Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  Suddenly, a heavy swell came on from the south-east, and we could see from the atmosphere that we should soon have a sea from that quarter. It was not long before it was so rough that we could hardly keep our legs. Unskinned walrus and lumps of flesh slid about in all directions, crushing everything that came in their way. The deck was as slippery as a “ski”-hill at home, and horrible to view with blood, blubber, and other filth; but it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and the dogs gorged themselves to their hearts’ content. More than once they were in danger of being crushed flat by the mountains of flesh, which had been hoisted up on deck one by one; while we had our work cut out for us in skinning the animals, and rigging up bins for the meat, so that it should not roll overboard.

  On August 22, still coping with nasty weather, they passed by thirty-mile-long Cobourg Island, turned west in Lady Ann Strait, and sailed into Jones Sound. To the north lay the steep, fjord-riven coast of Ellesmere, stretching west beyond vision and knowledge. To the south lay huge North Devon Island, forty to fifty miles from Ellesmere and paralleling its coast, which likewise disappeared into the distance. Fighting rough seas, dodging icebergs, and winding through patches of pack ice, they made their way toward Ellesmere for wintering-over possibilities; it was the more difficult but more inviting approach than exposed, barren Cobourg or the snow-and-ice clad mountains of North Devon, dropping into the sea unrelieved by protective coves. Rounding the big headland of Ellesmere, they found an ice-free refuge in a narrow fjord they named “Fram Fjord,” where they anchored, caught their collective breath, and went ashore to check the surroundings. It was relatively lush, by Ellesmere standards, with a valley to the west “wide and smiling” and “one of the most verdant places” they had seen.6 Everything is relative.

  But, despite the attractive environs, especially to botanist Simmons who reveled in collecting specimens, Fram Fjord was not a good bet to spend the winter. The big game they needed was oddly absent. They had entered the fjord easily at high tide, but when it went out, they saw large rocks guarding the entrance to the fjord, a threat when departure time came.

  On August 28, the Fram left its peaceful anchorage and headed back into the still-miserable weather outside, varying from buffeting winds to dense fog, driving rain, and sleet. It struggled westerly, though helped by the winds and currents. Three days after leaving Fram Fjord, they rounded a cape and, with their way obscured by fog, steamed slowly and carefully through a mile-and-a-half-wide passage due north. As they crept along they heard, through the fog, “such a crashing and rumbling, that we thought the mountains were coming down on us, while at the same time the din was increased by the echoes which were thundered back from the steep crags on the other side.”7 Alarmed but undeterred, they continued, around a hook of land to the east and into a small, protected bay. With deep water right up to shore, they ventured in as close as they dared, picked their spot, dropped anchor at thirty fathoms (180 feet), and secured the stern to the rocky shore.

  Sverdrup was not entirely comfortable with this location either, as it was exposed to the west and a stiff current ran by. A boat trip up the fjord the next morning revealed no better place, though they did find the fjord well stocked with seals for their winter food supply. They also saw that the land on the west side of the fjord entrance was actually an island and that the source of the tremendous noise they had heard coming in was actually great boulders careening down the steep cliffs. They named the island Skreia, Norwegian for something like “Landslide Island.”

  The Fram would stay put where it lay for the second winter. Jacob Nødtvedt drilled into the rocks and drove in a big iron bolt, to which a cable was attached, securing the Fram stern to the shore (the rusted bolt is still there, visible to the rare visitor who might know where to look). They doused the boiler fire, drained the tank, and committed the Fram for the next nine months, or however long it took to get free again, to this place they called Havnefjord, “Harbor Fjord.” It was the first of September.

  Some of the men became ill soon after setting up in Harbor Fjord, worn down by either the travails from Pim Island to Harbor Fjord, from a disease caught from Peary’s men earlier, or something else. Peder Hendriksen, though one of the strongest on board, was hardest hit, with severe chest pains, coughed-up blood, and swelling in his legs, and had to be confined to bed for an extended period. Their condition was especially worrisome as there was no doctor to tell them what was wrong or how to get better.

