Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  The favorable drift continued in the New Year. By the middle of February they had gone another 270 miles in a westerly direction, hovering just below the eighty-fifth parallel, inching southerly. After a couple of weeks of reversals and false starts, it seemed as though the Fram, like a runner at the end of a long race summoning last reserves of strength, began its final move, slowly at first to the west, then faster, swinging southwest, and then south. On March 4 the sun reappeared, a celebration to be quickly followed by another ten days later, the first anniversary of Nansen and Johansen’s departure from the ship. With the return of the sun and spring (more emblematic than actual by our more temperate standards) and the Fram’s promising progress, the spirits of the crew rose, bolstered even more in April as they began to encounter game again. They also took pleasure in a little thing: a snow bunting, the “first harbinger of spring,” that alighted on one of the boats and remained there for several days, resting and taking food from the men.

  Those Arctic opposites are fascinating, as with tiny, delicate flowers blooming or fragile insects hovering at them, in a landscape so huge as to seem infinite. They are, from a distance, at first, insignificant, invisible, and lost in such immensity, yet up close, alive and vital and, because of that, precious and important.

  ››› In April and May, with the ice beginning to melt and open, Sverdrup had all the winter stockpiles on the ice brought back aboard. Then, almost exactly on National Day (May 17), as if it were the symbolic kickoff of the final sprint to the finish line, the Fram headed almost due south and kept resolutely on that path into summer. Though the ice began to fracture, with lanes opening and closing around them, the ship was still stuck fast in the ice. The crew worked eagerly in anticipation of what they hoped and prayed was coming, reassembling the engine, filling the boiler with fresh water, and reerecting the funnel on deck. They stoked and lit the coal-fired furnace to start the boiler for the first time in over two and a half years. With hoses, they directed hot water from the boiler down ice-blocked wells of the rudder and screw to unblock them, and freed the shaft to turn. The Fram was getting ready for life in water instead of ice.

  From the crow’s nest, they could see far down open lanes when the wind blew the floes south, but they were still too icebound to reach them. To the south, too, was a horizon of dark “water” sky, indicating open sea, but getting there at this point was impossible. Freedom—a ripe, enticing fruit—hung before them but just out of reach. Being so close to their goal, after so much time, and with a fourth winter in the ice nipping at their heels, they redoubled their efforts to get out. At the urging of several crew members, on the last few days of May a skeptical Sverdrup decided to try blasting free from the ice that gripped them, a time-consuming, dangerous, and problematic effort. They gave up when the blasting did little more than wear them out and shake the ship, but on June 2 the ice on its own gave them another opportunity when an old lane opened up nearby, close enough for one more try with dynamite to set it loose into the water.

  With one great explosion that knocked things from the walls, broke glassware, and sent shock waves through the ship, the Fram was almost blown free. More dynamite and manual chopping away with picks and axes did the rest. It at last came free and settled into the water, though it was still at the mercy of the surrounding ice. It was a ship again, albeit without a rudder or propeller yet, waiting for the chance of liberation by warping or under its own steam—if and when that time ever came.

  Weeks of a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game between ice and ship followed. In early June, encroaching pressure ridges played with the ship, pushing it up in the stern, healing it over to the side. Then, a few days later, the ice slackened enough to entice them to try warping the ship, with the steam-powered winch, into a suddenly appearing lane. Before the steam had built, the lane opened up even more, allowing them to warp the ship forward by block and tackle. Then, with steam up, they went down the lane as far as they could go, until they could go no farther. Then they sat, fast in the ice, until June 14 when once again the ice slackened and rifts appeared, so the furnace was lit again for steam, and the rudder and screw shipped, as the Fram tried to force its way through the cracks to more open water. The serious game went on, pushing and pulling, starting then stopping, and rushing furiously then waiting.

  Their one great respite from worry about their situation came with the birds and mammals that were now showing up in greater numbers and offered opportunities for good hunting and fresh food. Sverdrup figured they killed as many as seventeen polar bears during this period in the summer ice as well as innumerable birds.

