Hall's labors did not cease with his discovery of the Franklin expedition. He became an enthusiast concerning the arctic and seemed to enjoy its weird icy scenery and attendant perilous excitement. Believing that he could reach the north pole if he had a properly equipped expedition, he planned a fourth voyage and appealed to Congress for assistance.
A generous appropriation was made by Congress, and on July 3, 1871, the expedition set sail from New London, Conn., carrying a full crew and several scientists. The vessel, which was named the Polaris, touched at several places on the western coast of Greenland to secure additional dogs and skins suitable for arctic clothing, and then steamed north as far as seemed safe, to establish winter quarters preparatory to making a dash for the pole in the spring.
The vessel passed through Robeson Channel into the polar ocean, reaching 82° 11', then the highest point ever reached by a ship. Not finding a good harbor, Hall sailed south about fifty miles. He anchored near the Greenland shore to the lee of a stranded iceberg. Building material for a house and part of the stores were removed to the land in case anything happened to the ship. Then the ship was banked up with snow and part of the deck was covered with canvas to keep out the cold.
The weather being propitious, Captain Hall thought best to take a sledge journey to find the lay of the country. He ordered the dogs to be well fed, and accompanied by two other sledges advanced northward about fifty miles, making side trips to take observations. At the end of two weeks he returned seemingly perfectly well, but in a few hours complained of illness. Thirteen days afterward he died. The date of his death was November 8, 1871, just a little more than four months from the time he left the port of New London buoyant with hope.
The command of the expedition now devolved on Captain Buddington, a man of dissipated habits and lacking in discipline. During the winter and spring severe storms crashed the ice-pack against the sides of the vessel, causing it to leak. In the meantime exploring parties were sent out with sledges and boats, gathering not a little knowledge concerning the west coast of Greenland. Then the vessel began to leak badly, and Captain Buddington ordered all hands on board for return home.
Great fields of ice still covered the sea, and it was with extreme difficulty that the vessel made its way through them southward. A severe gale damaged the vessel still more, and as it seemed certain that it could not float much longer, preparations to abandon it and to move at once to the ice-floe were made.
At the dead of night, in the face of a fierce gale, a part of the ship's company and stores were transferred to the ice. Then the heaving billows broke the vessel loose from the floe, separating the men on the ice from those on the vessel. With eighteen companions Captain Tyson lived on the ice-floe which moved southward, breaking off piece after piece, for a period of six and one-half months, suffering incredible hardships from cold, hunger, and constant fear. Finally, they were sighted off the Labrador coast by the ship Tigress and rescued in a starving condition. The story of this ice-floe journey of one thousand three hundred miles is one of the most thrilling in maritime annals. Fortunately, there were two Eskimos on the ice-floe skilled in the capture of seals, else the entire company would have starved to death, since but a small portion of the provisions had been transferred to the floe when the vessel parted from it. The devices for sustaining their lives during the journey form interesting reading. Strange to relate, no one was seriously ill and no deaths occurred during this remarkable ice voyage.
After drifting a while the Polaris was purposely beached on the Greenland shore and the stores placed on land, where a house was built in which to spend the second winter. In the spring two boats were constructed in which the company started southward along the coast, where they were finally picked up by a whaling vessel.
The conquest of the northeast passage was not achieved until the latter part of the century. In 1878 Baron Nordenskjold, a Swedish explorer commanding the Vega, entered the Arctic and sailed eastward along the Russian and Siberian coast. Nordenskjold was the first navigator to double Cape Chelyuskin, the northern cape of Asia. The Vega reached Bering Strait where she was nipped by the ice-pack. In the following spring she reached Japan in safety.
In 1879-80 Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka set out on an overland expedition northwestward for Hudson Bay, to gather knowledge concerning the great Arctic Plain of North America. Schwatka's was probably the longest sledge journey ever made up to that time. With a small party of men, his dog sledges covered a distance of three thousand miles. Schwatka found the skeletons of several members of Sir John Franklin's party. These he buried on King William Land.