  Nonetheless, work had to go on: the search near and far for life-saving game; collection of natural history samples of interesting finds; surveys to trace new lands onto new maps; and depots set out of dog food for sledge trips later in the fall, when they would go even further west into unknown territory. For this, a group of four (Sverdrup, cartographer Gunnar Isachsen, hunter Ivar Fosheim, and general assistant Stolz) sailed in one of the boats with a load of dog food and other supplies, for fifty miles west along the coast of ice-pocked Jones Sound, until they reached another big fjord (named later Boat Fjord) cutting into the land. As they tried to cross its mouth, they were driven back by incoming drift ice, so they retreated to the east shore, pitched the tent, and established the dog food depot higher on the beach.

  FIGURE 62

  Memorial for Ove Braskerud, at entrance to Harbor Fjord, where the Fram spent the second winter. He was the second expedition member to die at Ellesmere. The upright piece of the wooden cross is still there, according to veteran Ellesmere sledger Jerry Kobalenko.

  It was a risky time of year for traveling by boat, when the rapidly cooling surface water could quickly turn to ice, or when the already-existing pack ice, broken and dispersed, could suddenly appear as one great, impossible mass. Sverdrup and his small team were well aware of this, so they intended to scoot back to Harbor Fjord as soon as possible. They were too late, by just one day. The fjord surface became deep slush, impossible to row or sail through, and south winds brought the Jones Sound pack ice in to block their way. They were stuck.

  With a patience demanded by the Arctic of any visitor, they waited for the winds to shift and sweep the way clear, long enough to get out. The winds did shift, several times, but the ice only gathered more, and more confusedly. They decided to wait until the inshore ice thickened and became strong enough to walk upon, all the way back. As nights now in mid-September were getting steadily colder, they moved from the tent into a shelter they made, Adolphus Greely style: dug partially into the ground, with walls of rock and the upturned boat a roof (hence the name, Boat Fjord). Here was their home away from home, where they slept and ate in relative comfort, and hunted by day mostly Arctic hares and ptarmigan. They made a sledge out of a boat seat, a harpoon shaft, tin from food containers, and other scavenged parts. Three weeks they waited until they thought the ice ready and then set out walking. Two days later, October 8, as they approached South Cape where they would turn north toward Skreia Island and the Fram just beyond, they saw two men on the ice, running toward them.

  Baumann and Bay had come to look for the long-overdue group and hurried when they caught sight of them. But their meeting was not joyous. They were bringing bad news that another member of their close-knit family, good-natured Ove Braskerud, had died. He had fallen victim to that same malady that had struck Hendriksen, Nødtvedt, and others, but he had not pulled through.

  As they had done for Svendsen at Fram’s Haven, in solemn ceremony they slipped his body through the ice into the sea and built a rock cairn memorial overlooking the place of his burial, atop it a wooden cross inscribed with his name. Svendsen was thirty-two when he died, Braskerud but twenty-seven.

  ››› Now that the ice had formed sufficiently for dog-and-sledge travel, Sverdrup intended to make best use of what time they had before winter. One party (Isachsen and Sverre Hassel) was to survey the coast eastward, the land they had already passed but not yet mapped. Another (Sverdrup and Ivar Fosheim, with scientists Schei and Bay) was to set a depot as far west of Boat Fjord as possibl
e, to support exploratory trips the following spring before the ice broke up and the Fram sailed out (they hoped) of Harbor Fjord. A third (Baumann and Stolz) would take supplies and equipment to and from Boat Fjord.

  FIGURE 63

  Man’s best friend. Dogs were an essential component of all three Fram expeditions, hauling heavy sledges long distances, helping in the hunts, warning of dangers, and providing company for the men. Long shadow of photographer indicates a low sun in spring or fall.

  They all departed together on October 13. Remaining on the Fram were first mate Oluf Raanes, engineer Karl Olsen, botanist Simmons, the still-ailing Hendriksen and Nødtvedt, and cook Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, whose food and cheery presence were surely welcome by those few as the long darkness and deep cold gathered outside.

