Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  Amundsen marked the moment, recounted in The South Pole: “We came in sight of the Great Ice Barrier. Slowly it rose up out of the sea until we were face to face with it in all its imposing majesty. It is difficult . . . to give any idea of the impression this mighty wall of ice makes on the observer who is confronted with it for the first time. It is altogether a thing which can hardly be described; but one can understand very well that this wall of 100 feet in height was regarded for a generation as an insuperable obstacle to further southward progress.” But Amundsen was in the race of his life, and it would not stop him. He had come sixteen thousand miles. There was another eight hundred to go to the finish line.

  FIGURE 84

  Flying south. The Fram clicks off the miles in strong winds and following seas in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Because of its shape, it was difficult to handle in such conditions, and often required two men at the helm.

  The Fram made the long way from Madeira without major incident; the four-month passage led the crew over towering waves or across flat calm; through storms or in fair weather; to run free with the trade winds or poke along in equatorial doldrums; and from wilting tropical heat to polar cold. The ship had proved many times before that it was a superb ice ship and would do so again. Now it had shown its colors as a sea ship, able to handle any condition any ocean could throw at it, though the ride would not always be pleasant for passengers caught in the dramatic slewing, wallowing, and rolling it was famous for in big winds and seas.

  The men had fared well, despite the months at sea without a break. The dogs also did well; so much depended on them for the land journey to come. For the trip south a temporary, removable deck had been laid down over the main deck and elevated on blocks a few inches. This deck was washed down twice a day (one hundred dogs can make quite a mess) and taken up once a week for cleaning the main deck. Moreover, the space between the temporary and main decks kept the dogs dry, above any seawater sloshing over the ship’s sides, while in the tropics it allowed circulation of cooling air. An awning the length of the foredeck provided shade for the dogs (at first chained and then let loose once they got to know each other).

  FIGURE 85

  The dogs were close companions of the men on the long voyage to Antarctica, providing entertainment and relief from boredom. Here Nilsen feeds a puppy while the mother keeps an eye on things. Puppies born on board were to take the place of those lost later, so were well cared for, unless killed immediately because there were too many. By the time the Fram reached Antarctica, there were more dogs than at the beginning (one hundred). Awnings provided cooling shade for the dogs when the ship reached the hot tropics.

  The dogs were everyone’s responsibility. Each man had a group of ten or so to look after, and during the long voyage close bonds developed between the men and their charges. The dogs were also companions, diversions from monotony, and a source of entertainment and, at times, exasperation. Amundsen wrote that sometime all the dogs, one hundred strong, might begin howling like wolves all at once, for no apparent reason, in a strange and deafening chorus (such an image, to see and hear from afar a ship powered not by wind or by motor but by the howls of dogs).

  ››› Scott had had a different idea about getting to the pole. Whether out of tenacious but out-of-place British tradition, unfamiliarity with the ways to travel efficiently over ice and snow, or simply belief that there was a better way, he would not rely on dogs to pull the sledges. Instead, he would use primarily northern ponies (supposedly cold and snow adapted). There was a precedent: Ernest Shackleton had used them, with qualified success, in 1908–9 to reach “farthest south” up till then, which was 112 miles from the pole. Scott would also use new “motorized sledges,” the heavy and insufficiently tested precursors of today’s snowmobiles (now the vehicle of choice for transportation in frozen, snowy regions of the world).

  In Lyttelton, they had brought on board the Terra Nova two Siberian and seventeen Manchurian ponies, tons of grain and bales of fodder (both scarce in Antarctica), and, Scott’s secret weapon, three petroleum-powered motor sledges made just for this purpose but never before used in such extreme circumstances. Almost as an afterthought, thirty-three Siberian sledge dogs were loaded, less than one-third of what Amundsen brought along on the Fram; no one on board had worked with sledge dogs. There were skis, but few knew how to use them skillfully, or at all. There were also harnesses for men, so they could pull the sledges themselves, in staunch British fashion.

