The New International Encyclopædia/Hall, Charles Francis

HALL, Charles Francis (1821–71). An American Arctic explorer. He was born at Rochester, N. H., and was for a time a blacksmith, and later became a stationer and journalist. In 1860 he sailed from New London in the George Henry, to discover the remains of the Franklin party, the expense of the expedition being borne largely by Henry Grinnell (q.v.). His ship was blocked by ice, and for two years he lived among the Eskimos near Frobisher Bay, returning in 1862. In 1864 he published an account of the expedition in Arctic Researches and in Life Among the Esquimaux. In the same year Hall returned to the Arctic to renew his search for evidences of the fate of the Franklin expedition. It was not till the spring of 1866 that he met Eskimos at Cape Weyton, south of Boothia Felix, who had seen Franklin and visited the deserted ships. He obtained from them silver bearing the crest of Franklin and other officers of the party. While searching for further evidence he did some interesting geographical work by filling in the gap between Rae's farthest (1846) and Parry's farthest, in Fury Strait (1825), thus completing the mapping of the north coast of the continent. At last, after five years of toil, he met natives near the south shore of King William Land, in the summer of 1869, who gave him personal or traditional information on the fate of 79 of the 105 men who died of starvation in King William Land. It is now believed that the remaining 26 reached the coast of the mainland and perished. It was thus McClintock, Hall, and Schwatka and Gilder who solved the fate of the Franklin party.

His last expedition was undertaken in 1871, at the expense of the United States Government, in the small naval vessel Polaris, which proved to be unfitted for Arctic work. He ascended the Smith Sound channels into the Polar Sea to 82° 11′ N., the most northern point attained up to that time by a vessel. Unable to proceed farther, the expedition spent the winter of 1871–72 at Thank God Harbor, on the Greenland coast. In the fall Hall made a sledge journey north to Cape Brevoort, and was the first to see the land on the west side of Robeson Channel and to determine approximately its extension to the north. Upon returning from this journey he was taken violently ill, and died on November 8, 1871. In the fall of 1872 the Polaris pushed into an impassable ice pack and drifted south for two months, when a terrible gale broke up the pack and nearly destroyed the vessel. A part of the supplies had been removed to the ice, on which 19 of the crew had taken refuge, and they were carried away from the vessel in the darkness. After experiencing all the horrors of a five months' winter drift on an ice-floe, they were picked up, off Labrador, 1300 miles from the point of separation, with 20 in the party, the Eskimo Hannah having given birth to a girl.

The ship had drifted to the Greenland shore a little south of Smith Sound, whence, in the spring of 1873, the remainder of the party retreated south in boats, and were rescued at Cape York on June 22d by a Scottish whaler. Though the expedition was unfortunate, its geographical results were very important. Hall completed the exploration of Kennedy Channel, discovered Hall Basin and Robeson Channel, extended both Greenland and Grinnell Land northward nearly two degrees of latitude, and visited the unknown Polar Sea. He was not competent to take charge of scientific work, but he was a genuine Arctic pioneer, full of resources, and undaunted by obstacles, many of which he overcame by patient and untiring effort. The scientific results of the Polaris expedition were important and were published by the Government in 1879. Consult also: Davis's Polaris North Pole Expedition (Washington, 1876); Tyson's Drift (New York, 1874); Bessel's Die amerikanische Nordpolexpedition (Leipzig, 1879).