The crew members who had remained on board the Polaris, a group that included Bessels, eventually found shelter on land and were rescued in June. By then a United States Navy board of inquiry had begun investigating Hall’s death. Upon his return to the U.S., Bessels was questioned along with other crew members. The investigation upheld Bessels’s opinion that Hall had died from a stroke.
But in 1968, Dartmouth professor and Hall biographer Chauncey C. Loomis traveled to Greenland and exhumed Hall’s body, which was in remarkably good condition because of the surrounding permafrost. Laboratory tests showed that Hall had received large doses of arsenic during the last two weeks of his life. Suspicion has fallen on Bessels, who as Hall’s physician would have had ample opportunity to administer the poison. But there were a few other high-ranking crew members who had also quarreled with Hall during the voyage, and it’s therefore unlikely that we’ll ever know who gave Hall the arsenic.
When he returned to the United States, Bessels wrote up the expedition’s scientific results for the Smithsonian Institution, including his proof that Greenland is an island. He eventually returned to Germany, where he died of a stroke at the age of 41.
Frozen
Anyone who signed on for a voyage to the Arctic knew there was a chance he wouldn’t ever come back. Ships sank, crews got stranded without enough supplies to make it through the harsh winter and illness coupled with malnutrition took its toll. But if you were very young when adventure called, it was sometimes hard to say no – and Edward Israel was one of those who said yes.
Israel was born in 1859 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His parents, Mannes and Tillie, who arrived in Kalamazoo in 1843, were the first Jews to settle in the town. Edward was a bright young man who was interested in the sciences and was accepted into the University of Michigan, where he studied mathematics and astronomy. He was the only Jew in his class. Just before he was due to graduate, one of his professors nominated him for a place on the U. S. government-sponsored Lady Franklin Bay Polar Expedition, headed by Adolphus Greeley. He was chosen to collect astronomical, magnetic and meteorological data. The ship set sail in 1881.
After reaching Ellesmere Island, Israel and the other members of the scientific expedition boarded a special polar-equipped vessel and set off for Lady Franklin Bay, setting up camp far above the Arctic Circle for what was meant to be a two-year stint of scientific research. Misfortune first struck when their supply ship failed to reach them in 1882. When a second attempt to reach them in August 1883 also failed – the ship was later discovered to have hit ice and sunk – the crew members had to get through yet another arctic winter, but this time with virtually no supplies. Edward Israel died three weeks before the United States Navy was able to rescue the crew. Only seven of the original 25 crew members were still alive. By that point they were eating their shoes, the only source of “sustenance” they had left.
Israel’s body was returned to Kalamazoo, where he was buried. He was only 25.
Arctic Exploration Enters the Airplane Age
Israel wasn’t the only Jewish scientist who perished in the Arctic. Professor Aldo Pontremoli, an Italian scientist, died when his aircraft crashed in the Arctic in 1928. By then the North Pole had finally been reached – both Robert Edwin Peary and Frederick Cook claimed the honor of being first – and the Northwest Passage had been mapped. As the 20th century wore on, exploring outer space became the next big challenge beckoning to adventurous souls.
But there was still one mystery that Arctic exploration never solved. If the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel weren’t living near the North Pole, where in the world were they?