  On July 3 the ice relinquished its hold somewhat, and they tried yet again. With the full power of its compound engine gobbling up great quantities of coal, the Fram muscled its way three miles down a lane. A few days later, they tried once more, this time for a gain of only a mile, when the south wind gathered the floes and pushed them north, packing the lanes tight shut.

  A month of precious summer had gone by. Progress came only with great effort and amounted to little. In fact, in mid-July they determined they had actually gone backward many miles. The dreaded thought began to enter their heads: perhaps the day of release might not come. The struggle continued. The ice would relent; they would get up steam and push and batter their way ahead; and the ice would return and shut them down. Sometimes a collision with a giant underwater floe or capsizing hummock would jolt them to the core. The Fram lurched, clawed, and bulldozed its way south, yard by yard, on a good day mile by mile: dynamite then steam; dynamite then steam. On it went, through July and into August. The specter of winter grew closer.

  But when the fog lifted a bit on August 12, after a hard battling the day before, they could see “several large channels running in a southerly direction both east and west of our position. Besides, we noticed an increase in the number of birds and small seals, and we also saw an occasional bearded seal, all evidences that we could not be very far from the open water.”17 As they went, the ice grew thinner and easier to push aside. From early evening to midnight they charged ahead sixteen miles. Then, at three in the morning, they saw “a dark expanse of water to the SSE, and at 3:45 we steered through the last ice-floes out into open water.” Finally, the release, both of the ship and their emotions, after three years in the ice. “We Were Free!”

  At first it was like a dream, sailing clear in open, blue water, the ice disappearing behind them. Could it have been an illusion? Was it just an enormous pool within the ice, with more ice further on? “No, it was real! The free, unbounded sea was around us on every side; and we felt, with a sense of rapture, how the Fram gently pitched with the first feeble swell.” They fired a cannon salute to the receding ice, as if to a defeated worthy foe or perhaps also a tribute to themselves.

  In dense fog they set a compass course for the largest of the islands in the Svalbard archipelago, six hundred miles due north of mainland Norway. Early the next morning they saw a sail through the thinning fog and headed to intercept the ship, whatever it was. After hailing the ship with cannon shots and coming alongside what they found was the whaling ship Søstrene (Sisters) from their native land, and after the joyous cheers between countrymen of both ships, the one most pressing question was yelled across the span separating them: “Have Nansen and Johansen arrived?” There was a momentary silence, an expectancy of held breaths, for the answer to come back. “It was short and sad, ‘No.’”

  The Søstrene’s captain and some of the crew came aboard the Fram, whose information-starved sailors pumped them for news of what had happened in the world since they had been gone. They heard, among all the rest, that a Swedish explorer, Salomon Andrée, was then on Danes Island (Danskøya), off the northwest coast of big Spitsbergen Island in the archipelago, preparing to take a hydrogen-filled balloon to the North Pole. Sverdrup immediately changed course to Danes Island to pay him a visit and find out if he had heard any news of the missing men. By midnight’s light of that season, they spotted dead
ahead the northern tip of Spitsbergen, the first land they had seen in almost three years. They continued slowly west through fog, following the coast toward Danes Island. They arrived as the fog lifted and were able to see Andrée’s expedition ship Virgo at anchor and, ashore, the big building sheltering his balloon, Örnen (Eagle). Soon, Andrée and the Virgo’s captain, having spied the famous but unexpected visitor, came out to greet them.

  They brought no news of Nansen and Johansen but said that a British expedition under the command of Frederick George Jackson was on Northbrook Island in Franz Josef Land, exploring and mapping this largely unknown region. Sverdrup rested somewhat easier hearing of Jackson’s presence there, as he knew Nansen’s proposed exit route took him toward that general vicinity and thought it possible he may have encountered him. However, he also knew it would be premature to put too much stock in that hope, as the region was vast and the full extent and character of Franz Josef Land was a mystery. In truth, it included almost two hundred rugged islands, many indented with convoluted, concealing coastlines, and six thousand square miles of land spread across 250 miles of sea. Even if Nansen and Johansen had made it that far, if they somehow had survived an unanticipated winter on the ice, and if they knew of Jackson’s presence there, the chances of such a fortuitous encounter were extremely slim, at best.

