Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  The doctor, Henrik Blessing, was unable to free himself from the grip of morphine addiction that had started on the voyage and drifted aimlessly and without steady work. Hjalmar Johansen, one of the stalwarts of the crew and Nansen’s constant, dependable companion for fifteen months on Arctic ice, fell back into the dark hole from which he had emerged all those years ago, where depression, overuse of alcohol, interpersonal strife with others (especially his wife to be), and joblessness lay claim to him once again. Nansen, loyal to and feeling responsible for all those who had participated in the expedition, and putting aside any private conflicts they might have had, tried to help both men, Blessing with payment for medical attention and rehabilitation and Johansen with outright gifts of money. His succor, though, did not solve either man’s problems; it only helped defer the day of reckoning.

  Nansen himself was not immune from that plunge of the spirit that befell many after homecoming. It took another form in him, perhaps because the spotlight had continued to shine on him longer than on the others, in Norway and beyond, and he had responded to the clamor for his story and his presence. He worked furiously on his book about the adventure and, incredibly, within two months of returning finished a three-hundred-thousand-word manuscript (about one thousand pages). It was published four months later in two volumes as the classic Farthest North. The entire process, from the beginning of the first handwritten page to printed book, took only six months. It became an instant and lucrative best seller, and Nansen embarked on a hectic schedule of public appearances to publicize and sell it. He gave forty-one presentations in forty-two days in Great Britain alone, many others in Europe and Scandinavia, and then an extended tour in the United States. Each appearance was embellished by a dinner or other fetes, where he was always the center of attention, not the least from women attracted to his rugged, Viking-like features and stature; brooding but engaging demeanor; deep, booming voice inflected with a lilting Norwegian accent; and an indefinable mantle of power cloaked in his new fame. Nansen, ever the keen observer and ever susceptible to feminine favor, was not unaware of the looks directed his way, or what they meant.

  All this activity took its toll on him and those closest to him. Perhaps it would have been taken anyway, given who he was and the life-changing events he experienced over the last three years. The euphoric, blissful reunion with his wife Eva soon subsided into a marriage with domestic separate ways, he into his work, travel, and public appearances, and she into the role of mother (of a daughter, Liv, now three) and her own professional performing career as singer. Nansen’s moodiness returned more pronounced than before, surely in part a normal if exaggerated descent from the emotional peaks he had scaled. Their relationship was not without difficulties, too, as Eva, feeling isolated once again through not just his physical absences but psychic ones as well when the dark moods came on, and upset about his infidelities, withdrew and pursued her own interests without him.

  It was not just the family that felt the changes. In a biography of her father, Nansen: A Family Portrait, Liv Nansen Høyer wrote, “Many people noticed that Nansen was ‘a changed man’ after his North Pole Expedition. ‘There was a great gravity about his face, which never moved and never smiled, as though it were numbed’ . . . a strange melancholy came over Father. . . . He had been happy when all his will-power and strength was concentrated on a great aim. It was only when the task was accomplished that he became tired of life.” In this, perhaps, he was not so different than the man who had kept him company all those months in the Arctic, who now too was suffering.

  ››› When all was said and done, it did not really matter, then or to history, that the Fram, or Nansen personally, never reached the pole. There was a record, yes, for coming closest, for ship and man. The voyage’s great legacy, first and foremost as Nansen always intended, was for its scientific revelations. While not only proving Nansen’s controversial theories, the wealth of new information and data also revolutionized understanding of this vast region, including that the high Arctic was not a continent or an ice-free sea but an ocean whose perennial ice was carried in predictable ways by polar currents and that this ocean was incredibly deep, instead of shallow as had long been believed. It was also a resounding vindication of Nansen’s unorthodox, much-criticized ways of proving those theories: using a small expeditionary force and working, Inuit style, with the environment instead of against it; building a special ship for the very purpose of being frozen in the Arctic ice in order to survive it; employing men on skis, with sledges and dogs, for most efficient long-distance transportation across the ice; and putting his own life and those of other men on the line as a measure of his confidence in his thinking and planning.

