Resolute (29 page)

Less humorous, though, was Peter Jensen's health; his legs completely worn out, he could not go on. Leaving Jensen with McDonald, Hayes moved on with Knorr. He was now desperate. All of his hopes, all of his sacrifices, the deaths that had occurred on this journey be pointless if he did not find the Open Polar Sea. For the next three days the two men pushed on, but then found their way completely blocked by ice and cliffs. They could go no further. Hayes estimated that he was now only 450 miles from the North Pole. He was really more than a thousand.

But he still believed in his dream. As he looked off in the distance he was certain that the land dropped off into what was surely the Open Polar Sea. “I felt that I had within my grasp,” he would write, “the great and noble thing which had inspired the zeal of the sturdy Frobisher, and that I had achieved the hope of the matchless Parry.” After leaving a message in a hastily built cairn and planting an American flag, Hayes and Knorr painfully retraced their steps, recovered Jensen and McDonald, and, on June 3, arrived back at the ship. They had traveled thirteen hundred miles in two months.

On July 14, the ice at Port Foulke released the
United States.
After a difficult journey, made much longer by having to put into ports in both Greenland and Nova Scotia because of foul weather, the ship finally reached Boston in October 1861. Hayes's claim that “all the evidence showed that I stood upon the shores of the Open Polar Sea” would soon be proven completely wrong. But nobody could convince Isaac Hayes of that. He would go to his grave certain that there
was
an Open Polar Sea and that it had been within his grasp.

CHARLES HALL WAS
just as certain about his own convictions. He had arrived back in New London a year after Hayes had come home, more certain than ever that there were Franklin survivors on King William Island or in its vicinity, and that his friends, the Inuit, would provide important clues as to where they were. He had found more Frobisher relics and, based on his discoveries, he would surely be able to finance a return expedition. And this time he would get a ship of his own, a vessel strong enough to challenge the ice and bring him to the island. He could not imagine returning without the aid of the skilled and faithful Joe and Hannah, and he had brought them back with him to New London. After leaving them at Captain Buddington's house, he went off to secure what he was sure would be a quick acquisition of the funding he needed.

But he was wrong. Completely out of touch with events at home while living among the Inuit, he had had no idea that the nation was now embroiled in the Civil War—a conflict that had torn the country apart. Names like Bull Run and Shiloh, not King William Island or Barrow Strait, were now foremost in Americans' minds. Once again he raised some money by lecturing and writing, but, as before, he was only able to obtain some supplies and passage aboard a whaler. It would have to do; nothing would stop him from finding the survivors.

It was not until the end of June 1864 that Hall was finally ready to depart. With Joe and Hannah aboard, the whaler
Monticello
set sail under orders to drop Hall and his companions off with a boat and their supplies at Repulse Bay. The
Monticello's
captain, however, miscalculated, and in August the party was deposited at Depot Island, many miles south of where Hall had intended to begin his search. He thought that this time he would be in the Arctic for about three years. He would actually be gone for five, almost all of it spent living among the Inuit. His sole contact with white men would take place only on those rare occasions when he was able to obtain supplies from whalers.

Hall did not expect to find traces of the Franklin party from where he had been mistakenly dropped off, but he and his Inuit companions spent the winter sledging over miles of frozen landscape, hoping they might come upon something of substance. But they found nothing. In the spring, however, Hall was ready to begin his search in earnest. On April 13, 1865, the party set out for Repulse Bay and reached it on June 10. Realizing that it was too late to begin the long trek to King William Island, he spent yet another winter among the natives.

Finally, on March 31, 1866, he was ready to make the journey to King William Island. With Hannah and Joe and a party of eight other Inuit and six of their children, he headed out. The band was immediately assaulted by a raging blizzard that lasted five days. Finally able to resume the search, they were soon rewarded when they came upon a group of Inuit who possessed a great number of relics from the Franklin disaster, including a spoon with Francis Crozier's initials, a mahogany barometer, and a pair of scissors. Most of the stories they had to tell were similar to tales that Hall and other searchers had heard—accounts of ships sinking and the bodies of white men being seen. But one of their tales was completely new. As the Inuit members of Hall's party listened in terror, the natives spoke of a fierce tribe on King William Island that killed any newcomers they encountered. Hall's companions were so frightened by the news that they refused to go on; they wanted to return immediately to Repulse Bay. Hall had no choice but to go back with them.

By May 1866, a downcast Hall was back from where he had so confidently started his main search. Two months later however, his spirits were restored when a boat sent from a New London whaler landed at his encampment carrying letters for him, including one from Henry Grinnell. In his letter, Grinnell had included a communication he had received from none other than Lady Franklin, in which she praised Hall as Grinnell's “brave and adventurous protégé.” After asking the financier to share with her any news of the Franklin party that Hall might discover, no matter how tragic, Lady Franklin then offered an apology. “When [Hall's] first plan … was brought before me,” she had written, “it was represented to me by all the Arctic people as the wildest and most foolhardy of schemes, which must necessarily fail, and with which, for the poor man's own sake, I ought to have nothing to do…I believe Hall is now doing exactly what should have been done from the beginning, but which no government could
order
to be
done.”

Endorsement and encouragement from Lady Jane Franklin herself! Hall was rejuvenated. Aware that there were six whaleships that were wintering over in Repulse Bay, he visited them and extracted a promise that, in the spring, they would provide him with five men who would accompany him to King William Island. In February 1867, knowing that he would need dogs for the trek, he set out with an Inuit he had recruited to obtain the animals. He returned a month later, only to have the whaling captains tell him that the five men would not be available to him for the better part of a year.

