Fatal North by Bruce Henderson

The Polaris expedition, the failed first U.S. expedition to the North Pole, is one of the strangest in the history of Arctic misadventure. It was marked by the mysterious death of its leader, Capt. Charles Francis Hall, and by bickering between different factions of the crew, both before and after their leader's death. After marooning 18 of its members, including officer George Tyson, on an ice floe (where they drifted for six months until rescued by another ship), the expedition ended when the vessel was abandoned by the remainder of the crew. With narrative and descriptive skill, Henderson chronicles the group's attempt to survive the Arctic winter and one another's treachery. In the end, he casts significant doubt on the official inquiry into Hall's death, citing the inquiry's transcripts and drawing on the results of an autopsy performed on Hall's exhumed body in 1968 that reveal high levels of arsenic.