  However acclaimed Nansen was for his vision, courage, and discoveries, voices of criticism and judgment inevitably arose. One was of the man who had been so vocally skeptical and condemning of Nansen’s plan in the first place. The American Adolphus Greely, whose own record in Arctic exploration was so deeply marred, gave grudging acknowledgment of the success of the entire enterprise but continued to find fault. Nansen, he said, had committed the one most grievous act of a naval commander, leaving—in effect, abandoning—his ship without intending to return. At the same time he praised Otto Sverdrup, in a backhanded swipe at Nansen, for what he did to bring the Fram and its men safely home. (Greely did not mention, intentionally or otherwise, that the Fram, though technically owned by the Norwegian government, was not a commissioned naval vessel nor was the expedition under military orders. He also conveniently ignored the fact that Sverdrup was captain of the ship, while Nansen, as commander of the expedition, retained the right to do what was in the best interests of the overall mission.)

  ››› After making it through such a long and dangerous gauntlet of trials in the Arctic, after the men left the ship and dispersed into other work and other lives, there came back now and then sad words. Lars Pettersen, the eager, fresh-faced young Swede who had fibbed his way on board, died mysteriously in Germany two years after returning. He was thirty-eight and left behind a wife and four children. About the same time, Bernt Bentsen, the man who had come aboard at the last hour in Tromsø and stayed on for the entire journey, was in a startling reenactment of Nansen’s and Johansen’s 1895 wintering saga, without the happy ending.

  He had signed on to an American expedition to the North Pole under the leadership of a Walter Wellman, leaving in 1898 at the very time the Fram took off on its second exploration. They arrived in Franz Josef Land to set up a large cache of food and supplies for the next year’s assault on the pole. Bentsen and compatriot friend Paul Bjørvik volunteered to remain with the cache, to protect it and the forty dogs that had been brought along. They holed up in a small shelter eerily like that of Nansen and Johansen’s, even down to its structure of rocks, snow, driftwood, and a walrus-hide roof. However, in November Bentsen fell ill, and he died in January. Bjørvik had promised the ailing Bentsen not to let bears and foxes eat his body, so he kept his frozen corpse in the sleeping bag right next to his own, for two months until Wellman and the main party arrived at the end of February as they headed north. Bentsen and Bjørvik’s shelter was on an island southeast of Nansen and Johansen’s, only forty miles away. His body stayed in Franz Josef Land. Bentsen, like Pettersen, was thirty-eight years old when he died.

  But what about the steady, quiet one, the man who had always stayed in the shadows cast by Nansen as he stood tall under the bright lights of public reverence? What happened to the self-effacing, modest person who had been on two major expeditions with Nansen and played such an important yet unheralded part in their success? What became of Otto Sverdrup after he came back?

  II ›››THE SECOND EXPEDITION

  1898–1902

  THE CANADIAN ARCTIC ‹‹‹

  FIGURE 50

  Ellesmere and the Sverdrup Islands. Map from the original by Gunnar Isachsen. In dark is new territory discovered on the expedition. Numbered are the Fram’s four winter quarters: (1)
“Fram’s Haven” on Rice Strait, 1898–99; (2) Harbor Fjord, 1899–1900; (3) Goose Fjord north, 1900–1901; and (4) Goose Fjord south, 1901–2. The Sverdrup Islands include Axel Heiberg, Ellef Ringnes, Amund Ringnes, and several others. Place names ending in “Land” were of unknown extent at the time; many were later determined to be islands (for example, Ellesmere Island includes several such “lands”). For scale, Ellesmere is about five hundred miles long, north to south. See also figure 8 for the route of the entire expedition, 1898–1902.

  11 ›LEAVING AGAIN

  In their many hours together in Greenland, and later as commander and captain while the Fram lay immobilized in the Arctic, Fridtjof Nansen and Otto Sverdrup had talked extensively about their ideas for future polar exploration. Nansen always had in mind to continue what he had begun in the Arctic, even attaining the pole in the process, but also heading south to do the same in Antarctica. Sverdrup, typically, was open to just about anything offered to him that would take him to these places.

