Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram

by Charles W. Johnson

  FIGURE 73

  Scientists and sailors. Sometimes there was a little rivalry, even contention, between the two groups, through differing opinions about the importance of the scientific work. From left, botanist Simmons, zoologist Bay, hunter extraordinaire Fosheim, first mate Raanes, and cook and steward Lindstrøm. Raanes was a big man (and Lindstrøm quite short)!

  Under full steam they tried to bore the Fram through cracks in the ice, to reach what little open water there was. After several hours they gave up, after moving only a few hundred feet. Then the wind shifted, the temperatures fell, the ice packed in ever harder, and for four days they stayed put. They blasted with dynamite and sawed with big ice saws, trying to reach newly appearing leads. When they could move again, it was by feet and yards, if that, but then they ran aground and had to wait and pray until the tide turned and floated them again. The winds would clear an area and then shift and close it up again; the ice would configure and reconfigure itself from moment to moment, encouraging then denying. Back and forth across the fjord crept the Fram, ahead then back, looking for that one magic opening.

  On September 5, after almost a month of struggling, the Fram had made it ten miles down the fjord. Open water was only six miles ahead, but the Fram could move no further. Here they would stay until this same time next year, when they would try it all over again to get out. A disappointed Sverdrup expressed what was in all their minds, “How were we to know that we should get free next year?”12

  20 ›A FOURTH WINTER, BREAKING OUT

  “A fourth polar night in succession is not a thing to be joked about,” Otto Sverdrup wrote in New Land, based on his own experience of what the Fram’s crew almost faced on its first voyage across the Arctic Ocean, and from what he knew of other less fortunate expeditions. How it could weigh on the soul, even crush it. How it could lead to disagreements and fights over petty things, almost as if the men were reverting to childhood. How, too, the potential for a divided, unhappy crew could threaten the entire mission, ending in disaster.

  But there would be no time for them to feel sorry for themselves or get lazy. Sverdrup knew the antidote to this poison: the seasonal task they all knew well, the “autumn kill.” Out into Jones Sound and Norwegian Bay they went by boat, while still able, to shoot and harpoon walruses and seals on the floes. Up into the hills and mountains they sledged and walked for musk oxen and caribou, into the fjords and at the sea’s edge for polar bears. As before, they stockpiled the meat in caches where they shot it, to be taken later to the Fram.

  As a measure of how long the expedition had been underway, several dogs had grown too old for pulling sledges and had to be shot, both as an act of mercy and to save food for the others, including the puppies who were growing up to replace them. Otherwise, the normal winter work went on, along with the usual holiday observances stretched out as long as possible followed by repentant exercise regimes to work off what the feasts put on. There were also new activities to help while away the time. Edvard Bay finished a novel he had been working on (nothing like four winters in the Arctic to provide time to write!) and “published” it in time for Christmas reading by his captive audience. They carved scrimshaw in walrus tusk, gifts for folks back home, almost as talismans to ensure their escape and return to Norway.

  They took extra measures to ensure that escape. In a laborious experiment, they dumped great piles of sand down the fjord, to be spread in early spring as a “highway” from the ship to Jones Sound. They hoped the dark sand would absorb the sun’s rays enough to burn partway down through the ice, hastening an early lead for the Fram’s exit.

  Naturally, too, they had plenty of time to mull over plans for spring sledging before attempting the “great escape” sometime in late summer. For folks back home, the Fram was now overdue. So Gunnar Isachsen, Sverre Hassel, and Ivar Fosheim were to erect cairns along the northern coast of Jones Sound, containing messages for any ship that might be searching for them. Sverdrup and Per Schei were to go back north, to map the coastlines of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands beyond Greely Fjord. Victor Baumann and Oluf Raanes would again be the support party for the far-traveling Sverdrup and Schei.

  But that was not all they would do. Baumann, Raanes, and Fosheim were to go later to North Devon Island and then south through Arthur Strait (misnamed, as they found it to be a fjord) over one hundred miles to Beechey Island at North Devon’s southwestern corner. The ill-fated Franklin expedition had wintered there in 1845, and British explorer John Ross, in search of them in 1850, had left behind a depot and one of his ships, the sloop Mary. Sverdrup thought that the Mary might still be seaworthy and serviceable, despite its fifty-year abandonment, and able to reach Greenland if the Fram were still stuck in Goose Fjord the next winter. Isachsen and Bay, in the meantime, would survey an unmapped section of the north coast of North Devon Island.

