of various types—the fin, the humpback, the bottle-nose, and the huge sulphur-bottom—large numbers of them. It reminded Tyson of his old whaling days, which seemed so long ago. Another officer with a similar
history forgot the moment, too, and exclaimed the whaler's call as he caught sight of the first spout: “Thar she blows!”

Fostering the momentary illusion, Tyson gave the answering response: “Where away?” and could almost hear men clambering into whalers with harpoons.

Tigress
rendezvoused with
Juniata
on August 11 at Upernavik, three hundred miles up the Greenland coast from Disco. From there—after
Tigress
shipped a supply of coal—the two vessels parted company. The eight-hundred-ton
Juniata,
not built to contend with ice packs, remained at her anchorage and sent out a coastal exploring party in a small steam launch, and
Tigress
boldly struck north for the last-known position of
Polaris.

Near Cape York,
Tigress
encountered heavy pack ice, which prevented them from getting close to shore, but she went in close enough to observe any flag or signals. Several lookouts were kept aloft at all times.

Clearing the pack, they skirted the western shore of Greenland, and, on August 14 approached Northumberland Island, which Frederick Meyer had confidently testified before the board of inquiry as the location of
Polaris
at the time of her separation from the ice floe party. Captain Greer had been ordered to search here first, even though Tyson had always suspected they were separated farther north, near Littleton Island.

With the handful of
Polaris
crewmen on deck watching for familiar landmarks,
Tigress
came within range of Northumberland Island in full daylight—being midsummer, it was light twenty-four hours a day at this latitude. The scene was unfamiliar, though. Evidently, it was not the place. Since they were quite certain they had not passed it, they sailed farther north. They passed Capes Parry and Alexander, looking sharply around not only for signs of
Polaris
and her crewmen, who they knew might now be living on shore, but also for the location of the October 15 separation.

At last Litdeton Island came in sight. Simultaneously, a shout of recognition rose from all the
Polaris
members on
board, declaring
this
was the spot. Everyone was excited as one and another pointed out familiar rocks and other objects that had been indelibly impressed upon their memories.

Tigress
stopped about a mile and a half offshore. A small boat was lowered, carrying Tyson and other officers, but before it had gone far, some on the ship heard a distant sound appearing to come from shore.

“Silence!” Commander Greer bellowed from the bridge.

In the stillness that followed, the sounds were recognized as human voices.

From his elevated spot, Greer exclaimed: “I see their house—two tents, and human figures on the mainland near Littleton Island!”

No one doubted that they had found the missing
Polaris
crew, but those in the boat discovered otherwise when they landed. The human figures turned out to be Eskimos, whose language was unintelligible to all the officers except Tyson, who obtained some facts from them and looked around the camp while the launch returned to
Tigress
to bring back Joe to act as interpreter for more complete information.

It turned out that
Polaris
had been abandoned soon after she broke away from the floe, and the crew had built a house on the mainland, where they wintered. It had been fitted up with berths from the ship; Tyson counted fourteen in number, indicating that the entire party had made it ashore. They had furnished it with a stove, table, chairs, and other articles taken from the ship.

With Joe's help, they learned further that during the winter the crewmen had built and rigged two sailboats with wood and canvas taken from the ship and that “about the time when the ducks begin to hatch”—approximately two months earlier—the whole party had sailed southward in these boats, taking along with them ample provisions.

Upon hearing this, Tyson knew that there was an excellent chance that the
Polaris
survivors had already been picked up by a whaler in Davis Strait or even farther south.

The winter camp was a scene of complete disorder and willful destruction, although it was not possible to tell how much of this was the work of the retreating party and how much of the Eskimos. But its condition showed that no pains had been taken to seal up or preserve in any way the records, books, or scientific instruments. Also, a careful search failed to reveal any written record of
Polaris
being abandoned. Violating one of the oldest rules of Arctic exploring, there had been nothing left in writing about which route the men intended to go looking for rescue.