Charles Francis Hall

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Charles Francis Hall

Charles Francis Hall (* 1821 in Rochester , New Hampshire ; † November 8, 1871 in Thank God Harbor, Greenland ) was an American polar explorer .

Career

Hall's interest in the Arctic was aroused by the numerous searches for the missing John Franklin in the mid- 19th century , and from 1860–1862 he finally took part in it himself. Together with local Inuit , he explored the southeastern part of Baffin Island . There he found traces of Martin Frobisher's expedition , but none of Franklin's. Hall was the first explorer to visit this part of the Arctic in nearly three centuries. He wrote a book about his journey called Arctic Researches and Life among the Esquimaux (1864).

Hall's second expedition (1864–1869) took him to the Boothia Peninsula and King William Island and contributed a great deal to the geographic exploration of the Canadian Arctic region. This time he found traces of Franklin's lost expedition . In 1871 he was finally given command of a US government-equipped expedition to the North Pole . On board the Polaris he managed to cross the Robeson Channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland and to set a new record: Hall reached latitude 82 ° 11 'north, up to that point no one had been closer to the North Pole.

Hall died suddenly in the expedition's winter quarters, Thank God Harbor in northern Greenland. On the way back, the Polaris was damaged in an ice squeeze and was abandoned by part of the crew. Only after more than six months of drifting on an ice floe through Baffin Bay to the Labrador Sea were the men rescued by a whaler . Captain Budington put the Polaris on a sandbar and wintered with the rest of the expedition members. Eventually they too were picked up by a whaler.

Hall's death and the failure of the Polaris expedition resulted in an official investigation. As a result of the questioning of all those involved, it was assumed that Hall had died as a result of a stroke . While doing research for a biography, the American historian and author Chauncey C. Loomis (1930-2009) led an expedition to Hall's grave in 1968. The corpse was exhumed , but despite the arctic temperatures, the tissue was so badly decomposed that an autopsy was only possible to a limited extent. Laboratory tests on hair and fingernail samples revealed that Hall had consumed lethal doses of arsenic in the last few weeks of his life .

Honor

The Hall Island , an island in Franz Josef Land in the Arctic, is named in honor of Charles Francis Hall .

literature

  • Charles Francis Hall: Life with the Esquimaux . Low, Son & Marston, London 1864, Vol. I and Vol. II (accessed January 7, 2010).
  • Chauncey C. Loomis: Lost in Eternal Ice - The Mysterious Death of Arctic Explorer Charles Francis Hall . Malik, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89029-210-0 .
  • Richard Parry: The men of the Polaris - the true story of the tragic Arctic expedition of 1871. Goldmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-71183-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Krämer (Ed.): The discovery and exploration of the earth . Brockhaus Verlag, 3rd edition, Leipzig 1961, p. 260

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Hall, Charles Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochester , New Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1871
Place of death Thank God Harbor, Greenland