  Rudolf Stolz, however, was no longer one of the sledgers. Though still wanting to participate, he had shown himself to be ill suited to the work, physically and temperamentally, and had become an aggravation to the others. When Sverdrup relegated him to the ship, Stolz responded impetuously, further piquing Sverdrup and alienating himself from the rest.

  ››› As they headed north, Sverdrup and Schei contended with periods of bad weather, difficult snow and ice conditions, and scarcity of food. Nonetheless, they went one hundred miles beyond where they had gone the year before. On May 8, they set a cairn and a Norwegian flag on a point of Ellesmere at their farthest north, calling it Lands Lokk (Land’s End). Fifty miles more and they would have reached where Nares’s men, coming the other direction, had stopped twenty-six years earlier, and thus would have completed the map of Ellesmere’s coastline.

  They arrived back at the Fram on June 16, after a trip of seventy-five days, to find everyone there. Isachsen, Hassel, and Fosheim had set five cairns, containing maps and information for searchers, all the way to the entrance of Jones Sound. Isachsen and Bay had surveyed a big section of the North Devon coast, closing the gap in the map of its shoreline. On Beechey Island, Baumann, Raanes, and Fosheim had found Ross’s depots rifled and his ship Mary an unusable wreck. It had suffered not so much from years of Arctic weather but at the hands of humans, seal hunters or Inuit, scavenging the wood and gear. So if the Fram were stuck another year, they would have to use its own boats to find a way back to civilization.

  Now, with all hands available and July upon them, they focused full attention and energy on getting out. The “sand highway” had worked surprisingly well, partially melting and loosening the ice south four miles, about half the remaining distance down the fjord. Even so, the Fram still sat locked in ice, and the way out was completely clogged. So they sat, hunting when they could, and making one last strike for science; a group of four (Bay, Herman Georg Simmons, Isachsen, and Peder Hendriksen) went out in the boat to dredge in western Jones Sound, near Cardigan Strait and Hell Gate. They left by sledge on July 7 to pick up the boat at the fjord mouth, with orders to be back around July 20.

  On July 15 the Fram floated free. The crew scurried to get the ship ready for sea, bringing the dogs on board and lifting the boats in their davits. They fired up the boiler and put the engine on ready. The crazy quilt of floes, changing with the tides and currents, smashed into the ship and turned it around, took it one way and then another, pushed it close to shore, and then out into the channel. At one point the anchor was set to help warp the ship ahead, but the ice built up around the anchor chain and threatened to pull the ship down, so men had to go down on the floe to saw and pound the ice away. Wherever the winds and tides took the ice, so too went the Fram. After eleven days of such commandeering, it had only two miles to show for its troubles. Of the four dredgers, due a week ago, there was no sign.

  On July 30, a huge floe crashed into the ship, carried it stern first toward shore, and drove it aground. Other floes sweeping in pushed it higher and harder aground. The tide began to fall. Now immobilized and vulnerable, the ship was at real risk of
being overpowered by oncoming ice. The men shifted stores below to cause it to list toward land so its decks would not be exposed to direct attack. They prepared anchor and cables to warp the ship off with the rising tide, but when it came, it gently floated and drifted off on its own.

  Suddenly free, they steamed across the fjord and then south through leads, sticking their nose into Walrus Fjord to look for the overdue dredgers. The sledge was still there at the edge of the ice, but there was no sign of boat or men. They steamed back to the protection of Goose Fjord just before eastward-racing floes in Jones Sound almost took them past it. They waited there, buffeted by the moving ice. August came, and there were still no dredgers. Had they run afoul in Hell Gate or Cardigan Strait, or had they just been held up somewhere, by bad ice or bad weather? Sverdrup chose to believe the latter, since at least one of them, Hendriksen, with his experience and wisdom, would not take chances, especially with the Fram about to be released from the ice, when timing was so critical.

