by Gray, Gordon
Immediately, the other seamen on deck somehow clear the flipped Zodiac from the crane wire, and get another Zodiac in the water. We go out on deck, Carina is there and she tells us what has happened. The next Zodiac is already in the water and comes alongside the boarding ladder. Victor is there at the foot of the ladder and he leaps in with one of the seamen and they speed back to look for the man. The seawater temperature is -2 ºC. The chances of survival are minimal unless the person is very lucky. The ship has now stopped and, from the ship’s deck, we can just see the man in the water but he is drifting away astern in the waves as the rescue Zodiac races towards him. Those on deck are silent and helpless. Soon, the man is invisible to us and lost astern in the waves. However, with help from the bridge by radio, the rescue Zodiac finds him. By that time they reach him, the man is paralysed with cold and can do nothing to help himself. He has been in the water now for at least three or four minutes. Victor and his companion get to him and try to drag the deadweight bulk of a frozen, sodden seaman into the Zodiac as it rocks and tips in the swell. At last, they manage to haul him into the boat and set off back to the ship to get him back on board. We wait at the ladder to help but amazingly the man is able, with help from Victor, to get up the ladder himself. He is taken straight to the sickbay where he soaks in a bath for a while. He is a lucky man; just to have been found was lucky, to survive, very lucky. He was undoubtedly saved by the survival suit that all the Zodiac drivers wear. After a few hours in the sickbay, recovering his body warmth, he was fine. Needless to say, he was not short of offers of vodka in the bar for a couple of days. It was a truly sobering event, but, thankfully, one that turned out well.
Nansen and Johanssen
All this happened at the spot where Fridjtof Nansen and Hjalmar Johanssen spent the winter of 1895. In June 1893, Dr Fridjtof Nansen and a crew of twelve left Norway in the FRAM, a specially-designed ship, with the objective of testing Nansen’s theory that the Arctic ice drifted from east to west across the Pole. They planned to deliberately let the ship be frozen into the ice towards the eastern end of Siberia and letting the ice’s supposed westerly drift across the Polar Basin take the ship across the North Pole. This would prove that there was a polar ice drift across the top of the world. The FRAM was caught by the ice and frozen in mid-way along the Siberian coast in September 1893. This was probably further west than Nansen would have wanted but he had no choice. By February 1895, after seventeen months locked in the ice, the Fram had reached 84 degrees north and it was clear from the track that her drift, although clearly westward, would not take the ship across the Pole itself. Nansen then decided to make a dash for the Pole on foot. He and Hjalmar Johanssen, a superb international skier, set off for the Pole with two dog teams, sledges and kayaks, The sledges, tents, stoves, and kayaks had all been designed by Nansen. His designs have proven so successful that they are still used as the basis for similar equipments today.
At first they made great progress over good smooth ice, but then conditions worsened and the ice became broken with many ridges. Eventually, on 8 April 1895, Nansen had to admit that they could not get to the Pole and then safely back to Franz Josef Land with the provisions that they had. They had reached a new Farthest north of 86 degrees 13.6 minutes north, just about 240 miles from the Pole. They had always known that they would never be able to get back to the FRAM as she would have moved many miles in the ice by the time they would arrive back; so they had set off with the plan to go to Franz Josef Land and take their chances of finding a sealer to get them home. If that failed, then they would make for Spitzbergen where they were certain to find human help. They headed back for the islands. During the trip, both their chronometers stopped so their navigation became a bit haphazard, but eventually, after many days, they sighted land. They could see mountains to the east but with open sea between them and the land. The problem was that they had no idea which land it was, as there were no proper maps. After a number of frustrating days waiting for the drifting and melting floes to carry them closer, they finally shot their last two dogs for food, launched their kayaks and set off by sea. They managed to get ashore on one of the islands in early August 1895, 146 days after leaving the Fram. But where were they and were there any sealers still in the area this late in the season? They soon realised that they were alone as the last sealers would have left the area by now as winter was about to arrive. They saw more islands to the south so paddled their kayaks down the sounds, with the sledges tied across the two of them to form a catamaran. On 17 August, a storm blew up. They struggled to get to shore through the heavy seas and drifting ice and managed to land on a lonely beach near a small cape. They landed on the one beach in the area where they could land their kayaks as elsewhere along the coast there had been nothing but sheer ice cliffs. As the weather worsened and the ice came in to the shore, they realised that winter had indeed arrived and they could go no further. They named the area Cape Norvegia (Cape Norway). They then settled down to spend the winter on the beach. The almost vertical cliffs behind the beach and ice blocking the sea meant that they had no choice but to stay there. Some walruses lying in the sea just off the beach were their first meal.
