He didn’t find the Open Polar Sea he was looking for—and probably overestimated how far North he actually managed to get—but the Arctic discoveries of Isaac Israel Hayes M1853 helped set the course for later explorers. And that was just the first of his several careers. Pointing the Way 40 NOV | DEC 2011 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE to th e Pole by Dennis Drabe lle or a short time in the mid-19th century, a Penn Medical School diploma doubled as a credential for Arctic exploration. In 1853, Elisha Kent Kane M1842 led an expedition to Greenland and beyond on a search Ffor a missing British explorer [“Explorer in a Hurry,” Mar|Apr 2008]. In 1860, Kane’s former medical officer, Isaac Israel Hayes M1853, mounted an Arctic expedition of his own, with the main goal of discovering the rumored ice-free Opposite: Famed Civil War sea that was supposed to ease the way straight to the North Pole. photographer Mathew Brady shot this portrait of Hayes Despite failing to find his man, Kane returned a hero, embellished his sometime between 1860 and fame by writing a bestselling book about his exploits, and triggered a 1872. Library of Congress. Above: Hayes himself pioneered nationwide binge of mourning when he died of a heart ailment in 1857, at the use of photography in Arctic age 37. Though Hayes made less of a splash, he set the course for subse- exploration. Images he brought back helped inspire paintings quent Arctic explorers. He went on to run a hospital during the Civil War, like Aurora Borealis (1865, oil on canvas), by Frederic Edwin Church. to earn a living by lecturing and writing, and to serve multiple terms as a Smithsonian American Art member of the New York State Assembly. Museum, gift of Eleanor Blodgett. Doctor, explorer, CEO, public speaker, author, legislator—Isaac Hayes excelled in a remarkable number of roles. He deserves to be better known. THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE NOV | DEC 2011 41 Hayes planned to cross Smith Sound from Greenland to Ellesmere Island using sledges pulled by dogs, with a boat strapped to one of the sledges for eventual launch into the Open Polar Sea. He was defeated by impassable terrain, frigid weather, and dwindling food supplies—and the fact that no such sea existed—but this chart of Smith Sound, possibly by Hayes himself, shows his track and discoveries in the 1860-61 expedition. From the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin Libraries. Hayes was born in 1832 to a farming been to Hayes’s liking: upon graduat- harder and graduated a year earlier than family in Chester County, Pennsylvania. ing, he stayed there two more years as I otherwise would have done.” After attending the local public school an assistant teacher of mathematics Toward the end of his abbreviated until age 13, he was sent to Westtown and civil engineering. stay at Penn, Hayes wrote a letter to School, a Quaker boarding school of Hayes was leaning toward the study of Kane, offering his services as med- such austerity that its disapproval of law when his father talked him into med- ical officer on his imminent rescue frivolous literature extended even to icine instead. The young man entered mission to the Far North. (Kane’s own Shakespeare. It was a good incuba- Penn’s Medical School in the fall of 1851. Arctic career had begun with a stint tor of scientists, however. Another of As a student he was ambitious, if not as ship’s doctor on an earlier voyage.) its pupils was Edward Drinker Cope, traditionally so. “I had a lot of intuitive The interview went well—and the Penn who became a renowned paleontologist feeling that my destiny would lead me to connection couldn’t have hurt—but an (and taught the subject at Penn). Even the North,” he recalled, “and under the offer was not immediately forthcom- without the Bard, Westtown must have influence of this feeling I set to work the ing. Hayes hedged his bet by open- 42 NOV | DEC 2011 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE ing a medical practice in Philadelphia to deliver the plea for mercy. “We have Kane’s death left Hayes eager to return and trying to latch on to John Charles come here, destitute and exhausted,” to the North at the head of his own expe- Frémont’s planned expedition to the he told Kane, “to claim your hospitality; dition; but with no support from the US Rocky Mountains. The arrival of a brief we know that we have no right to your government and little from the philan- note on May 26, 1853, saved Hayes from indulgence, but we feel that with you, thropist who had bankrolled Kane, it casting his lot with the inept Frémont: we will find a welcome and a home.” took him three years