  The westward-heading group, accompanied by the support team, made it to Boat Fjord in two days, setting up comfortably in the “boat house.” Baumann and Stolz headed back a couple of days later, and the others struck out, in a snow storm. They crossed Boat Fjord and rounded a headland, beyond which spread the entrance of an even bigger fjord, perhaps ten or eleven miles wide. After crossing this they camped at the western headland, named “Cape Storm” for the fierce north winds they encountered there.

  The next day they forged on to the western shore of a north-cutting bay, where they were stopped by open water right up against sheer cliffs at the sea edge. Here, they knew, was to be their depot. So they pitched the big Fort Juliana tent and stocked it with supplies, supplemented with a stock of frozen meat from polar bears they had shot along the way. They had reached their western-most advance. They then began to explore the big fjord they had just passed and look for signs of game.

  They were not to be disappointed. They soon came across musk-oxen tracks. Then they found the animals themselves, herds of them, and another slaughter began. In a heartrending passage in New Land, Sverdrup once again, wrestling with his conscience, describes his deep remorse over the carnage:

  It was ten o’clock when we first caught sight of the herd, and by eleven the misdeed was finished. How distressed I felt, as I stood there, looking on, that we should be obliged to do such a thing! I would rather hang a criminal, if such a thing fell to my lot, than shoot down a herd of defenseless animals, which had set themselves up as targets. . . . So, then, all the giants and defenders of the herd were fallen, and lay bleeding, with bursting eyes, in a steaming pool of blood; only a couple of young animals and five calves were left standing inside the square, which before had been so strong. They stood, trembling with fear, gazing at us out of their deep dark eyes. It was not so horrible at first, when the big bulls out in the square made their furious attacks on their assailants; but as they were shot down one by one, and only the young animals and calves were left standing alone in the middle of it, it was a dreadful sight to look on at. Round about them lay in heaps their friends and kin, while the blood spurted steaming from their gaping wounds. The nearest of the fallen animals lay so close up to the survivors that the latter could hardly move. Terror was plainly written in their beautiful beseeching eyes, and every limb shook with fear, but to attempt to flee from their comrades—no; rather would they fall. There lay 20 animals in a heap—horrible riches that we had acquired all in a few minutes.

  The unnamed place became, unsurprisingly, “Musk-ox Fjord.” They shot and butchered so many animals there that, in addition to what they hauled back, they had to leave a huge, stacked-up pile of meat to be retrieved later, a “meatberg” Sverdrup called it. When all was said and done, from this and other hunting in the summer and fall, they had accumulated over a ton and a half of beef (ox, bear, walrus, and seal), more than one hundred hares, and a great variety of birds (ptarmigan, eider ducks, gulls, black guillemots, and others). “Almost a disconcerting supply of fresh food it was, and quite enough for the whole winter.”

  ››› In the perpetual gloaming of November, through more challenging weather, over several trips they brought the meatberg load by load to the ship. When they and others returned from their outings, they joined those on board to continue preparations for winter and for the spring sledging trips to follow. The routines were now familiar. Sort and stock the incoming food. Cover the skylights with sailcloth and insulate them and the decks above the living spaces with piled-up snow. Make igloo kennels for the dogs out on the ice near the ship. Also on the ice build a blacksmith shop. Fix, and improve, the sledges. Tailor new clothes and camping equipment from hides and cloth. Experiment with innovations to make life easier, such as Olsen’s bicycle-wheel odometer for the sledges or quicker-to-heat cooking pots. Always, too, tend to needs of the Fram itself.

  Amid all the activity, at times they would come to a standstill, awestruck by the unearthly, ungodly world in which they found themselves. Sverdrup wrote in New Land,

  In the midst of all this work we did not forget the beauty of the Arctic night, which unfolded itself in all its most enchanting splendor just at this time, when the moon was at its full, and shed its glittering brilliance on the scene both night and day. A moonlight night up there in the north is something infatuating. The effects of light and shade are so sharp; the transition from black to white so abrupt while the snow and ice seem twice as white, the clefts and chasms twice as black. Skreia [Island] in particular was very imposing, with its black irregularities and perpendicular walls.