Nansen and Johanssen, summer 1895. (J&C McCutcheon Collection)
The west coast of Jackson Island just as Nansen would have seen it, black rock peeping from the white ice cap.
Fridtjof Nansen.
Cape Norwegia (Cape Norway). Nansen was able to get ashore here from his kayak on the only piece of beach in the area.
The desolate narrow beach at Cape Norwegia showing the flat area at the top of the beach and the cliffs behind.
The remains of the hut with the beach and sea beyond. Nansen’s daily view for nine winter months.
The remains of Nansen’s ‘hole’ or shelter. This shows the rocks they had to dig out to make walls and the tree trunk they used as a roof beam.
The small narrow strip of land above the beach offered little in the way of building materials so they dug out rocks from the ground to make a 3-foot deep hole and built up a wall of rocks round the edge. They found a piece of driftwood to act as a roof beam across the top. As trees do not grow in Franz Josef Land this itself was a lucky find. That beam is still there. Then they covered the walls and formed a roof with walrus skins. These immediately froze solid. They called it ‘the hole’ for that is exactly what it was. They lived there in mind-numbingly-low temperatures of anything down to -40 or -50 ºC, enduring the screaming storms during the long, dark, polar winter and living on polar bear and walrus meat. For most of their time though, they stayed inside the hole and slept.
Finally in May 1896, after nearly nine months in the hole, the sea ice started to break up and they continued down the coast in their kayaks until 100 miles to the south they had their chance encounter at Cape Flora with the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition and were rescued. After Cape Flora there was nothing but the empty Arctic Ocean. It was the last island on their route.
The FRAM itself completed her drift and came out of the ice west of Spitzbergen. She arrived back in Norway only a few weeks after Nansen. All the expedition team had survived and Nansen’s theories about the Polar ice drift had been confirmed.
The Hole
As we are getting ready to board the Zodiac at Cape Norvegia, a polar bear is spotted walking along the beach. We watch and wait. If he stays there we may not be able to get ashore after all. It sniffs the air and wanders on then it walks off over a rise so we carried on. From the sea, the Cape seems to be nothing more than a low rocky beach with steep, mountain slopes behind it. Ice and snow-bound crevices cover the cliff face and, above that, the ice cap comes down from the cloud to the very edge of the dark grey cliffs. The wind has got up a bit since we first stopped and the Zodiacs bounce from wave to wave and a few of us get a good dousing as we head into the beach. We land among large, hard and rough lumps of sea ice that clutter the shoreline and move around in the waves. Some walruses are idling in the breakers a few yards along the be
ach, just as they had when Nansen landed here just over 110 years earlier. They appear to be totally unaware of us. At the top of the narrow shingle beach is a raised and gently sloping area that stretches about 20 or 25 yards back up to the foot of some rough scree at the base of the cliffs. This raised area is made up of rocks and mosses with some grasses struggling to cling to the thin soil. In the middle of this grassy stretch we see an old log, bleached white and about 15 feet long. As we get nearer we can see that it is lying across a small hollow in the ground. The hollow is surrounded by loose rocks and stones. This is Nansen’s hole. It was here that Nansen and Johanssen spent the winter of 1895/96. A plaque is mounted on a post some yards away. It commemorates, in Norwegian and Russian, ‘Nansen and Johanssen’s survival over the winter of 1895/6 at this point’.
Salisbury Island from the north, a land totally covered in ice.
I am now looking into the hole. It seems barely big enough for one man to lie in let alone for two men to live in it for a full polar winter. Dried bones of bear and walrus still lie by the hole. Although tiny, low wild flowers bloom in vibrant pinks and greens nearby, it is a desolate and depressing place. This is August; what must it have been like through the dark of the winter night? The view from their front door is across the sound to the low ice covered hills of Salisbury Island in the far distance. It is a humbling experience to stand here where two men, through sheer determination, survived for so long. How tough, mentally and physically, were these men? And to do this after they had pushed themselves to the extreme trying to ski to the North Pole only to be defeated by lack of supplies: then racing back to find land and to try and find a sealer to take them home before finally realising that they had another nine months of winter to survive by living off the land.
