Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  As on many ocean-going ships even today, the crew was a cast of characters, with varied backgrounds, training, education, and personalities. Some were married, some not. Some were outgoing, even boisterous, and others were quiet and reserved. Besides being relatively young men (most in their thirties), their only other common denominator was that they were all Norwegian—or were supposed to be—to satisfy Nansen’s prideful nationalistic intent and for the bond and concord arising, in theory at least, from sharing the same cultural identity.

  The personnel organization was not as rigid and hierarchical as in the navy, with everyone assigned a rate and rank within departments, but more as on a merchant ship around duties and skills, and, because the crew was small, assisting others as situations demanded. Everyone worked side by side and ate meals together. Notwithstanding, there was a recognized formal cadre of “officers” in charge and “mates” to carry out their orders, the officers with the luxury of their own private cabins: Nansen as expedition leader (overall commander), Sverdrup as captain of the Fram, and Sigurd Scott-Hansen as navigator and second-in-command, while Henrik Blessing was in the special category of ship’s doctor. (The roles of “expedition leader” and “captain” sometimes got confused in their overlapping, fuzzy jurisdictional, and ego lines.)

  FIGURE 10

  Otto Sverdrup, captain. After Nansen departed with Johansen for the North Pole, Sverdrup became expedition leader as well. He was broadly respected for his steady leadership, careful planning and preparation, and calmness under duress. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  Nansen readily picked Sverdrup, then aged 38, for the post of captain, based on what he knew about him, had seen for himself on the Greenland crossing, and with the respect he had that had grown out of their close association. He was strong in body, a highly proficient skier if not a flamboyant one, good with his hands, a sharpshooting hunter, and an experienced sailor, having spent many years at sea, eventually becoming mate and commanding officer of a coast guard boat. His poise and clearheadedness under duress were remarkable, exhibited years earlier when he was shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland and directed the rescue of the entire crew before he himself was saved from the foundering ship.

  There were perhaps other, subtler, reasons Nansen had tapped Sverdrup for the job. They had similar childhoods, in spending a great deal of time outdoors, developing a physical and emotional closeness to the land and sea. There was a family tie: Nansen’s younger brother Alexander was a friend of Sverdrup’s and had recommended him for the Greenland expedition. Sverdrup had participated in designing the Fram and had moved to Larvik to oversee the day-to-day construction. And, for all his brilliance, drive, and vision, Nansen, in the words of Roland Huntford, “was not exactly a leader of men, but he could inspire them.”2 Or, as Arctic trekker, writer, and photographer Jerry Kobalenko put it, “Nansen’s strength was conception; Sverdrup’s was execution.”3 Once inspired, however, the men would follow Sverdrup more willingly and loyally. Sverdrup’s calm, quiet steadiness was the counterpoise for Nansen’s more roller-coaster moodiness, impatience, and occasional irascibility. Sverdrup had the shipboard experience and thus the credibility with the men that Nansen lacked. Sverdrup was six years older, and those years were packed with experience that, combined with his laconic demeanor and unflinching, focused gaze, gave him a natural authority. In short, Nansen needed Sverdrup, for practical, but also subconscious, reasons.

  FIGURE 11

  Sigurd Scott-Hansen, second-in-command and chief scientist. Born in Scotland but raised in Christiania, he was well educated and well spoken, and an officer in the navy. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  At twenty-five, Sigurd Scott-Hansen was the youngest member of the crew and on active duty in the military. He had persuaded the navy to grant him a leave of absence to participate in the expedition, having attained the rank of first lieutenant in the Norwegian Navy the year before the Fram left. His hyphenated surname came from the union of a Norwegian father and Scottish mother. In contrast to most of the other crew, Sigurd was small in stature, with dark hair, reflecting his transnational heritage. Like Nansen, he was well educated and well spoken, an outcome of his graduation from the Naval Academy in Horten. In addition to his shipboard role as second-in-command, he was also in charge of the regular observations (meteorological, astronomical, and magnetic) to be conducted throughout the journey, work that Nansen deemed of high importance, indeed the primary purpose of the voyage.