  On August 5, Schei, looking through the telescope, spied movement on the Outer Isthmus, the strip of land between Goose and Walrus Fjord. Yes, there were men, two of them, one holding up a flag. Sverdrup and three others jumped in a boat and rowed the few miles to shore to meet them, and the other two at the boat, in a two-week-late but happy reunion.

  The dredgers had indeed been held up, by both bad ice and bad weather. They had boated partway up Cardigan Strait when the ice packed in around them, and they took refuge on a small island in the channel. There they stayed for ten days, surrounded by pack ice, enduring high winds and pelting rain, and running out of food. Finally, they were able to leave and fight their way back to the west side of Walrus Fjord but no further. They took to land, hiking over the mountains to the Inner Isthmus where they hoped at least to catch a glimpse of the Fram. By then it had moved out, so the troupe went south until they saw their ship.

  Though late, they brought good news. From high ground they had seen that, beyond the fringe of ice around these fjords, Jones Sound was open to the east. If a good offshore wind would come up, it could clear the ice away, long enough at least for the Fram to reach open water. Their luck held. A rising north wind did carry out the ice, with one last bashing against the ship. Out of the fjord they steamed, first west to pick up the dredgers’ boat and then east to their freedom. “Every mile we worked our way east the ice became slacker and slacker; and soon we were under full canvas, on our way, full-speed, homewards.”13

  Sverdrup reflected in New Land, “This Gaasefjord [Goose Fjord] is a very remarkable place. It had to wait long before strangers found their way to it, but, once there, it knows the art of keeping its guests to perfection. Last year the ice never broke up at all: this year, when the same host opened the drawing-room door for his guests, they were seized by the collar and held fast in the hall. . . . I, at any rate, shall take good care not to set foot in Gaasefjord again.”

  ››› As the Fram traded pounding by the ice for rocking and rolling in high winds and seas, the crew also traded stability for their old bugaboo, seasickness. The weather got so bad, so quickly, Sverdrup had to take the ship into its old winter refuge in Harbor Fjord for two days, where the men made emergency repairs on a sail, shifted coal, and paid respects at Ove Braskerud’s memorial, before the ship sailed out again into calmer waters.

  On August 16, they made landfall in the fog off Greenland and the next day dropped anchor in familiar Godhavn harbor on the south side of Disko Island, where they had been four years earlier. As the town’s superintendent came on board to greet them, he was besieged by the crew members, who were starved for news about the world and eager for any letters from home, no matter how old they might be. They stayed in Godhavn for three days, feted by local officials and taking on coal, needed supplies, and welcome “luxuries,” such as salt, coffee, tobacco, and fresh-baked bread. Here, too, they said good-bye to most of their beloved dogs, giving some to their hosts but shooting those too old to adapt to new homes. In a gesture perhaps repugnant to those of more “refined” sensibilities, the local Inuit eagerly accepted the dog carcasses, for food and clothing.

  After leaving Godhavn, the Fram continued south, fighting its way down Baffin Bay against gales and high seas, with its engine partially disabled by a fire. It was also shorthanded—Hendriksen had seriously injured his knee in Godhavn, and Karl Olsen was still recovering from a second dislocation, of his other arm, suffered just before they left Goose Fjord.

  Fortune prevailed. During a brief break in the weather, a passing ship appeared, a Danish vessel taking supplies to settlements up the Greenland coast. Sverdrup hailed it to request a loan of two crewmen for the trip back to Norway. Its captain refused and sailed on, but the ship soon reappeared, as the captain finally realized who it was making the request, knew about the famous ship, and gave it one man. An hour later another trade ship appeared, and a second crewman went over to the Fram. These were timely additions, as the weather soon turned, the wind rose and seas built, and every hand was needed to get it around Greenland and into the North Atlantic.

  On September 17, the Fram, now sailing easily, passed between the Shetland and Orkney Islands, directly toward Norway. By evening of the next day, it was off the island of Utsire (now Utsira), where it waited until morning for the pilot boat. It was a surprised and excited pilot who came on board in the morning, to take this unexpected guest into Stavanger on the southwest coast.

