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released from the pilothouse. If a man fell overboard or became stranded on the ice, the light and cable attached to the buoy would aid his rescue. In the perpetual winter night and swirling snow, men separated by mere yards vanished from sight. In a storm the howling wind swallowed all sound. Only such a lighted beacon would help.
    For exploration the ship carried four whaleboats and a flat-bottomed scow that could be dragged over the ice from one open lee to another. Roughly twenty feet long with a width of four feet, whaleboats carried oars and a collapsible mast and sail and normally held six to eight men. Designed for speed and durability, they were slim, sharply keeled, and built of heavy wood. A standard but inefficient practice was to use the whaleboats as makeshift sleds for exploring the ice pack. At Hall's urging a special collapsible boat patented by a man named Heggieman was added. Constructed of folding frames of hickory and ash, the twenty-foot-long boat could be packed aboard a sled for easy transportation. Once the frame was assembled, a waterproof canvas covering fitted over it. Theoretically, the folding boat could carry twenty men.
    While in the Arctic, Hall had greatly admired the
oomiak
used by the Inuit to hunt whales and walrus. Similarly designed of a wooden frame, the
oomiak
was covered with walrus skin. Had Hall inquired, he might have discovered that the Inuit took special pains to cover their boat in the lighter-weight hides of the female walrus instead of the thick skin of the male. Weight was an inherent problemin a boat that size and shape, especially one intended for hauling on and off ice floes. At 250 pounds, the Americans' folding boat would prove next to useless.
    Extra spare parts that could not be fabricated crammed into whatever space food and coal did not occupy. Spars, line, kegs of nails, a spare rudder were stowed away. At the navy's insistence, the hold held a small mountain howitzer with sufficient powder and shot to intimidate any unfriendly Natives they might encounter. After all, this was a naval expedition. Anyone giving it much thought would have realized that the cannon was a useless and heavy item. If the howitzer were fired on the slick ice, the first shot would either upend it or send it speeding across the ice into the closest patch of open water.
    In the captain's cabin, Hall packed books on Arctic exploration, including a copy of Luke Fox's
Arctic Voyage of 1635,
In one corner the workers loaded a cabinet organ donated by the Smith Organ Company. No one drew the parallel that Sir John's ill-fated party had carried two organs.
    One thing seriously flawed the newly refitted
Periwinkle.
The ribs and keel of the old
Periwinkle
werp kept and used for the ship's back. To do otherwise would have been too costly. But the
Periwinkle's
keel was not designed to deal with ice. It was too narrow and too sharp-bowed. With a wide, thick-waisted beam, a ship “nipped” in the ice would lie level. As pressure from the floe increased, the wide keel would not the hull to be easily gripped by the ice. Instead, the broad hull would be squeezed literally out of the ice like a seed from a grape to lie comfortably atop the frozen water. The
Periwinkle's
narrower design doomed it to be seized by the ice. The ice's grip would tilt the ship precariously, while mounting pressure would spring the planking, opening the seams to sea-water. The ship's slender hull would plague the expedition and eventually lead to the vessel's death.
    Hall, the landlubber, transformed from an intrepid explorer into an
explorer and a sea captain,
now unknowingly did something that no sailor would ever do. He renamed his vessel, a sure sign of bad luck to come. Inspired by the lofty aim of the expedition, he changed the name of the
Periwinkle
to
Polaris.

A H EARTY C REW
    There being attached to the expedition a scientific department, its operations are prescribed in accordance with the advice of the National Academy