  Two years older than Scott-Hansen and, like him, a clergyman’s son, Henrik Blessing signed on as ship’s doctor, with his medical degree awarded just before the Fram’s departure. He had grown up near the Telemark region just north of Christiania and was an expert Nordic skier, as were most other members of the Fram. A rather reserved, perhaps shy, figure, Blessing’s main role was, of course, to keep the crew physically and mentally healthy, that is, treat illness or injury. He was also the “botanist” for the expedition; he collected specimens gathered from land, ice, or water to document the heretofore undocumented part of the world ahead. (It was often the case on polar expeditions that the doctor was also the naturalist. This was partly due to an education that included the natural sciences but also because their unique job freed them from normal shipboard duties and left ample time for wandering about observing and gathering specimens of this or that.)

  FIGURE 12

  Doctor and botanist Henrik Blessing. Though well liked, he struggled with morphine addiction throughout the trip and later in life. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  FIGURE 13

  Theodor Jacobsen, first mate. Roland Huntford described him in Nansen: The Explorer as Hero as “tall, dark, bearded, talkative, and Mephistophelean-looking.” A good, practical, and dependable sailor, he could also touch the men’s hearts with stories and songs. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  Theodor Jacobsen of Tromsø, thirty-eight, was chief mate serving under Sverdrup. He had more sailing experience than anyone else, twenty-three years of it since age fifteen, advancing all the way from cabin boy to skipper, in many oceans of the world, including the Arctic. He was an imposing man of considerable height, dark hair and long, dark beard, sharp features, and penetrating eyes. As a seaman, he was deft, levelheaded, and practical. Socially, he was a bit quirky and highly talkative but nonetheless respected as a man of “much feeling” who could stir the souls of homesick shipmates through his stories and moving songs.

  The elder of the crew was forty-year-old Anton Amundsen (no relation to the more famous Roald), chief engineer. A rough-and-ready-looking man, he had spent twenty-five years in the Norwegian Navy as an engineer, but his career was pockmarked and undermined by insobriety. Aware of the two-edged sword of his reputation as excellent engineer and robust drinker, Nansen took him on but with a stern written demand for him to abstain from alcoholic drinks from that moment on. Once aboard, Amundsen gained another reputation: a lone wolf who did not like to socialize in the usual, informal ways, yet one not shy about laying on others his strong, even dogmatic, opinions (though he had a wife and seven children, he claimed there is no such thing as “love,” only “arrangements”). Scott-Hansen, who knew of him through their military service, attributed his problems to an unhappy marriage and troubled life at home, from which he escaped by going to sea. (Amundsen himself as much as acknowledged this, in his application for a position on the Fram. He even fudged his age on the application, making himself younger, a sure indication of his desperation to get away.) Once at sea, however, and sober, he seemed to find peace of mind with near-absolute devotion to his work and machines.

  FIGURE 14

  Anton Amundsen, chief engineer. A bit of a loner and skeptic of “the establishment” or conventional wisdom, he was a first-rate engineer and kept the Fram’s engine going through thick or thin. Photograph by Sigurd Scott-Hansen.

  Second engineer Lars Pettersen, thirty-three, had also been in the Norwegian Navy for years, as a machinist and blacksmith, skills readily transfer
rable to the Fram. He also served as one of the engine stokers and practically took over cooking for the entire crew later in the expedition. He had taken a risk when he applied to Nansen, knowing full well his requirement of a Norwegian-only crew, for he was actually Swedish. But he had a good cover: his parents were Norwegian, he had lived many years in Christiania while in the navy, and he spelled his name the Norwegian way (Pettersen) instead of the Swedish (Petterson). His ruse was good enough to get him on board, but eventually his secret was uncovered. By then, however, his good nature and hardworking habits overruled any nationalistic bias and he became a popular, fully accepted member of the crew.