  The first flush of success of the Fram expedition, and the notoriety it generated, had spawned excitement for a sequel. Now, unlike three years before, raising money would be no problem. Even before the Fram was completely unloaded in Christiana that fall, Nansen came aboard with a proposal for Sverdrup. Axel Heiberg and the Ringnes brothers, key patrons of the first expedition, had agreed to finance, entirely on their own, a second venture northward into the Arctic, this time via the narrower passageway between Greenland and lands west of it, still largely unknown. The ship would go as far as it could before being frozen in; then sledge parties would explore the Greenland coast as far north and east as they could go. Officially, as for the first expedition, the primary goals would be scientific inquiry, specifically, surveying of new territory for Norway. Deep down and unofficially, though, would there still not be that lingering desire of being first to a place no one had ever been? For some, certainly yes. Not for Sverdrup, though, who was never starstruck and whose motivations lay elsewhere than seeking his own fame. “There was no question of trying to reach the pole,” he stated flatly in the opening page of his book on the expedition, New Land, as if it never crossed his mind.

  Nansen’s time for the Fram, at least for the foreseeable future, was over (some say it had been so ever since he decided to leave the ship with Hjalmar Johansen, halfway through the voyage). Swamped with work, pulled in many different geographic and social directions, he was no longer available, physically or emotionally, for the kind of arduous, isolating undertaking he had just completed. Another man, of different temperament and ambition, was. Sverdrup did not hesitate and agreed then and there to the offer.

  It would have been understandable if Sverdrup had decided to spend the rest of his life in the company of family and friends, working closer to home. But he was not that kind of person. He was, after all, a professional sailor and now the rare one with deep experience in the Arctic. Moreover, he had come under the spell of the Arctic; he was drawn to it in all its fearsome splendor.

  But the trip would have to be carefully planned, the ship refurbished and prepared, and supplies brought on board, and that would take some time; the estimated departure was set for the summer of 1898. So, to bridge the gap, Sverdrup took command of the steamship Lofoten in 1897, ferrying tourists north in the summer to see the mythic islands of Svalbard and their wildlife. The archipelago had recently become a destination in no small measure due to worldwide interest in the Andrée expedition, and Sverdrup would have been a natural choice for guiding people there. For the cruise line owners, he would be a great financial draw.

  The Fram was towed to Colin Archer’s shipyard in Larvik late in 1897, to be made ready for its next adventure, under the guidance of the master. The three years in the ice, and ocean traveling to and fro, had revealed things that needed changing. Super-sized pressure ridges and extraordinarily heavy seas had periodically threatened to swamp the low foredeck, so it was covered over by a whole new deck, with the sides planked up to it, providing an extra six feet of freeboard and interior living space. The extra height and weight would make it more top-heavy and unstable, so the charthouse atop the half-deck was removed. Likewise, the foremast was raised seven feet to make up for the lost sail area. To better its maneuverability in heavy weather, lessening dangerous slewing in a heavy-following sea while improving its ability to claw upwind, a deeper false keel was added (spiked on instead of bolted, so if the ice got hold it would be torn away without damage to the hull or other vital structures). Inside, the space under the new foredeck was partitioned into six more berths for a larger crew, a new saloon, a workroom, and a laboratory.

  Sverdrup selected fifteen men from the many applications that poured in. Besides himself, only one was a carryover from the previous voyage: rugged and loyal Peder Hendriksen. Like Sverdrup, Hendriksen would once again be leaving wife and children (Sverdrup one, Hendriksen four) at home for a second prolonged time, on an expedition planned to take three years but, as before, provisioned for five. Brave and forbearing families they must have been . . . but with what depths of loneliness and yearning?

  FIGURE 51

  The new and improved Fram, showing added foredeck, new cabins, and work spaces. See also figure 3.

  sD–spar (upper) deck. mD–main deck. oS–old saloon. nS–new Saloon. B–galley. b-laboratories. d–berths (cabins). g–bunkers (fuel). p–poop deck.

