Admiral Byrd wasn't the first. Read about USN Capt. Charles Hall ( 1870 )., page 1

I'm glad I found this thread. It's a fascinating subject really, and I've done a bit of research so that everyone else can enjoy it.

Here's basically what happened. Hall made an attempt to reach the North Pole in 1870. Hall several of his crew were civilians, including several Inuit guides and a German scientist named Dr. Emil Bessels.

They sailed further up the Greenland coast than had ever been achieved previously, then set out on sleds.

A power struggle developed between Captain Hall and the other officers on the ship, then after Hall returned from a sledding expedition one day and drank some coffee, he became violently ill. He accused Bessels and others of trying to poison him. He got well again, then suddenly fell sick again and died.

The ship was badly damaged by ice, and in the midst of abandoning ship, the mooring broke, strangely leaving Hall's faction marooned while Budington's faction took the ship (which was taking on water). The ship came back into the area after only a short time, but ignored the marooned and ran itself aground on another iceflow, away from those they had left.

The faction on the ship, including Bessels, was eventually set out in small boats to be rescued, and when they got far enough South that rescue was likely, Budington, who was commanding that faction, became violently ill as Hall had.

A biographer named Loomis had Hall exhumed and found that he'd been given arsenic in his last two weeks, but resisted the urge to claim poisoning.

A later biographer, Parry, noted that Dr. Bessel's treatment of Hall was foolish even by the standards of the time (Bessels was a physician) and that his observed actions were consistent with a murderer. He also asserts that Bessels may have poisoned Budington to tie up loose ends, but as he did on his first attempt with Hall, screwed up the doseage.

Parry further claims that Bessels may have acted on the orders of the Bismark, perhaps to keep America from making ties in Northern Europe or interfering in whaling in the area.

www.ric.edu...