  Life went on with its mix of routines and struggles in the dark, cold depths of December, January, and half of February, with the added burden of unexpected long illnesses to Lindstrøm (and a three-month hiatus in his desired cooking) and Simmons, a relapse of Hendriksen’s, and a serious injury to Raanes’s foot. In late February, with the return of the sun—its glowing light if not its full-bodied appearance in the sky and its spiritual uplift if not its bathing warmth—they stirred with the renewed energy and expectation that come with change. The ill ones had mostly healed. The sledging expeditions would soon be underway.

  16 ›NEW LAND, NEW DANGERS

  Otto Sverdrup’s plan was straightforward. As soon as feasible, the sledges would take to the ice foot in relays and, using the depots at Boat Fjord and Cape Storm, push westward to the end of Jones Sound, wherever and whatever it was, and then up the coast of Ellesmere. They would keep going as long as conditions permitted. Later, sometime in summer when the sledges could no longer run and the Fram was freed from Harbor Fjord, they would move the ship west to be closer to the future sledging activity that fall, into a suitable new winter harbor. By then, if all went well, they would have been able to piece together what the western side of Ellesmere really looked like and possibly reach where George Nares’s mapping of northern Ellesmere left off. After that, they would hustle out of that third winter harbor, before they were caught and forced to spend another one in the ice. Then they would go home.

  It was a straightforward plan, yes, but freighted with big what ifs. What if they could not get through or around the end of Jones Sound? What if the way north were impassible? What if they could not find enough game to keep them going or restock the Fram for next winter? What if the weather or the ice made travel impossible? What if, without a doctor to diagnose illnesses, they lost more men from an already-reduced force? What if the dogs died in an epidemic, as had Robert Peary’s? What if the ice did not relent and free the Fram from winter harbor this year, or the next, or ever? Sverdrup weighed all the risks, as he had in Smith Sound. This time, it was not retreat but “gå fram.” Fridtjof Nansen would have been proud.

  ››› The first party of four (Gunnar Isachsen, Edvard Bay, Per Schei, and Rudolf Stolz) left on February 23 to take supplies to the last outpost and continue on to check on conditions further west. However, they found that bears had made a mess at the outpost, tearing the tent to shreds, eating the dog food, and scattering other supplies hither and yon. Also, bad ice and pressure ridges stopped them, so they returned to the ship.

  FIGURE 64

  After the second winter. Sitting, from left: Hendrikse
n, Nødtvedt, Sverdrup, Baumann, Bay, Lindstrøm, Isachsen, and Raanes. Standing, from left: Stolz, Olsen, Simmons, Fosheim, and Hassel. Schei probably took the picture; Svendsen and Braskerud by this time had died.

  Because the last outpost was such a critical staging area, Sverdrup wanted it guarded continually for the duration of spring sledging, though it meant one less man for the journeys. Amiable Bay volunteered for the job, even though it meant he would be there alone for up to three months. They named his new home after the invaders who destroyed it, Bjørnborg (Bear Fort), and he its commandant, in charge of no one but himself. On March 7, Sverdrup, Bay, and Ivar Fosheim left the Fram for Bjørnborg and there put up a new tent, stocked it, and made it as comfortable as possible inside with bearskins and cloth. Sverdrup and Fosheim then departed, to see what lay ahead in the west.

  The going was tough over pressure ridges, so they stuck mostly to the smoother ice foot (a belt or strip of ice formed between high and low tide line along the shore) until, after about twelve miles, they reached a narrow fjord cutting due north (later named Goose Fjord). They passed a steep-walled, mile-wide isthmus to another fjord (later, Walrus Fjord). Crossing this, they suddenly saw a different scene.

  The entire ice-covered sound, pressure ridges and all, was moving west, carried by strong, underlying currents. So they knew they must be close to where Jones Sound pinched down to a strait between Ellesmere and whatever lay to the southwest. In the west, the sky was dark, the so-called water sky, indicating open water. Climbing a rocky slope for a better view, they could see the high-cliff coast of Ellesmere curving north, with a channel between it and land to the southwest, presumably an island or islands just emerging through the fog. In the channel, great jagged slabs of ice tumbled along in the powerful currents, caught, spun, and grinding in whirlpools as they went.