The Polaris was favored by an unusually open sea; Melville Bay was crossed in forty-eight hours and the “North Water” beyond was so free of ice that the Polaris kept her way unchecked until she reached Hakluyt Island; even here the ice-pack was so open that the Polaris easily forced her way. Littleton Island was passed on the evening of August 27, 1870, and later, crossing the parallel of Rensselaer Harbor, the Polaris attained a higher latitude than any former vessel on this route. Kane Sea and Kennedy Channel proved equally free of ice, so that the Polaris, steaming uninterruptedly northward, entered the Arctic Ocean, hitherto inaccessible, where she was finally stopped by an impenetrable pack, in 82° 26´ N. This point was more than two hundred miles directly north of the farthest reached by Kane’s vessel, the Advance. From this vantage-ground it was seen that the eastern coast-line of Grinnell Land extended somewhat farther to the north before turning to the west, and that, on the other hand, the coast of Northern Greenland trended very nearly eastward. Strenuous, though unavailing, efforts were made to push the Polaris further northward; failing this, attempts were then made to find a safe harbor to the eastward, but none was accessible. In the meantime the main ice-pack of the Arctic Ocean, setting southward to its normal position, carried the Polaris steadily to the south, through Robinson Channel, a distance of nearly fifty miles, and nearly caused her destruction by forcing her on the Greenland coast. Fortunately the pack opened somewhat, so that the vessel was enabled to change her position and secure safe anchorage. This place, later named Thank God Harbor, in 81° 37´ N., 61° 44´ W., was sheltered by a bold cape to the north, while the Polaris was protected from the polar pack by an immense ice-floe, called Providence Berg. This enormous floe-berg, grounded in a hundred fathoms of water, was by direct measurement four hundred and fifty feet long, three hundred feet broad, and towered sixty feet above the level of the sea.
Preparations were at once made to put the crew in winter-quarters, and on shore an observatory was built for scientific purposes. To the surprise and delight of the party, seals proved to be quite abundant, and a small herd of musk-oxen was found, the first of these animals ever seen on the west coast of Greenland.
Leaving his chief of the scientific staff and his sailing-master to their respective duties, Hall decided on a preliminary sledge journey in order to determine the best route for his contemplated journey of the next spring toward the pole. A heavy fall of snow insured good sledging and enabled him to leave Thank God Harbor on October 10th, he being accompanied by the first mate, Chester, the Esquimaux, Joe and Hans Hendrick, with two dog-sledges and fourteen dogs. In a journey of six days he attained Cape Brevoort, in 82° N., on the north side of Newman Bay, a considerable distance to the southward, however, of the point reached by the Polaris in the Arctic Ocean. In a despatch written at this point, Hall says, “From Cape Brevoort we can see land extending on the west side of the strait to the north, a distance of about seventy miles, thus making land, as far as we can discover, about 83° 5´ N.” To illustrate the accuracy of Hall’s judgment and his freedom from making extravagant claims, it may be stated that the detailed surveys of the British Arctic expedition of 1876 show the most northerly point on the east coast of Grinnell Land, Cape Joseph Henry, which possibly could be seen by Hall, was in 82° 55´, or within ten miles of the position assigned it from a distance of seventy miles.
| A Woman of the Arctic Highlanders. Sketched from life. |
Hall returned to the Polaris on October 24th, speaking most encouragingly of his prospects and planning another sledge journey for the autumn. Within an hour, however, he was taken violently ill, and upon examination, Dr. Bessels announced that he had been stricken with apoplexy, that his left side was paralyzed, and that his sickness might prove fatal. After an illness, with delirium, for several days, he improved materially, and was even able, through his clerk, to arrange the records of his late sledge journey, but a recurrence of the attack caused his death, on November 8, 1871.
The death of Hall left the expedition without a head. However, Captain Buddington, the sailing-master, and Dr. Bessels, the chief of the scientific staff, signed an agreement to do all in their power to fulfil the ultimate object of Hall’s ambition. Desultory efforts to go northward by boat were made without success the following year, and the only expedition which had definite result was one on foot by Sergeant Meyer, of the Signal Corps of the United States Army, during which he reached Repulse Harbor, 82° 9´ N., on the shores of the frozen Polar Sea, at that time the most northerly land ever attained.
The future of the Polaris expedition does not strictly pertain to Hall. However, the winter was marked by a series of valuable physical observations, made by Dr. Bessels and Mr. Bryan, the astronomer. In August, 1872, it was decided to return to the United States. Pushed into an impenetrable pack, anchored to a floe, the Polaris drifted with the main ice-pack down Kennedy Channel, through Kane Sea, and into Smith Sound, where, on October 15, 1872, off Northumberland Island, the pack was disrupted by a violent gale, which freed the Polaris. Part of her crew, left upon the ice-pack, experienced the horrors of a mid-winter drift southward of thirteen hundred miles, and were picked up off the coast of Labrador by the sealer Tigress, in the spring of 1872. The Polaris drifted to land in Lifeboat Cove, near Littleton Island, where the party built winter-quarters on shore, known as Polaris House. In the succeeding summer they built boats from the remains of their ship, by means of which they reached Cape York, where their contemplated journey across Melville Bay was rendered unnecessary by falling in with the whaler Ravenscraig, which took them to England.
| Esquimau Woman. Sketched from life. |
The geographical results of Hall’s last expedition were extensive and valuable. Not only was the Polaris navigated to the highest point then ever attained by a vessel, but the very shores of the Polar Sea were visited and explored. Hall carried northward and completed the exploration of Kennedy Channel; outlined the coast of Hall Basin and Robinson Channel; extended Grinnell Land northward nearly two degrees of latitude to practically its extreme limit; added materially to the northern limits of Greenland, and charted a very extensive portion of its northern coast. Unfortunately for the general credit of the expedition, the accurate observations and conservative estimates of Hall were not adhered to, and in their stead were published, under government auspices, a chart of Hall’s discoveries which proved misleading in many of its details, extravagant and unreliable in its claims of new northern lands.
The fidelity, accuracy, and importance of Hall’s Arctic work is recognized, especially by his American and British successors in Smith Sound. Nares, in his official report to Parliament, states that the east coast-line of Grinnell Land agreed “so well with Hall’s description that it was impossible to mistake their identity. Their bearing also, although differing upward of thirty degrees from those of the published chart, agreed precisely with his published report.” Thus Hall merited the commemorative inscription on the brass tablet which the British polar expedition of 1875, with a generous appreciativeness creditable to its own brave men, erected to Hall’s memory over his lonely northern grave. It recognizes Hall as one “who sacrificed his life in the advancement of science,” and further recites that they, “following in his footsteps, have profited by his experience.”