For his selection of sailing master, Hall first turned to Sidney Ozias Budington, then to George Emory Tyson. Both initially declined due to prior whaling commitments. When those commitments—Budington's first, followed by Tyson's—fell through, Hall named Budington as sailing master and Tyson as assistant navigator. Budington and Tyson had decades of experience captaining whaling vessels between the two of them. In effect, "Polaris" now had three captains, a fact which would weigh heavily on the fate of the expedition. To further complicate matters, Budington and Hall had quarreled before, in 1863, during Hall's earlier search of Franklin's lost expedition. At the time, Budington had denied permission for Hall to bring north his Inuit guides, Ipirvik and Taqulittuq, whom had taken ill and were in the Budingtons' care.