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HISTORY
 The
Polaris expedition (1871) was led by Charles Francis Hall to
explore the North Pole.
Hall received a grant of $50,000 from the U. S. Congress to
command an expedition to the North Pole in the ship Polaris. The
party of 25 also included Sidney Budington as sailing master,
George Tyson as navigator, and Dr. Emil Bessels, a German
physician and naturalist, as chief of the scientific staff. The
expedition was troubled from the start as the party split into
rival factions. Hall's authority over the expedition was
resented by a large portion of the party, and discipline broke
down.
Polaris sailed into Thank God Harbor (now called Hall Bay) on
September 10, 1871 and settled in for the winter on the shore of
northern Greenland.
That fall, upon returning to the ship from a sledging expedition
with an Inuit guide, Hall suddenly fell ill after drinking a cup
of coffee. He collapsed in what was described as a fit. For the
next week he suffered from vomiting and delirium, then seemed to
improve for a few days. At that time, he accused several of the
ship's company, including Dr. Bessels, of having poisoned him.
Shortly after, Hall began suffering the same symptoms, and
finally died on November 8. Hall was taken ashore and given a
formal burial.
Command of the expedition devolved on Sidney O. Budington, who
dispatched an expedition to try for the Pole in June 1872. This
was unsuccessful and Polaris turned south. On October 12, the
ship was beset by ice in Smith Sound and was on the verge of
being crushed. Nineteen of the crew and Eskimo guides abandoned
ship for the surrounding ice, and fourteen crew remained on the
ship. Polaris was run aground near Etah and crushed on October
24. After wintering ashore, the crew sailed south in two boats
and were rescued by a whaler, returning home via Scotland.
The following year, the remainder of the party attempted to
extricate Polaris from the pack and head south. A group,
including Tyson, became separated as the pack broke up violently
and threatened to crush the ship in the fall of 1872. The group
of 19 drifted on an ice floe for the next six months over 1,500
miles before being rescued off the coast of Newfoundland by the
whaler Tigress on April 30, 1873, and probably would have all
perished had the group not included four Inuit, among them the
skilled hunters Ebierbing and Hans Hendrik, as well as
Ebierbing's wife Tookoolito and their adopted daughter Panik.
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