to raise the roughly “Dr. Kane would like to see Dr. Hayes They knew their man. Although hurt $30,000 he needed. (In the process, he as soon as possible.” A whirlwind week and resentful, Kane not only took the alienated the only woman he ever loved, later, Kane’s ship left New York harbor prodigals in but also surrendered his who told him he had could have her or with the 21-year-old Hayes on board. bunk to Hayes, who had to undergo the the Arctic, but not both.) He furthered Up north, Hayes looked and learned, amputation of three frostbitten toes. his cause by following up on Kane’s great especially from adaptations by Eskimos The reconstituted group abandoned book, Arctic Explorations, with one of his (as the Inuit were then called) to their ship and made its arduous way back own, Arctic Boat Journey in the Autumn uncompromising environment. He also to Greenland on sledges and boats. In of 1854, about the Kane expeditionary tended to patients, notably after the October of 1855, they finally reached schism. In June of 1860, the Hayes North return of a party sent out to lay depots New York, where they were welcomed as Pole Expedition finally set sail. Its objec- on Canada’s Ellesmere Island. Tempera- symbols of America’s coming-of-age: it tives were to increase scientific knowl- tures bottoming out at 75 degrees below was no longer a country to be explored, edge of the Arctic, reach the Open Polar zero had left the sojourners severely but one that engaged in exploring. Sea, and, conceivably, steer a course all frostbitten; despite Hayes’s best efforts, Hayes lectured about his just-con- the way to the North Pole. In Greenland, Hayes supplemented his crew with Eskimos, including one who had taken part in the Kane expedition. In June of 1860, The Eskimos were crack hunters, and Hayes depended on them to keep his the Hayes North Pole Expedition 20-member party supplied with fresh meat. They performed well enough that finally set sail. Its objectives were no one fell victim to the condition that had plagued Kane’s party: scurvy. to increase scientific knowledge of Hayes’s plan was to cross Smith Sound from Greenland to Ellesmere Island via sledges pulled by dogs, with a boat the Arctic, reach the Open Polar Sea, strapped to one of the sledges for eventual launch into the Open Polar Sea. But the and, conceivably, steer a course dogs kept dying, and the terrain—if that’s the right word for an immense jumble of all the way to the North Pole. ice slabs and hummocks—was so intrac- table that often the explorers had to climb, descend, zigzag, backtrack, and plod three of them died. On a happier note, cluded adventures at the Smithsonian ahead all day long just to advance a mile Hayes and another man made it to Elles- Institution, the American Geographical or two. The thermometer recorded tem- mere and back by sledge, filling in blank Society, and lesser venues. Although peratures in the minus 60s, a zone where spots on the map. the talks were well received, audiences snow on the ground hardens, causing fric- Bent on exploring some more, Kane found one aspect of them disappointing: tion and hampering progress. Luckily one decreed that the expedition would the speaker himself. A reporter described of the Eskimos knew how to cope with spend a second winter in the Far North. him as “quite a young looking, slender, this condition: melt ice in your mouth and Yet fuel and rations were running so black haired, dark complexioned gentle- drool on the sledge’s runners, where the low that he gave everyone a choice: man, rather under the medium size, [who] liquid formed a slick ice coating. stick with him or head south with a does not, at first sight, appear like one of Even so, the trip proceeded at such portion of the supplies to live on. To his those robust men whom we naturally a petty pace that Hayes was driven to dismay, eight men—a majority—elect- picture to ourselves as the best fitted to distraction. The food supply dwindled, ed to leave, Hayes among them. Their encounter the rigors and hardships of game became unavailable, and he finally journey proved so harrowing that the polar navigation.” Ultimately, however, had to admit that the best he could do famished secessionists were reduced that slight specimen became, as Douglas was use clues from his surroundings to to eating lichen scraped off rocks. In W. Wamsley puts it in his invaluable infer the existence of the Open Polar Sea. desperation, they turned around and 2009 biography, Polar Hayes, “the most In a morose frame of mind—and with fin- retraced their steps, all the way back prolific lecturer and writer on the Arctic gers that may have trembled in the pro- to the mother ship.