  Crammed with men, animals, food for all of them, coal by the ton to heat their base station, barrels of other fuel, and mountains of equipment and supplies, the Terra Nova slogged away from New Zealand but almost never made it to Antarctica. It was caught in a violent storm soon after leaving New Zealand and, top-heavy, nearly capsized. Then it took on water and almost sank; two ponies died. Somehow it stayed afloat and managed to limp south and into the pack ice. Without an ice pilot like the Fram’s Beck to guide it through, it became trapped and remained so for three weeks. Finally, it broke through and made it the rest of the way to the western corner of the Great Ice Barrier, at the end of McMurdo Sound.

  Unbeknownst to Scott, the Fram would reach Antarctica a week and a half later, easily slipping through the ice and arriving, as Amundsen intended, in the Bay of Whales at the opposite corner of the Great Ice Barrier. The Fram lay some four hundred miles east of the Terra Nova and, more importantly, a whole degree of latitude, sixty-nine miles, closer to the pole. Although only sixty-nine miles, it would make all the difference in the long run.

  FIGURE 86

  Fram moored to pack ice in the Bay of Whales, with the Great Ice Barrier (now Ross Ice Shelf) in the background. Framheim would be set up on the barrier a few miles in. The shelf extends about five hundred miles east to west and is up to 150 feet high, while beneath the sea surface the ice can descend one thousand feet or more.

  Both expeditions, ignorant as yet of the other’s whereabouts, immediately began preparations to set up their respective base stations. Scott chose, as he had on his previous expedition, the eastern side of big Ross Island, with its twin volcanoes Mt. Erebus (active and smoking) and Mt. Terror (extinct) rising in the east. He favored this spot for its accessibility for unloading the Terra Nova and because, being solid land, it could not calve at any time as could the barrier. The location of the “Hut,” a wooden structure large enough to house twenty-seven men, did have a liability: it was separated from the mainland where the real expedition would begin, across several miles of pack ice, which was unpredictable in thickness and stability, at the head of McMurdo Sound. This liability showed itself right away. One of the motor sledges, just as it was being unloaded from the Terra Nova, broke through the pack ice and sank, gone before it ever had a chance to start. It would cost them even more dearly a few weeks ahead, when eight ponies fell through and drowned.

  Amundsen and his men knew ice better. They brought the Fram in close where they found a natural ramp of snow leading from the sea ice up to the top of the Great Ice Barrier. Easily ascending, they selected a place two miles in, on the flat plateau; this spot was safely back on older ice not at risk of breaking off and, they believed, anchored to an island below. Here they erected the smaller, prefabricated station for the nine men who would be there, dubbed “Framheim” (Fram’s home), along with fourteen tent kennels for the dogs. Ahead, just beyond Framheim’s door and across a narrow belt of old, firm sea ice, stretched the South Road, a boundless highway of ice and snow as far as they could see. The flat surface of South Road was made for northern dogs pulling northern sledges, with northern men on skis keeping pace, to speed their way toward this other pole.

  › POLES APART

  The Arctic and Antarctic, as their names denote, are antipodes, opposite extremes of north and south where all the lines of longitude converge and disappear, and where there are no more lines of latitude. They are at the outermost limits of life on earth, beyond which there is nothing else but space. In these, at least, they
share identities as our only two polar regions, and their lands are, for the most part, kinds of deserts, with annual precipitation less than the Sahara’s. As “polar” and “desert,” these are stark, tough places for living things, and few call them home. Their oceans, however, are rich with marine life, from seabirds to seals and whales, and several are endemic only to them.

  Both, too, are not what they once were. In their rocks are fossils telling of much warmer, even tropical, times—trees, ferns, birds, and even dinosaurs. (Scientists in Nansen’s day did not have our present explanations for their presence, but they knew the mysterious fossils were significant and collecting them was an important if arduous scientific activity of Otto Sverdrup’s expedition, as well as of Robert Falcon Scott’s later in Antarctica. Some members risked—and in Scott’s party perhaps even gave—their lives to bring back prized specimens.)

  But after these commonalities, it is hard to unite them in one sweeping comparison. It is perhaps easier to distinguish them.