  FIGURE 43

  Fram towed into Virgo Harbor (Virgohamna), Danes Island (part of the Svalbard archipelago). Sverdrup took the Fram there after escaping the ice on August 13, 1896. He went there to meet balloonist Salomon Andrée (preparing to take off for the North Pole), hoping to hear news of Nansen and Johansen, who had been gone for fifteen months on their trek. Here, for the first time in three years, the crew set foot on solid land. The harbor was named after Andrée’s ship, Virgo. Photograph by Wilhelm Dreesen.

  So Sverdrup decided then and there to sail immediately to Tromsø, to get the latest news and resupply coal, and then head out to Franz Josef Land as quickly as possible for Jackson’s camp. If they did not find Nansen and Johansen there, they would begin a search.

  The Fram’s men had a brief reacquaintance with land after three years, as Andrée gave them a quick tour of the Örnen, which was ready in the hangar awaiting favorable conditions for liftoff for the pole. Then the Fram set steam and sail early in the morning of August 14 on a course to Tromsø.

  ››› It would have been a pretty symmetry had the balloon Örnen drifted north over the ice almost at the same time as the Fram punched south out of it, trading places on their first-of-a-kind voyages. But contrary winds kept the Örnen grounded, and Andrée had to fold it up and return home for the winter. When it finally did fly off in the summer of 1897, with Andrée and two others aboard, it disappeared forever. Thirty-three years later, on remote White Island in the northeastern part of the Svalbard group, a Norwegian hunting and scientific expedition found remnants of a boat, sledge, tent, diaries, and other articles, and nearby the still-frozen, partially clothed, dismembered skeletal remains of two men. A third body was found later, buried in a rock pile. By names on the clothing they were known, and by the diaries and even preserved photographs their stories were told.

  The balloon had come down under the weight of freezing fog and rain, laden with ice, after sixty-five hours in the air and only 230 miles in transit. The men had headed across the pack to Franz Josef Land, hauling heavy sledges and a small boat that had been brought along on the balloon, full of food and supplies. The westward-drifting ice took them progressively farther away from their destination, just as it had taken the Fram on to hers, so they changed course for Svalbard, eventually, after eight weeks of exhausting trekking, reaching White Island. They soon after died, from unknown causes, though speculations were many: carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty stove, trichinosis from eating an infected polar bear, scurvy, or outright starvation.

  ››› Five days later, in the calm, sleepy quiet of two in the morning, the Fram slipped unseen into the harbor of Skjervøy, in Kvænangen Fjord, one fjord northeast of Tromsø, and dropped anchor. Rowed ashore by Bernt Bentsen, Sverdrup rushed to the telegraph office where he “tried to knock life into the people by thundering with my clenched fists first at one door, then at another, but for a long time in vain.”18 Finally, a window on the second floor opened, and a man, the chief of the telegraph office it so happened, fuddled and perturbed by the abrupt awakening, stuck his head out, demanding to know, no doubt in a less than cordial voice, what was going on. Then, as the chief recounted later about the incident, “A man dressed in grey, with a heavy beard, stepped forward. There was something about his appearance that made me think at once that I had perhaps been somewhat too hasty in giving vent to my displeasure at being called up. . . . ‘I must ask you [he said] to open the door: I come from the Fram.’ Immediately it dawned upon me who it was. It could be none other than Sverdrup.”19

  Sverdrup, once inside, gave the chief a quick accounting of what had happened since their leaving the ice: the meeting with the Søstrene, visit to Andrée, and their great disappointment in not hearing anything of Nansen or Johansen. It must have been a lightning bolt that struck Sverdrup then, as the chief, probably with a huge grin on his face, told him that Nansen and Johansen had arrived in Vardø six days earlier, on August 13, and were now in Hammerfest, making their way to Tromsø.