  Nansen had asked only one other besides Sverdrup to join the expedition (all the rest had had to apply), because of the reputation he had in skills that would be of highest value to the expedition: Tromsø native Peder Hendriksen (in Farthest North, Nansen spelled it “Henriksen”). Hendriksen had spent twenty of his thirty-four years as sailor, harpooner, and hunter, many on sealers north of Scandinavia and Russia. He was soon to prove that his reputation was well earned and showed himself also to be one of the more good-natured of the men, fond of entertaining with enthralling, if often off-color or even brutish, stories from his rough years at sea. Like many on the Fram, in addition to the primary duties, he could be a jack-of-all-trades when the moment called.

  FIGURE 15

  Peder Hendriksen, harpooner, ice pilot, and sailor. Tough, skilled, and with years of experience in northern waters, he was a favorite of Nansen’s, often being his only companion out walking or skiing on the ice. He loved to tell jokes and stories, many off-color. He was to go on the second expedition as well. Photograph by Sigurd Scott-Hansen.

  Short, stocky, powerful Hjalmar Johansen, twenty-seven and from southern Norway, was another who was a superb athlete (a champion gymnast and Nordic skier) and had military education and training. Though very bright and hardworking, Johansen, like Anton Amundsen, had particular difficulty living a normal life at home. He struggled with a steady career and fell into periods of heavy drinking for illusory relief. So it may well have been to escape his own self-created problems that he had been so eager to participate in the voyage: he pestered Nansen relentlessly until finally appointed to the only open position, stoker, a duty unfamiliar to him. Also like Amundsen, once away and settled in to a new life of far different responsibilities, he was a model of dedication to the tasks at hand, including assisting Scott-Hansen with the scientific observations. He, as it turned out, was to play one of the biggest roles in the expedition, albeit away from the ship, one that was to have significant personal repercussions afterward.

  FIGURE 16

  Bernhard Nordahl was a jack-of-all-trades on the ship: stoker, gunner, scientific assistant, and most importantly, electrician responsible for keeping electric lights burning. He loved to read and write stories and poems. Like Nansen and Johansen, he wrote a book about the voyage.

  FIGURE 17

  Ivar Mogstad was spirited and sometimes contentious yet a clever, skilled handyman valued for his diverse contributions. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen.

  Bernhard Nordahl from Christiania, thirty-one and another navy veteran, had multiple duties: electrician, stoker, and scientific assistant. The first of these would be most valued, for he was the one to keep the innovative yet problematic electric light system working, for even though the illumination from this new technology was meager, the men would be drawn to it like moths to candle flames, not just to see but also to keep their spirits alive through the long, oppressive darknesses to come. That he was aboard at all was by coincidence. He had come to the waterfront in Christiania just to see the Fram as it was being loaded for the voyage and had run into Hjalmar Johansen, an old acquaintance now on the crew. Through Johansen’s urging and his sway with Nansen, Nordahl applied and was signed on but only for the trip up the coast to Tromsø, during which he would teach others to operate the electrical system. It would turn into a much longer cruise for him, whether by his own design or that of Nansen, and one can only imagine what his wife, at home with five children, felt about this sudden, shocking, and irreversible change of plan.

  Ivar Mogstad, thirty-seven and unmarried, was hired on for his all-around abilities as woodworker, builder, ingenious and resourceful fabricator of equipment, and hunter, everything from “watchmaker to dog watcher,” as Nansen said. But he was also temperamental and often contentious with others, thus prone to getting into fights. On the other hand, his softer side came out when he played the violin, which he did pleasingly for others. Prior to coming on the Fram he had been a guard at the psychiatric hospital (“lunatic asylum” of that day) in Christiania, a position that, some wag remarked irreverently, might come in handy on that voyage.

  FIGURE 18

  Nansen in a dashing pose as the Fram pulls out of Bergen, on its way north along the coast of Norway, the first expedition, July 2, 1893. Photograph by Johan von der Fehr.

