The Ill-Fated “Polaris” Expedition

Captain Hall’s Arctic Expedition -- The “Polaris”, a wood engraving published in Harper’s Weekly, May 1873. 

The Ill-Fated “Polaris” Expedition September 1 at Camden Public Library

Dr. Richard Cornelia returns to the Camden Public Library with another intriguing slide talk, “The Ill-Fated Polaris Expedition,” on Saturday, September 1, 1:00 pm. The “Polaris” expedition, America’s first attempt to teach the North Pole in 1871, ended in tragedy. Doomed from the start, the mission was plagued by politics, insubordination, and the suspected murder of its commander, Charles Francis Hall. Half the crew would spend over six months drifting 1700 miles on an ice floe in the Arctic’s black winter, fighting starvation, storms, and intense cold.

The “Polaris” and “Congress” at Godhaven, Disco Island, off the coast of Greenland, a wood engraving from Harper’s Weekly, May 1873. USS Congress (left) arrived at Disco Island on August 10, 1871 carrying extra supplies for Charles Francis Hall’s Arctic expedition aboard Polaris, which steamed away on August 17.

The talk will be accompanied by a display of contemporary periodicals and books on the expedition, provided by the Kislak Foundation. The display will include three bound volumes narrating Hall’s expedition, published in 1874, 1876, and 1879, Hall’s own Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux (1865), and two Harper’s Weekly illustrated entries from 1873.

The expedition is considered America’s North Pole saga equivalent to Ernest Shackleton’s later South Pole expedition of 1914. The talk at the library is also part of the Camden Windjammer Festival activites. Richard Cornelia is a frequent guest lecturer at the library; this will be his ninth talk in an ongoing series.

“The Polaris in Winter Quarters at Thank God Harbor” from painting by William Bradford (1875)