Emil Bessels – författare

The German surgeon and explorer Emil Bessels (1847-88) was head of the scientific team on the American-sponsored Polaris Expedition, which in 1871-3 made an unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole. Some of the crew spent months adrift on an ice floe and others were marooned in Greenland. Astonishingly, they survived, but much of the expedition's scientific research remained unpublished as a result of financial wrangling. This 1879 publication is a popular account of the journey, with a substantial scientific appendix based on the expedition papers and additional data shared with Bessels by Sir George Nares. It describes the expedition's landfalls from Newfoundland to Greenland, and experiences, including temperatures so low that mercury froze, hunting for polar bears and seals for food, and the help provided by the local Inuit, whose language, traditions and burial customs Bessels outlines. The book also contains over eighty illustrations, mostly woodcuts.

Emil Bessels was chief scientist and medical officer on George Francis Hall's ill-fated American North Pole Expedition of 1871-73, on board the ship Polaris. Bessels' book, translated from the German in its entirety for the first time, is one of only two first-hand accounts of the voyage, and it is the only first-hand account of the experiences of the group which stayed with the ship after it ran afoul of arctic ice, leaving some of its crew stranded on an ice floe.Bessels and the others spent a second winter on shore in Northwest Greenland, where the drifting, disabled ship ran aground. Hall died suspiciously during the first winter, and Bessels is widely suspected of having poisoned him. Bill Barr has uncovered new evidence of a possible motive.Polaris includes considerable detail which does not appear elsewhere. It is the only account of the expedition which includes rich scientific information about anthropology, geology, flora and fauna and provides much more information than other accounts on the Greenland settlements Polaris visited on her way north.Bessels' is the only published first-hand account of the second wintering of part of the ship's complement on shore at Polaris House, near Littleton Island, and of that party's attempt at travelling south by boat until picked up by the Scottish whaler Ravenscraig. The same applies to the cruise aboard the whaler, Arctic, after Bessels and his companions transferred to that ship.Essential reading for researchers and students of arctic exploration history, this book is also a compelling read for the interested general reader.