  Thirty-three-year-old Adolf Juell, sporting a large, flowing, walrus-like mustache, came on as cook and steward, though his extensive maritime background did not include these duties. Instead, he learned on the job, with mixed results. In fact, later on Pettersen seemed to enjoy cooking and took over most of the duties, much to the crew’s delight as eating was one of the great, pleasurable diversions they looked forward to every day. Unfortunately, the normally chatty, affable Juell could turn sour and aggressive when consuming alcohol, which he did to excess at times (despite Nansen’s order to the contrary), leading to confrontations with other members of the crew.

  Kristian Kristiansen, twenty-eight, had grown up on a farm near the sea, worked on both, and engaged in the usual outdoor activities of hunting, fishing, skiing, and boating. Otto Sverdrup, who knew him, had recommended him for the Greenland expedition, on which Kristiansen had been a valuable, steady, “quiet but nice” member. Because of this, Nansen had asked him to join the Fram, and he came on board with Sverdrup when he joined the ship near Trondheim.

  FIGURE 19

  Fram attended by small boats, here escorted out of Bergen. It would be greeted and cheered every place it came to, whether outbound or inbound, leaving on the expedition or coming back from it. Photograph by Johan von der Fehr.

  ››› The Fram worked its way north up the coast, stopping at various ports along the way in an extended national good-bye, always to warm receptions of curious, well-wishing throngs. It arrived in a snowstorm on July 12 in Tromsø, at northwestern Norway, almost 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where it was to take on coal, clothing, and other supplies. It was a busy time, with official ceremonies, last-minute preparations, and the crew’s boisterous departing celebrations in town. Scott-Hansen’s fiancée appeared, having made the long trip from Christiania by passenger ship to see him off, something sure to have drawn kindly jesting, underlain with some envy, by others on the ship.

  But there was a glitch. Kristiansen, the Greenland veteran, changed his mind about going on the expedition and left the ship, to return home. In his official account, Farthest North, Nansen does not say anything about this. In fact, he does not even mention him at all. So one is left to wonder what was behind his change of heart, and how Nansen really felt about it. Kristiansen had been the target of some of Nansen’s imperious behavior in Greenland, which no doubt rankled him but he was able to put it aside then and go on. Now, perhaps having come face-to-face with it again on the trip from Trondheim to Tromsø, he may have realized he could not put up with him on a longer, more confined journey. Or maybe it was that, because his first child had recently been born, his thoughts turned more and more to home.

  FIGURE 20

  Bernt Bentsen signed on at the last minute in Tromsø. As the Fram was preparing to leave for the Arctic, one crewman departed and left an opening. Engaged to be married, he intended to go only as far as western Siberia and return home, but he stayed on for the entire three years of the expedition. Photograph by Sigurd Scott-Hansen.

  But just as th
e Fram was about to leave Tromsø, a man appeared at the gangway, Bernt Bentsen, asking to be hired on; this was fortuitous timing, as Kristiansen’s slot had just been vacated. A bit pressed for time and manpower, and learning of Bentsen’s extensive Arctic sailing experience, Nansen hired him on the spot. “It was 8:30 when he came on board to speak to me,” Nansen wrote in Farthest North, “and at 10 o’clock the Fram set sail.” His assignment was supposed to be relatively short, however, accompanying the ship to a place in Siberia where the Fram was to pick up coal and take on board Siberian sledge dogs. There, too, Nansen’s secretary Ola Christofersen, who had come on board with Sverdrup in Trondheim, was to disembark and return home.

  The Fram proceeded to Vardø at the northeastern-most tip of Norway, facing on the Barents Sea and the future way, for one last celebratory national send-off and, less gloriously but with more necessity for what lay ahead, a scraping of its bottom (since launching, it had been fifteen months in the water and already traveled over 1,600 miles). Many of the crew took the opportunity to get drunk and debauched in town, as they had in Tromsø a few days previously, and Bergen before that, and came back late and unruly, unable to fulfill their duties properly and delaying departure. An upset Nansen directed the Fram out of port nonetheless, with only himself, Sverdrup, and Scott-Hansen (though he, too, was hungover) to do the work, while most of the crew slept it off below.