Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  FIGURE 36

  Kayaks in the making. Hendriksen stands with skeletons of a single-man and double kayaks, made on board. Once covered and sealed, they could be used as lifeboats, for hunting, or, as with Nansen’s and Johansen’s polar dash, escaping the ice and paddling to safety. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  But even with reinvigorating his plan and undertaking projects in anticipation of it, and even with the midnight sun brightening the hours and summer easing the bonds of cold, Nansen still swung between emotional highs and lows, between feverish activity and near-stultifying ennui. He could be social and engaging with the men or withdraw for long periods to be alone, a kind of monastic retreat to a workroom he had set up for himself. It was as if he were a student again, studying back in Bergen, but grown into his more complex present existence. He wrote in Farthest North,

  I have found a new world . . . of animal and plant life that exists in almost every fresh-water pool on the ice-floes. From morning till evening and till late in the night I am absorbed with the microscope, and see nothing around me; I live with these tiny beings in their separate universe, where they are born and die, generation after generation, where they pursue each other in the struggle for life, and carry on their love affairs with the same feelings, the same sufferings, and the same joys that permeate every living being, from these microscopic animals up to man. . . . With our brain-cells we do not feel more strongly than they, never live so entirely for a sensation. But what is life? What matters the individual’s suffering so long as the struggle goes on.

  FIGURE 37

  North Pole or bust! In this staged photograph, Nansen and Johansen haul (unloaded) sledges with kayaks. Their plan was to make it with twenty-eight dogs from the Fram to the North Pole, over four hundred miles away, and then back to the ice edge, where they could kayak to land and safety. This might depict the end of the trek, when all the dogs would be gone (eaten).

  ››› He had dwelled, even obsessed, on the idea, even as he wrestled with himself about leaving the ship at all. Notwithstanding his moral conflict, he painstakingly worked out details, sometimes by himself and sometimes with his confidante Sverdrup, on how and when such a trip would be conducted, with whom, and what it would require in the way of supplies.

  His final plan, then, was this.

  The journey would begin before the next spring (1895), when he estimated the Fram would be at 83° north latitude, its probable closest approach to the pole and when ice conditions would be best for sledge travel. The party would be only two men, he and one other, skiing and guiding sledges hauled by twenty-eight dogs (all of them, except for seven puppies), bearing 2,100 pounds of food, equipment, and two kayaks. The approximately five-hundred-mile northward journey to the pole he figured should take no more than fifty days, by which time the weight on the sledges, through consumption of food (by dogs and men) and fuel (for the cooking stove) would have dropped to only five hundred pounds. After reaching the pole, they would head south, toward the northernmost point of Svalbard, the group of islands between Greenland five hundred miles to the west and Franz Josef Land (a cluster of almost two hundred islands) four hundred miles to the east. On this southern leg of fifty days’ duration, they would consume the remaining food. In addition, they would have to kill dogs as they went, to provide food for the other dogs and, perhaps, themselves.

  Upon reaching the edge of the polar ice pack, sometime in May or early June, all the dogs would be gone, but by then seals, bears, and birds frequenting the ice-studded water would be there for the hunting. The men would then take to the kayaks and paddle and sail either to Svalbard or Novaya Zemlaya via Franz Josef Land, depending on conditions, where they would find human presence and the means home.

  This trip, once begun, would be a total, irreversible commitment. There would be no rendezvous with the Fram. There would be no stockpiling of food along the way and little leeway for error or miscalculation. Nansen, as on his Greenland crossing and as with the freezing in of the Fram, was scornful of the concept of a “line of retreat,” calling it in Farthest North “a wretched invention . . . an everlasting inducement to look behind, when they should have enough to do to look ahead.” It was all or nothing. It was, again, “gå fram!”