  One definition fixes them to mirror-image latitudes in each hemisphere: 66.5° N (Arctic Circle) and 66.5° S (Antarctic Circle), beyond which the sun never goes below the horizon at summer solstice and never above it at winter solstice. Another ties them to climate, especially the controlling influence of temperature on the growing season: they are both regions where the average temperature of the warmest month is below 50° F. A third says it is their living ecology, not just physical measurements, that makes them polar: they are realms (biomes) where trees cannot grow (land above tree line) and associated animals cannot live. What is circumscribed by these definitions is not the same, and each falls short of capturing the totality. But collectively they paint a broad, if not precise, picture of these immense, remarkable, and profoundly different regions.

  There is a useful saying that the Arctic is mostly ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is mostly land surrounded by ocean. Though a bit too tidy, it does hold the key to a critical understanding—the 5.4 million-square-mile Arctic Ocean holds sway over the Arctic, while the continent of Antarctica, of equal size, dominates the Antarctic, leading to very different kinds of polar places. The Arctic is connected to other continents and other oceans; Antarctica is by itself, far removed, as one sea surrounding and isolating.

  The Arctic Ocean is only 50 percent ice covered at its minimum in summer (and shrinking), and the warmer, open water moderates the climate over the entire Arctic, especially the coastal areas. In addition, the dark ocean surface absorbs sunlight and thus heat. Consequently, the Arctic has a great deal of vegetated land, even when covered with winter’s ice and snow: hunkered-down patches or more widespread peaty tundra; carpets of mosses, shrubs, sedges, grasses, wildflowers, and lichens; and below these, the permafrost, permanently frozen ground. Tundra supports several abiding-year-round resident herbivores, mammal and bird (e.g., Arctic hare, lemming, musk ox, and ptarmigan). These, in turn, are sought by a number of predators (Arctic wolf, Arctic fox, gyrfalcon, etc.). Here are miracles in high places.

  Antarctica is a harsher, more barren place. Almost all of it is permanently covered with an ice sheet (see “About the Ice,” p. 8) up to three miles thick, so enormous a mass as to hold 90 percent of all ice in the world (the Arctic’s only sheet is Greenland’s, only 12 percent the size of Antarctica’s). Its near-total white surface reflects the sun’s rays, rejecting its heat, and making things even colder—the lowest temperature ever recorded on earth was there, −129° F, at the continent’s interior. It has very few places with exposed soil or vegetation, even in summer. Its flora is mostly lichens pressing against the rocks or smudges of algae in the ice, and only a couple of tiny flowers. There are no land mammals. Only one species of vertebrate, the emperor penguin, has what it takes to be a year-round resident (a remarkable story of its own). Life is mostly at its margins and in the sea around, and mostly in the summer.

  Then there is the human element. Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Arctic, sparsely but continuously, for thousands of years, adapting to what the land and sea offered and demanded. Four million native peoples now occupy this region: Inuit of Canada and Greenland, Saami (formerly Lapps) of Scandinavia, and several others of Russia. Nonindigenous people have joined them, too, in year-round settlements.

  But Antarctica is another story. No person ever saw it until 1820 or set foot on it until 1821. No one lives there permanently, or ever has. As many who have been there have felt and said, it is a place beyond imagining, where superlatives are inadequate. In the minds of some, it is the closest thing we have to another planet.

  FIGURE 87

  January 15, 1911 (midsummer), at the Bay of Whales, Antarctica. Supplies are loaded on the sledge at the edge of the Great Ice Barrier, for transportation to Framheim, the base camp and shelter for those making the expedition to the South Pole.

  Just after midnight on February 4, the watchman on the Fram had gone below to the galley for a cup of coffee. When he returned to his post on deck he saw, in disbelief, another ship not far away, moored to the barrier. The Terra Nova had come in silently, like a specter. Soon, men from the Terra Nova came over to the Fram (Scott and his shore party were not among them; they had stayed back at the Hut on Ross Island). The Terra Nova had left McMurdo Sound and sailed to King Edward VII Land east of the Bay of Whales, where a party from the ship was to land and investigate this unmapped territory. However, it had been unable to land and was returning to McMurdo, following the edge of the Great Ice Barrier when they, no doubt in total shock, happened upon the sleeping Fram.