Walruses
The three walruses are lying asleep on an ice flow in the middle of the sound. We left Cape Norvegia at about midnight on what is now a still windless night and encounter the walruses about four miles east of Cape Norway. From a distance they are reddy-brown, motionless lumps, like well-rounded sandstone boulders on the ice. The captain manoeuvres the ship so we drift to a stop alongside the ice flow. As we draw closer we can see that the boulders are made of leather and are very fat. The three great masses of very wrinkled, leathery, wobbly walrus slowly wake up and raise their heads to look up at the ship through small, round eyes that are both bleary and bloodshot. They each probably weigh well over a ton and are about 10 or 12 feet long. They all need a shave too with their prickly whiskers sticking out from their top lips. They belch and snort as the biggest one prods its neighbour with its tusk. These boys look as though they had a really good party last night and have only managed to get as far as this ice flow on their way home. One of them, bored by us already, starts to scratch itself with the ends of its flipper and then tries to go back to sleep. The other two start to scratch themselves now they are awake. They manage to avoid each other’s tusks as they swing their heads about and start to move to make themselves more comfortable. Even a small movement of their head causes a ripple effect across their whole body as the fat under the thick, dry skin is set in motion. Ripples run out from the flow as they move about on it. Unlike seals, which look as though they are about to burst out of their skins, the walrus skins seem to be far too big for them, with masses of folds, creases and spare material. They look as though they are struggling to move about inside a great leather sleeping bag. After a while they decide that the ship is here to stay and as they cannot get back to sleep they will sit up and look at this strange, huge, black thing beside them. Even though we are no more than 20 feet from them and tower over them, they just lie on their flow and look quizzically at us without fear. They are totally unafraid and disinterested in us. When they are out of the water and dry like this, their skin is a reddish-brown colour and stands out in the Arctic white. This is unlike any of the other Arctic creatures which all tend to be white. However, when they slide into the water, they turn a glistening black and instantly merge into the black waters. It is such a very peaceful scene, the walrus, the ice floe drifting gently among others in the open waters and the panorama of the ice-covered islands stretching in all directions. We slowly move away leaving them to go back to sleep on their peaceful ice floe.
Walruses on their flow drifting in the sea near Jackson Island.
Ice floes and ice caps, a typical Frans Josef Land scene.
The edge of the ice cap meets the sea in a cliff of ice well over 50 feet high.
Kapitan Dranitsyn breaks through the ice as she ploughs remorselessly northwards.
Icebergs, glacier and mists. Near Hall Island FJL.
Sunshine and shadows as the mists swirl and roll across the islands.
A small bergy bit off the coast.
The next day we stop to go and look at a huge walrus colony. This colony is on the end of a spit of land and as we approach by Zodiac we can see the steam rising from this mass of over 100 walruses. Some of them are swimming about in groups just off the shore and as we approach they start to take an interest in us. About twenty of them swim across to the Zodiac and, when they are about 10 feet away, they stop and sit with their shiny, wet heads and tusks out of the water examining us. They get more agitated and concerned as we go closer to the colony and they start to move closer to the Zodiac. We decide that discretion is the better part of valour and move away. The walruses then chase us off, following the boat to ensure we did not go back. Knowing what we do about their skills at sticking their tusks through kayaks we make sure our rubber Zodiacs are out of their immediate range. We watch them for some time from a distance and it becomes clear that the walruses in the water are acting as guards for the females and young ones on the beach. Once we move away a little they were happy to watch us go. One of the other Zodiacs was not so lucky and a walrus did puncture one of the buoyancy chambers, although luckily not seriously and they were able to get back to the ship.
We leave them to it and motor quietly along a massive ice wall. At this point, the ice cap meets the sea and ends in a sheer wall of ice that is about 40 to 50 feet high and has the appearance of a freshly-cut block of vanilla ice cream. Here, we can see crevasses that run at right angles to the ice face, like knife cuts, running down through the edge of the ice almost to the sea level. Some have snow bridges across their top. Ice caves disappear into the ice and water drips from melt streams deep inside. Trying to imagine the vast quantity of ice that lies behind this half-mile-long ice front and the distance it goes back over the island makes us feel very small indeed.