  He had at the ready the dogs and sledges, the food, the equipment, and the strategy. He knew he would go as leader of the two-man team. But who would be that all-important second one to accompany him? Whoever it was, he had to be strong in body and spirit, levelheaded and unflappable, knowledgeable in navigation, an excellent skier and dog handler, a good hunter, and, as important as all the other attributes, able to get along with Nansen no matter what his moods and temper were. Sverdrup fit the bill (though he had had quarrels with Nansen), but as much as he wanted to go with Nansen, both knew he had to remain behind, captain of the ship and new expedition leader. Of the several others Nansen considered, he picked Johansen, the man who had practically pleaded to come on board, who had struggled to fit into civilized society back home, yet seemed perfect for this wilder, more primal test of human will and fortitude.

  Johansen accepted immediately, and the very next day, November 20, 1894, Nansen announced his plan to the entire crew. The day after that, the men turned their attention to getting things ready for their trip, still months away. Sverdrup and Henrik Blessing covered Nansen’s kayak with sailcloth; Ivar Mogstad built a second one for Johansen. Mogstad also put together new sledges, specially designed for the great weight they were to bear over craggy, pressure-ridged ice. Juell made harnesses for the dogs; Sverdrup, sleeping bags for the two men. Nansen experimented with the appropriate clothing, camping, cooking, and navigational equipment to take, as well as calculating and recalculating the amount and kind of food for dogs and men.

  December 14 called for another celebration. After an encouraging, mostly unwavering northwest drift over the last four months, the Fram reached latitude 82°30’ north, surpassing the previous record for farthest north for a ship, the British vessel Alert on George Nares’s 1876 unsuccessful assault on the pole. Progress continued through Christmas and New Year’s, their second away from home, and Nansen and Johansen’s last on board, as they passed 83°, still heading north and west.

  New forces came at them from the winter-built, rearranging pack, bigger and more violent than they had experienced before. The tremendous pressures, accompanied by deafening sounds, shook the ship, lifted it, and pushed it over, as if it were a toy, starting the men out of sleep to run up to deck or, if they were out on the ice, to scurry back to the only security they knew. By the light of lanterns they could see deep cracks open and close nearby, giant heaved-up ridges advancing slowly toward the ship. Now, for the first time, they could sense the real possibility of the Fram being threatened, if not crushed then rolled over or overwhelmed by great waves of ice.

  The first scare came after Christmas, when “a very ugly pressure-ridge” approached out of the dark, about one hundred yards ahead, which “roared and crunched and crackled all along” as it came.10 They kept close watch through the night, but it abated and caused no further trouble. Early in the new year of 1895, the real wake-up call came. Another monster approached with its deep roaring, this time “alarmingly near” on the port side, forcing the Fram over. Cracks suddenly appeared around the ship, threatening to cut off access to the scientific equipment left on the ice, so men rushed out to retrieve it. Soon everyone prepared feverishly to abandon ship, bringing food, fuel, sledges, kayaks, and other supplies on deck, making them ready for quick transfer to the ice. Cases of dog biscuits went on the ice, too, near the kennels where the dogs were locked in. When things were as ready as they could be, the men went below to wait.

  Nordahl, however, had taken one last look at what was happening outside and came running down to urge everyone topside. Water had gushed up through the cracks, poured onto the ice, and “already stood high in the kennel.” Hendriksen sped down the gangway, waded knee-deep through icy water to the flooded kennels, and
opened the door to free the sodden, anxious dogs while dragging out those that cowered in the corner. Having narrowly escaped one disaster and duly forewarned of another, the men worked into the wee hours of the next morning to relocate the dogs and the forge (which was sitting over a crack) to a huge hummock of more stable ice. They also established a food and fuel depot there from the supplies that had been brought on deck. Now maybe they could rest a bit more at peace.