Hall had no choice but to wait. But in the meantime he had something truly promising to occupy his attention. He had encountered a group of natives from Igloolik, who had told him that several years earlier they had met a tall white man and his short white companion near their village. Hall could hardly contain his excitement. He was convinced that the tall man must have been Crozier. A short time later, a group of Inuit from Pelly Bay told him that had come across a stone monument that had a marker pointing toward Igloolik. Now Hall was even more optimistic. In March 1868, he sledged north with Joe and Hannah and one of the whalers he had hired, intent on exploring the vicinity of the Inuit's village in hope of finding Crozier or at least evidence that he and others might still be alive. But they found nothing.

Disappointed once again, Hall returned to Repulse Bay to bide his time until all five of the whalers would be fully available to him. Then, on July 31, 1868, he became involved in the most traumatic incident of his life. On a brief sledging trip that he and five of the whalers took, two of the seamen—Patrick Coleman and Peter Bayne—became separated from Hall and came upon a group of natives from Boothia Felix. The Inuit told them that years earlier they had witnessed the ceremonial funeral of a white man. Convinced that the Inuit were describing the burial of John Franklin, the whalers questioned the natives further, eliciting every detail they could get out of them. When they reported back with the upsetting tale, Hall flew into a rage. It was he and he alone who was authorized to question the Inuit. What right had ordinary whalemen to interfere with work for which only he was qualified?

Convinced that it was Coleman who had led the questioning, Hall vehemently berated the seaman. Coleman, a large, well-built man, answered back in kind. Hall was sure that Coleman, Bayne, and the three other whalers he had hired were about to stage a mutiny. Racing to his tent, he grabbed a revolver and, pointing it at the five men, ordered them to calm down. But Coleman, according to what Hall would later write, became even more abusive and began advancing toward Hall. Without, as he would later claim, even realizing it, the threatened Hall fired the revolver, felling Coleman. Handing the weapon to a terrified Inuit onlooker, Hall helped carry Coleman to his tent where, for the next two weeks, he tried desperately to save the man he had shot. But he had been too seriously wounded. Although he would not be charged with a crime, Hall would never be able to erase the memory of the man he had killed.

Not that it prevented him from sticking to his goal. He would no longer have the services of the whalemen, and most of the Inuit in the vicinity were afraid to set foot on King William Island. He had only one option, and he took it. In March 1869, accompanied by Joe and Hannah and a group of five fearless Inuit, he set out once again for King William Island. By May they had reached the shoreline of Rae Strait, across from King William. There, in yet another Inuit village, Hall was introduced to more relics—a silver spoon bearing Franklin's crest, part of a mahogany writing desk, and some ship's planking and copper. The villagers stated that they had discovered a tent on the western shore of the island filled with weapons, ammunition, and various utensils, along with human bones. Asked if there had been any books or paper, the natives replied that they had found these items, but since they had no use for them, they had left them to be destroyed by the elements.

Hall would have liked to have spent months combing the island, but the men he had hired insisted that they could remain for only another week before heading back. Searching desperately during that short time, Hall discovered the skeleton of a man who would later be identified as Lieutenant Thomas Le Vesconte of the
Erebus.
And from a group of Inuit he encountered, he was told the most disturbing story he had yet heard. Four of their families had met a tall white man and about thirty companions who were dragging two sledges. The white men were obviously starving and had begged the Inuit to give them some seal meat, which they did. But then, the four families, having barely enough food to feed themselves, had quickly departed—leaving the white men to their fate.

Saddened both by the story and by the fact that he had to admit that there were no members of the Franklin party to found, Hall headed back to Repulse Bay. He would always believe that, of all the searchers, it was he who would have been best equipped to save any survivors from the lost Franklin expedition. “O, that I could have met Crozier and his party twenty-one years ago,” he would state. “I am sure that I could have saved the whole company. I say it with no egotistical feeling but with confidence of what I know of the country.”

On August 13, 1869, along with Hannah and Joe, the man who had spent five years in the Arctic on this expedition alone, the man who now knew more about the Inuit than any other white man, boarded the whaleship
Ansell Gibbs
and sailed to New Bedford. His obsession with finding Franklin survivors was over, but not his Arctic dreams. He would be back, he was sure, and he had a very different type of quest in mind.

CHAPTER 15.

L
IKE ELISHA KANE BEFORE HIM
, Charles Hall had come home to a hero's welcome. But he had also returned with a new obsession. “Neither glory nor money has caused me to devote my very life and soul to Arctic exploration,” he wrote. “My desire is to promote the welfare of mankind in general under this glorious ensign—The Stars and Stripes.” He intended to reach the North Pole.

He had no time to rest on the laurels that the accomplishments of his first two expeditions had brought him. Others, he knew, were also interested in reaching what now had become the ultimate prize. A German expedition had, in fact, recently tried but failed. Fortunately, the United States Congress shared Hall's desire to make the attainment of the Pole an American achievement. In 1870, it authorized a Hall expedition to the Pole and provided him with a 387-ton steam tug which he renamed the
Polaris.
Hall immediately recruited Sidney Buddington to once again act as sailing master. The Smithsonian Institution, responsible for naming the scientist who would accompany the mission, selected Emil Bessels, a German who, at the age of twenty-four, was already an accomplished doctor and naturalist.