About the Expedition
The Polaris Expedition was undertaken in 1871 as an attempt to reach the North Pole. It ended in disaster: its controversial leader, Charles Francis Hall, died under mysterious circumstances just a few months in. After his death, a large portion of the expedition's staff and crew became separated from the frozen-in ship when the ice floe they were camped on broke away from the pack. The ice floe party drifted in the waters off Greenland for six months before they could be rescued. The remainder of the crew had to overwinter on the wrecked ship. Though most of the expedition crew survived the ordeal, questions have since been raised about Hall's cause of death. In the 1960s, historian Chauncey Loomis, along with a group of fellow researchers, exhumed Hall's body and determined he had died of arsenic poisoning. The circumstances surrounding this are still the subject of debate. The goal of this project is to analyze what new evidence has been produced since Loomis's revelation and determine whether or not the case is solvable.