  FIGURE 88 Famous chance meeting of the Fram (foreground) and Terra Nova, at the Bay of Whales, the edge of Antarctica’s Great Ice Barrier, February 4, 1911. They would never be together again, nor would their commanders ever see each other.

  Early that morning, Amundsen and the others from Framheim, coming with empty sledges to ferry more supplies back, arrived and joined the crowd. Later there would be other visits back and forth, members of the Terra Nova to Framheim, members of the Fram and Framheim to the Terra Nova. It was all very proper and civilized yet somehow surreal, with these two dark ships from half a world away near each other, together but totally alone in the vastness of where they were and the enormity of what they faced.

  The Terra Nova left in the afternoon of the same day it arrived, February 4, as if it could not wait to get back and pass the urgent, unsettling news on to Scott. For the first and only time, the rivals had met on the field of battle and, from behind the veneer of cordiality, took the measure of each other. The Norwegians were more resolved than ever. The British came with an underlying unease, even worry, that the Norwegians looked tough and efficient, were all good skiers, and had many dogs to pull the sledges. Their feeling, if not put in actual words, was that the Norwegians were ready and knew what they were doing.

  Amundsen and Scott had come to contend with Antarctica and each other, to reach and claim a spot where life itself is barely possible and where human beings really do not belong for very long. Although nothing but a simple spot upon the ice, a point upon a map, it was worth the whole world to them.

  24 ›THE SOUTHERN OCEAN

  On February 15, 1911, with good-byes from those staying behind at Framheim, the Fram left the Great Ice Barrier. The nine on the ice would begin setting out depots, to relay themselves south toward the pole and back; they would go as far as they could before the dark and cold confined them to Framheim for the winter, where planning and work would continue for the push south in spring. Under written orders from Roald Amundsen, Captain Thorvald Nilsen, with his crew of nine aboard the Fram, were to go to Buenos Aires for tidying up, fixing up, and reprovisioning before heading out across the Atlantic to Africa and back, to conduct the first ever oceanographic surveys of the Southern Ocean. When done, they were to go back to Buenos Aires and then south to the Bay of Whales to pick up the shore party about the time it returned (hopefully) from the pole. Amundsen also directed that if he were too ill to continue, or had not survi
ved, Nilsen was to take over command of the expedition and go back to the original plan: to explore the north polar basin.

  With Nilsen carrying his official orders to Buenos Aires where they would certainly be made public, Amundsen was broadcasting for all to hear that he intended to take the Fram north all along, to traverse another entire ocean from south to north, toward the other pole. Did he really plan to go, or was there another motive, perhaps to assuage any bad feelings that influential people back home might still have, including Fridtjof Nansen and the king? As so much that went on in the mind of Amundsen, it is hard to know. He would not always divulge his deepest thoughts and feelings, even to his diary.

  ››› Nilsen estimated it would take two months for the Fram to get from the Bay of Whales to Buenos Aires, even with the uncertain conditions of pack ice, icebergs, and the notorious weather of the region. When they dropped anchor just outside Buenos Aires on April 17, it had been sixty-two days since leaving the barrier—two months exactly, figuring truncated February. Nilsen had an amazing ability, whether due to unusual astuteness or uncanny intuition, or both, to make accurate ETAs (estimated times of arrival). When the Fram left Madeira on September 9, he said it would arrive at the Great Ice Barrier on January 15. Four months and fourteen thousand miles later it was there, on January 14. He was off by just one day but in his favor. When leaving Buenos Aires on June 8 to begin the round-trip Atlantic crossing, some eight thousand miles in all, he wanted to be back at that city on September 1, to stay on schedule for Antarctica. He arrived on September 1. Amundsen had requested him to be back at the barrier as early in the new year (1912) as possible; he got there on January 8, after an absence of eleven months.