Polaris: The Chief Scientist's Recollections of the American North Pole Expedition, 1871–73 by Emil Bessels (review)

In 1968 the German physician and scientist Emil Bessels (1847–1888) was revealed as a key figure in one of the Arctic's strangest mysteries when the body of his leader, Charles Francis Hall, was exhumed from a grave in northwestern Greenland. Hall died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1871 during an expedition in search of the North Pole. Bessels claimed that the cause was a series of strokes. Although this explanation is plausible, Hall's biographer Chauncey Loomis realized that the explorer might well have been murdered and that if he had, Bessels was a prime suspect. This hunch led to the exhumation; forensic analysis then showed that Hall had ingested large quantities of arsenic in the final weeks of his life. The arsenic might, Loomis concluded, have been self-administered—or Bessels or someone else might indeed have wanted the leader dead.

Bessels published a long narrative in German in 1879, titled Die amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition. Although this book was used by a few historians, it has generally been neglected by English-speaking writers. William Barr has therefore performed an important service to scholarship with his translation. Polaris is the latest in a long series of Arctic works that Barr has translated from French, German, and Russian. As usual, he provides an excellent, informative introduction, and detailed endnotes. The introduction very usefully sets Bessels's northern activities in the context of increasing German participation in Arctic exploration during the nineteenth century.

As Barr himself is quick to acknowledge, the book sheds little light on the mystery of Hall's death. However, it contains extensive material on the scientific work of the expedition. Readers with an interest in the history of Arctic science will therefore find this work invaluable. Although Bessels generally loaded his text with what readers with a more general interest in the Far North will consider excessive detail, he was capable of vivid writing when describing moments of crisis. Besides the death of the leader, the expedition involved severe hardships for the rest of the members as they struggled to make their way south through heavy ice in a damaged ship; some were marooned for months on an ice floe, while others wintered in a hut built from the ship's timbers. For those who simply want to know more about these harrowing adventures, Polaris will certainly have considerable appeal, although some judicious skipping will be in order. Readers with no prior knowledge of the expedition may also want to read Loomis's Weird and Tragic Shores (1971), a classic work that has stood the test of time and that shows how carefully Bessels excluded his own failings from his narrative.

In an appendix, Barr recounts Arctic historian Russell Potter's discovery of evidence showing that before the expedition left New York, Hall and Bessels were rivals for the affection of an unconventional and attractive young woman, the sculptor Lavinia ("Vinnie") Ream. Ream favoured Hall, and jealousy, as Barr suggests, could have been a motive for murder. But the book indirectly provides evidence of another possible reason. Although Bessels looked down on Hall for his lack of scientific training, the scientist and the leader were very much of the same mind when it came to the goal of new geographical discoveries. After the expedition had begun its southward retreat, Bessels concocted a reckless plan to return north by sledge and set out toward the pole. He kept the plan secret from all but one of his comrades; not wanting any expedition members to accompany him, Bessels's only option was to approach the local Indigenous people, the Inughuit. In obstinate pursuit of his aim, he unsuccessfully cajoled, bribed, and bullied these people to help him, even resorting to threats of violence at one point. Bessels's account of his actions (388–404), with its angry complaints...