  FIGURE 74

  The Fram (far right) escorted into Christiania after the second expedition, September 1902. Overcrowded passenger boats list as passengers try to get a look at the famous ship, returning from four years at Ellesmere Island. Photograph by Anders Beer Wilse.

  The word was out, thanks to the news carried back in the pilot boat. As the Fram approached the harbor, boats large and small appeared, loaded with curious onlookers, and gathered around it in increasing numbers until there was a flotilla accompanying it into town. Awaiting, lining the docks and shore, were crowds of cheering, waving people.

  Reams of telegrams went out that day and night to families, friends, and high officials, just as they came pouring in for the crew. One of those was from Sverdrup’s wife, saying she was on her way from Christiania to be with him. Another was from an admiral in the navy, offering a ship to tow the Fram into Christiania, a royal gesture of honor and solicitude. In a few days, when the celebrations and reunions were over, the naval ship Heimdal, with Sverdrup and his wife aboard, towed the Fram out of port. The Heimdal’s captain was someone Sverdrup knew very well, a man named Sigurd Scott-Hansen.

  The way back along the coast included a stop at Larvik to pick up the Fram’s proud designer and builder, Colin Archer; then they made the last leg of the journey into Christiania. In Sverdrup’s words in New Land,

  FIGURE 75

  Homecoming. Small boats gather round the Fram on September 28, 1902, as it comes into harbor, Christiania, after four years away.

  We had been met by quite a fleet of steamers and sailing-boats as far out as Horten, and the Fram’s triumphal procession from Stavanger to Christiania ended on a beautiful autumn Sunday which recalled to us the days, four years since, when we had gone the other way. What a difference between then and now! Yet how near each other these days appeared to us! It was as if the frost and ice of the polar night melted away before all this warmth of heart which flowed to greet us in the welcome of our countrymen; as if the remembrance of the four long years, with all their toil, was buried under the sweet-smelling flowers which were showered over us as we drove through the streets of Christiania; as if all the waving flags could waft away the furrows the winter had brought us.

  ››› The second Fram expedition was a monumental undertaking with monumental results. In the four years, Sverdrup and his men explored an area over one hundred thousand square miles in size, more than all other expeditions combined up to then. They sledged a total of eleven thousand miles, in the process encountering and mapping three previously undisco
vered islands of a total area of twenty-three thousand square miles, and ascertaining the shape and size of Ellesmere Island (seventy-six thousand square miles). They collected fifty thousand plants, innumerable birds and animals, tons of rock samples, thousands of jars of plankton and other dredged material, and four years’ worth of meteorological and marine data, all of which would take scientists more than twenty years to sort and study.

  In the name of Norway and the king, they had laid claim to those new lands they had discovered, as history and tradition allowed. But the winds of change were blowing about ownership of the Arctic. Sverdrup, a man by nature least inclined to do so, would fight almost to his dying day for those faraway lands, as he would to save the ship that took him there.

  III ›››THE THIRD EXPEDITION

  1910–1912

  ANTARCTICA AND THE SOUTHERN OCEAN ‹‹‹

  FIGURE 76 Map of the Fram’s route on the third expedition. Not shown is route after Roald Amundsen left the ship in Buenos Aires. From 1913 to 1914, under Christian Doxrud’s and Thorvald Nilsen’s commands, it traveled from Buenos Aires to the Isthmus of Panama and back, and then to Norway. Photograph by Anders Beer Wilse from original map.

  21 ›THE BOSS

  He was one of those very few who, from earliest awareness and memory, know what they want to do with their lives. He was one of the even fewer who actually did it and almost as he envisioned. Ever since he was eight or nine, Roald Amundsen had wanted not only to be a polar explorer but also to be the best and the first to discover something of significance in those regions. The British Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a tragic drama played out twenty-seven years before his birth, fired his youthful imagination and powered his dreams of glory. Though Amundsen was ambitious in this way, he was also eminently practical and clearheaded, and the Franklin debacle gave him some early, sobering insights about what not to do when venturing for months and years into these places. Others would come along to fuel this duality, inspiring him by their soaring visions and yet imparting cold, hard lessons for him through their successes or failures. He needed both in full measure if he was to do what he so desperately desired.