Bentsen and Bjorvik
A day or so later, after sailing down to the south-east end of the archipelago, we come to Cape Heller on Wilczek Island. The day is very still but with a low cloud cover. The ice floes lie motionless all across the bay. The low cloud deadens any sounds so intensifying the silence of the place. It was here at Cape Heller that two Norwegians, Bentsen and Bjorvik, from the American Wellman Expedition of 1898/99 overwintered in a stone hut. They were an advance party for the spring expeditions and set up their camp in the late autumn. Unfortunately, poor management meant that they were left with insufficient provisions or proper equipment. They managed to build a good, solid, stone hut in which to overwinter but without sufficient materials to properly finish it they were forced to use walrus hides for the roof. The whole surrounding area is covered in loose stones ideal for building and their thick, dry-stone dyke walls still look fairly substantial even today. Tucked up against a small steep slope it was much more substantial in every way than Nansen’s hole. Wellman and the main party were meanwhile living in proper wooden huts in the base camp at Cape Tegettoff. Like Nansen, Bentsen and Bjorvik had to live on polar bear and walrus but they did at least have a better-constructed hut than Nansen and Johanssen were able to build. Sadly, Bentsen died during the winter and as it was impossible to dig a grave in the frozen ground. Bjorvik kept his friend’s now frozen body in its sleeping bag in the hut with him so it did not get eaten by bears, un
til he was rescued in the spring. Bentsen’s grave lies a few yards away down near the shore. We try and imagine living in it through the long darkness of the winter, without food, proper stores or equipment and with just the dead body of your only colleague for company.
Cape Tegettoff
The south-eastern end of the archipelago is off to starboard, about half a mile away but wrapped in fog, just as it had been on the day that Payer and Weyprecht looked out from their ship only 133 years earlier. We wait for the fog to lift so we can go ashore at this historic point. As the morning goes on the fog does slowly lift and reveals the two tall, rock pillars that had never been seen by man before 1873. The Zodiacs are launched and we go ashore. Wellman set up his base camp here at the foot of the cliffs on a flat area on the spit of land that runs from the cliffs towards the twin pillars. All that remains are a few sections of the base of his wooden hut. It is ironic that there is more remaining of Bentsen and Bjorvik’s hand-built stone shelter than the purpose-made, prefabricated base camp. Quickly, the fog descends again and we lose sight of the ship in the fog. We also lose sight of some of the party who have moved away from the shore and up towards the cliffs behind the beach area. Victor is keen to get people back to the ship as he does not think that the fog will lift. The dangers of one or more Zodiacs, each with twelve passengers, getting lost in the fog are very real. Zodiacs do not offer good radar targets so are very difficult to find in fog. Even in summer, the chances of survival here if a boat gets lost in fog are not good. Victor, who, as usual, is totally in charge, is down on the beach and orders the Zodiacs to only go back in pairs and to keep well in sight of one another. Doreen gets away in the Zodiac ahead of the one into which I climb. The Zodiacs find their way back with help from modern technology. Each Zodiac has a hand-held, sat. nav. receiver and can steer towards the sat. nav. position of the ship, this being passed to them by radio. Even so, malfunctions and errors can occur. The fog is now so thick that we lose sight of the Zodiac ahead and can only follow its wake. The trip back seems to go on forever. Surely, we must have passed the ship by now? Should we not turn round? Everyone in the boat is anxiously looking about to find any sign of the ship in the fog, then anxiously looking at the coxswain for reassurance that all is well. All we see is wet greyness. Shouts and calls come out of the fog but it is impossible to know from which direction. We motor on into seemingly endless fog, locked in our own cocoon of grey. The driver, while looking about all the time does not seem too concerned. Suddenly, a shaft of watery sun breaks through the fog just as a black cliff emerges above us. Where are we? But it is not a cliff, it is the ship and she is shining her powerful search light towards the shore so the Zodiacs can follow the beam back to the ship for the last few yards. We have made it. It is with a sense of relief that we all make it back to the safety of the ship.