  FIGURE 38A

  The dead of Arctic winter, January 10–12, 1895. The Fram in moonlight, with a giant pressure ridge pressed up against it. The winter scenery could be fearsome yet spellbinding; the ice sounds ominous and haunting. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  FIGURE 38B

  Another view of the Fram in ice. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  But the ice was not done with them yet. On January 4 a gigantic pressure ridge “towers higher and higher and bears right down upon us slowly . . . can actually see it creeping nearer and nearer. . . . I can hear the ice making a fresh assault, and roaring and packing outside. . . . This is an ice-pressure with a vengeance.”11 They knew a critical time was at hand. The men stuffed all their clothing into bags and brought them to the saloon, ready to grab and go. They slept the next night in their clothes, and at five-thirty in the morning, Sverdrup woke Nansen with the news that the great growling ridge was pressing at the Fram’s side, up to the highest rail. Nansen ordered that all the remaining provisions on deck be thrown to the ice and one of the boats be lowered.

  By evening, however, it seemed the pressure had subsided. It was only a lull. It picked up again, even more powerfully, battering the ship and riding in a great rampart of ice and snow up and over the decks and awning tent. Hendriksen and Mogstad came running with shovels to attack the invader, a gallant but impotent effort against so massive a foe. Nansen rushed forward, under the awning sagging with the weight on top of it, to reach the doorway and ladder down to the saloon, fearing that any moment the ice would come crashing down and trap everyone inside. He made it to the saloon, yelled to those gathered there in the dark (in the confusion the lanterns had gone out), ordering them topside with their bags but using the starboard passageway and door, as those on the port were at imminent risk of being blocked by ice.

  Nansen dashed up again, to where the dogs, having been brought on board, were in an enclosure under the awning that now threatened to collapse on them. With a knife he slashed the bindings tying the door shut and opened it, and the dogs, unhinged by all the commotion, charged out and down the gangway to the ice.

  Everyone followed, bags of clothing and personal items in hand. In effect, the Fram was being abandoned as surely as a foundering ship at sea, with all the men off, standing on the ice, and peering into the dark to see what would happen next. With them were the dogs, sledges, kayaks, and depot supplies, their only means to stay alive and go on if they had to leave behind the wreckage of what had been their home, their protector, and their hope ever since leaving Norway.

  But even with the ship half buried in the grinding ice, listing precariously, the men came back on board to wait until the last minute, if and when it came. “We are now living in marching order on an empty ship,” Nansen recorded at the time (and later in Farthest North). They spent that night aboard, with all the doors kept open so they would not jam shut and trap them inside. The next day and the day after were quieter, with only the occasional, more normal jamming and rumbling, and the tension aboard eased. The ice was settling; the worst was over.

  The Fram had not yielded to the siege of ice, now well into the shrouds; it had not caved in or broken into pieces. It had done precisely what Colin Archer, visualizing what he had never seen, designed it to do. It had resisted to the utmost and then bit by bit wriggled free, its smooth hull slipping at last from the deadly squeeze; it rode up on the immense blocks as they passed under and by degrees righted itself. The men spent the next few days, and off and on for weeks, with picks, mauls, and shovels, clearing the mass of ice and snow from the awning and deck, and relieving the ship from that great wall that still lay against its port side. The Fram had held; it sustained no real damage, inside or out. Even the canvas awning was intact, if stretched out somewhat.

  Now, their attention could turn back to what lay before them in the not-too-distant future: the sledge journey to the pole.

  6 ›THE MAD DASH

  To allow as much time as possible to reach the pole and get south to the edge of the polar ice pack before summer, when conditions for sledging would be impossible, Fridtjof Nansen wanted to set out in February, well before the sun had shown its 1895 face. According to the prevailing wisdom among Arctic explorers, this was too early and too cold. Even March was pushing it. As was his manner when he had made up his mind after researching a topic exhaustively, Nansen brushed aside this accepted dictum. They simply must go then, to hell with risks, discomforts, and problems.

  At the end of January, with anticipated departure only weeks away, preparations picked up speed. New clothing, sleeping bags, tents, sledges, sledge sails (an innovation from his Greenland crossing, to ease the hauling when the wind was following), dog harnesses, and other equipment had to be completed, tested under different conditions, and altered as necessary. Skis needed modification and prepping for Arctic conditions and the kind of travel that would be coming, and the skiers needed practice with the dogs and loaded sledges. Henrik Blessing gave lessons in first aid to Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen, who then tried out procedures on each other.