  Eleven of the crew manning the ship were, as before, Norwegians, from various walks of life but most with backgrounds as sailors or in pertinent trades. Victor Baumann of Christiania, age twenty-eight, with many years and much discipline as a naval officer, was appointed second-in-command, but he also brought with him additional useful training as an electrician and a land surveyor. The mate was big, square-jawed Oluf Raanes, thirty-three, who had grown up a tough, adept, and self-reliant fisherman and hunter in the offshore Lofoten islands of northwestern Norway, the site of a famous cod fishery. Thirty-four-year-old Karl Olsen of Tromsø, a licensed, college-trained engineer with several years of practical experience under his belt, was appointed chief engineer. Second engineer Jacob Nødtvedt, from near Bergen, at forty-one was the second-oldest member of the crew (Sverdrup was now forty-three). He had served many years as stoker on steamships and was a clever, creative blacksmith, fixing and fashioning all manner of items on the ship, personal items for the men, and equipment for the sledging trips.

  FIGURE 52

  Second expedition members in Christiania, before departure, June 24, 1898. From left to right, Lindstrøm, Schei, Olsen, Isachsen, Stolz, Baumann, Nøtvedt, Fosheim, Sverdrup, Raanes, Simmons, Hendriksen, Bay, Braskerud, Svendsen, Hassel. Svendsen and Braskerud would die on Ellesmere Island in 1899, Svendsen by his own hand, Braskerud of an unknown disease. And why is Sverdrup the only one in white?

  Of the remaining crew, three were to be all-around workers, performing many tasks aboard and, when the time came, on the sledging trips on land and ice. The oldest was Ivar Fosheim, age thirty-five, chosen mostly for his homegrown reputation as an excellent hunter (as Hendriksen had been), a skill that would be invaluable, as it had on the first expedition. Two others, both almost a decade younger, were to perform similar varied duties: Ove Braskerud, with a background as a smith and a mechanic, and Rudolf Stolz. The latter was a curious choice, as his previous work had nothing to do with ships, hunting, skiing, or any kind of exploration, let alone in the Arctic: he had led an indoor life, with education and training as an office clerk and financial broker. Perhaps outside influences had put pressure on Sverdrup to hire him, or perhaps Sverdrup was impressed with Stolz’s eagerness to change direction in his life and become physically stronger and more “manly” (à la Humphrey van Weyden, protagonist in Jack London’s Sea Wolf, published about this time, in 1904).

  Youngest of the crew was Sverre Hassel. He was only twenty-two years old but had been at sea for many years, since his early teens, and already held a mate’s license. He was soft-spoken, levelheaded, and for all his
youth, poised and diplomatic. Though hired for his maritime experience, he later became an excellent dog handler on long sledge trips, a newfound skill that would be of great consequence over a decade later.

  Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm was the picture-perfect cook on a polar expedition: portly, cheerful, entertaining, and most of all, day in and day out able to come up with tasty dishes made from the ship’s stores or fresh meat gathered by the crew. It seems he was born to this job, as he had been a steward and cook-in-training on sealing ships ever since he went to sea as a boy. He actually had signed on to the Fram at the end of its first expedition, coming aboard in Tromsø for the homeward trip to Christiania. It was during those weeks that Sverdrup got a taste, so to speak, of his culinary talents, and he wasted no time in hiring him for the second expedition. (Lindstrøm’s good nature comes through even in the stiff and formal portrait photographs of the crew. To remain motionless so the pictures would not blur, almost all the subjects gazed out in severe stoniness, making them look angry or depressed. Lindstrøm, however, held the slightest smile, giving radiance to his face and a sense of joy to his presence.)

  Emphasizing the primary mission of the expedition, Sverdrup (no doubt in consultation with experts in the various fields) hired five scientists to oversee the scientific work to be conducted, though they had to agree to other shipboard and sledging duties as well. Sverdrup put second-in-command Baumann and first mate Raanes in charge of them, an arrangement that later would cause some friction between these two camps: the officers did not see the need for scientists who took the place of more useful crew, and the scientists resented taking orders from those who did not understand the importance of their work.