  Sverdrup in his disbelief had to ask the chief twice, was it true? Then, with an uncharacteristic display of ebullience, jumped up and ran out the door, saying he had to tell the others. Soon he returned with the excited Scott-Hansen, Blessing, Ivar Mogstad, and Bentsen. They could not believe the revelation nor the coincidence that the Fram had broken out of the ice the very day that Nansen and Johansen had arrived in Norway, August 13—a “13” again, their lucky number.

  FIGURE 44

  A spruced-up Fridtjof Nansen and his wife Eva pose somewhat awkwardly at the helm of the private yacht Otaria. The yacht picked up Nansen in Vardø, then Eva in Hammerfest, and from there went on to Tromsø to rendezvous with the Fram at the end of the three-year voyage. Nansen and Johansen had arrived in Norway six days before the Fram. August 1896.

  It did not matter that it was still early when the Fram fired its guns in happy salute, waking the residents of Skjervøy to the sight just offshore, when champagne quickly followed coffee. Soon the telegrams went on their way to those who had been waiting and hoping for the words they were about to read. Sverdrup’s to Nansen, perhaps the first to go out, was in character again, simple and direct, restrained but cordial: “Fridtjof Nansen—Fram arrived here today in good condition. All well on board. Leaving immediately for Tromsø. Welcome home—Otto Sverdrup.”20

  The Fram left Skjervøy that same morning, sailing around the headland and then south toward Tromsø. On the way they met the steamship King Halfdan, which had come from Tromsø carrying six hundred passengers wanting to see the famous ship. As a gesture of respect and honor, the King Halfdan took the Fram in tow and led it into the Tromsø harbor that evening. There, waiting to greet it, were hundreds of flag-decorated boats and the adoring cheers of large crowds. It was much as it was nearly three years earlier here, when it had had such a send-off, although one tinged with worry instead of overflowing with pure joy.

  The afternoon of the next day, August 21, the British yacht Otaria arrived, with Nansen, his wife Eva, and Johansen aboard. The reunion was exuberant, glorious beyond words, and before long they shared their stories of what had happened since they separated. The men who had stayed with the Fram would find out soon enough how lucky indeed were those two of the “Lucky Thirteen.”

  8 ›TOGETHER, ALONE

  For a few weeks after leaving the Fram on March 14, though the way was sometimes flat and good for traveling ten miles or more a day, Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen often had a hard time of it and did not get so far. The cold was intense, consistently in the minus forties Fahrenheit, making ordinary tasks seem monumental. When done for the day, or even during a break, they would lie toge
ther fully clothed in their shared sleeping bag, for an hour or more, pooling what little body heat they had to thaw their frozen outfits (sodden with sweat) and warm themselves up enough to stop their uncontrolled shivering and chattering teeth. Often the ice became nearly impassible, with old, rough pressure ridges forcing them to assist the floundering dogs, hefting and heaving the sledges up and over. The sledges overturned quite often anyway, breaking equipment, pitching loads onto the ice and snow, and piercing sacks of food, with the precious contents sometimes leaking out over long distances before being noticed and retrieved.

  The tough going took a toll on boots and clothes, which got ripped or torn by shards or knives of ice and had to be mended, no mean feat with naked, numb fingers, thread, and needles at forty below. The kayaks, too, suffered punctures and tears, but Nansen put off repairing them until needed, as it was difficult work and he knew that they would sustain more damage later on. At other times they encountered open-water leads, unwelcome and incongruent with the ice in that deep cold and necessitating long detours.

  The dogs presented problems. Often Nansen and Johansen, though they hated doing it, had to beat them just to keep the exhausted creatures going. The dogs’ traces, too, regularly got tangled or snarled in knots, requiring the men to stop and unravel them in the bitter cold, with bare hands. They also had to kill two dogs because they were failing, a dutiful chore repeated many times later that they came to feel was “some of the most disagreeable work we had on the journey,” close as they had become over the years.21