  They looked for ways to minimize weight and bulk, while ensuring enough food for them and the twenty-eight dogs. Otto Sverdrup had an ingenious idea to deal with all three concerns at once. Pemmican, the Native American food adopted and adapted by explorers for Arctic travel, was to be one of the nutritionally complete, energy-rich staples on the trip, combining dried meat, fat, and fruit. They were taking 650 pounds of it, but the tins in which it was packed would add significant weight and be bulky. Sverdrup’s thought was to take the pemmican out of the tins, warm it so it could be kneaded, and put it in bags made in the shape of chocks to support the kayaks atop the sledges. Once in place, the chocks, three per kayak, each weighing around one hundred pounds, would freeze in their shape. So, the chocks would support the kayaks on the journey, protect them over rough terrain, save a great deal of room on the sledges, and be consumed along the way—edible boat chocks! It was a clever invention of Sverdrup’s practical mind, regardless of the rather limited market for such a product.

  FIGURE 39

  Nansen and Johansen leaving the Fram on their attempt to reach the North Pole, accompanied by the send-off party, March 14, 1895. Nansen is second from left, Johansen fourth from right. Note the kayaks atop the sledges, for later ocean travel.

  Nansen had set February 20 as the day to go. As it drew near, he fell into another bout of self-doubt and brooding, as seemed to happen when big changes were about to take place. His unpredictable, obsessive behavior troubled, even annoyed, many of the others. In his anxiety about getting ready for the journey, he became meddlesome, flitting constantly from one to the other, directing and correcting, though usually they knew better than he how something was to be done. He could be quick to anger when things went wrong or, harder for some to deal with, would skulk and withdraw socially. Even the officers closest to him, diplomatic Sverdrup and balanced but acerbic Sigurd Scott-Hansen, made chiding private comments in their diaries, while the man who was to be in his sole company for months, Johansen, complained about his needing to be right and interfering with the work of others. Scott-Hansen hinted that they would be as glad to see him go as he was to leave.

  They were not ready on February 20, and reset departure for the 26th. The preceding night a bittersweet good-bye party took place. After that, Nansen stayed up late writing letters home, to leave on the Fram. He also wrote a letter to Sverdrup, giving him full command of the ship and making him expedition leader from then on. The crew of the Fram also wrote letters that Nanse
n and Johansen took with them, in the event that they made it home and the ship did not; these were on tiny sheets of paper, with the words miniaturized and crammed together, to save weight.

  On the morning of the 26th, with Sverdrup, Scott-Hansen, Blessing, Peder Hendriksen, and Ivar Mogstad to accompany them away, Nansen and Johansen strode out on skis, driving eager dogs hauling four loaded sledges, one behind the other, all to cheers and cannon salutes from those left behind on the Fram. Off they raced, skimming over the snow and disappearing into the half-light. A fine, picturesque send-off it was, but soon they encountered steep ice hills the dogs could not surmount so had to be helped up and over, one at a time. Then, speeding off again, Nansen’s sledge hit rough ice, breaking its three crossbars and supports, and forcing them to return to the ship for repairs. On the way back, two sledges collided, snapping the hauling bar of one. They arrived at the ship, somewhat chagrined but grateful the weaknesses of their essential vehicles were discovered so early in the trip, for later on and far away it all might well have led to disaster.

  Their last night aboard, actually the second last one, was feted with a display of lights from the electric lamp raised high on the Fram’s main topmast and from torches and a bonfire on the ice surrounding it. It must have been a remarkable, ghostly sight, the barren ice and its captive ship illuminated in the darkness this way. Two days later, with the sledges repaired, reinforced, and modified to prevent similar mishaps, and with two more sledges to lessen the loads on each, they took off again, escorted by the same party of five, this time without the booming gun salute.