Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (12 page)

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He had dwelled, even obsessed, on the idea, even as he wrestled with himself about leaving the ship at all. Notwithstanding his moral conflict, he painstakingly worked out details, sometimes by himself and sometimes with his confidante Sverdrup, on how and when such a trip would be conducted, with whom, and what it would require in the way of supplies.

His final plan, then, was this.

The journey would begin before the next spring (1895), when he estimated the
Fram
would be at 83° north latitude, its probable closest approach to the pole and when ice conditions would be best for sledge travel. The party would be only two men, he and one other, skiing and guiding sledges hauled by twenty-eight dogs (all of them, except for seven puppies), bearing 2,100 pounds of food, equipment, and two kayaks. The approximately five-hundred-mile northward journey to the pole he figured should take no more than fifty days, by which time the weight on the sledges, through consumption of food (by dogs and men) and fuel (for the cooking stove) would have dropped to only five hundred pounds. After reaching the pole, they would head south, toward the northernmost point of Svalbard, the group of islands between Greenland five hundred miles to the west and Franz Josef Land (a cluster of almost two hundred islands) four hundred miles to the east. On this
southern leg of fifty days’ duration, they would consume the remaining food. In addition, they would have to kill dogs as they went, to provide food for the other dogs and, perhaps, themselves.

Upon reaching the edge of the polar ice pack, sometime in May or early June, all the dogs would be gone, but by then seals, bears, and birds frequenting the ice-studded water would be there for the hunting. The men would then take to the kayaks and paddle and sail either to Svalbard or Novaya Zemlaya via Franz Josef Land, depending on conditions, where they would find human presence and the means home.

This trip, once begun, would be a total, irreversible commitment. There would be no rendezvous with the
Fram
. There would be no stockpiling of food along the way and little leeway for error or miscalculation. Nansen, as on his Greenland crossing and as with the freezing in of the
Fram
, was scornful of the concept of a “line of retreat,” calling it in
Farthest North
“a wretched invention . . . an everlasting inducement to look behind, when they should have enough to do to look ahead.” It was all or nothing. It was, again, “gå fram!”

He had at the ready the dogs and sledges, the food, the equipment, and the strategy. He knew he would go as leader of the two-man team. But who would be that all-important second one to accompany him? Whoever it was, he had to be strong in body and spirit, levelheaded and unflappable, knowledgeable in navigation, an excellent skier and dog handler, a good hunter, and, as important as all the other attributes, able to get along with Nansen no matter what his moods and temper were. Sverdrup fit the bill (though he had had quarrels with Nansen), but as much as he wanted to go with Nansen, both knew he had to remain behind, captain of the ship and new expedition leader. Of the several others Nansen considered, he picked Johansen, the man who had practically pleaded to come on board, who had struggled to fit into civilized society back home, yet seemed perfect for this wilder, more primal test of human will and fortitude.

Johansen accepted immediately, and the very next day, November 20, 1894, Nansen announced his plan to the entire crew. The day after that, the men turned their attention to getting things ready for their trip, still months away. Sverdrup and Henrik Blessing covered Nansen’s kayak with sailcloth; Ivar Mogstad built a second one for Johansen. Mogstad also put together new sledges, specially designed for the great weight they were to bear over craggy, pressure-ridged ice. Juell made harnesses for the dogs; Sverdrup, sleeping bags for the two men. Nansen experimented with the appropriate clothing, camping, cooking, and navigational
equipment to take, as well as calculating and recalculating the amount and kind of food for dogs and men.

December 14 called for another celebration. After an encouraging, mostly unwavering northwest drift over the last four months, the
Fram
reached latitude 82°30’ north, surpassing the previous record for farthest north for a ship, the British vessel
Alert
on George Nares’s 1876 unsuccessful assault on the pole. Progress continued through Christmas and New Year’s, their second away from home, and Nansen and Johansen’s last on board, as they passed 83°, still heading north and west.

New forces came at them from the winter-built, rearranging pack, bigger and more violent than they had experienced before. The tremendous pressures, accompanied by deafening sounds, shook the ship, lifted it, and pushed it over, as if it were a toy, starting the men out of sleep to run up to deck or, if they were out on the ice, to scurry back to the only security they knew. By the light of lanterns they could see deep cracks open and close nearby, giant heaved-up ridges advancing slowly toward the ship. Now, for the first time, they could sense the real possibility of the
Fram
being threatened, if not crushed then rolled over or overwhelmed by great waves of ice.

The first scare came after Christmas, when “a very ugly pressure-ridge” approached out of the dark, about one hundred yards ahead, which “roared and crunched and crackled all along” as it came.
¹⁰
They kept close watch through the night, but it abated and caused no further trouble. Early in the new year of 1895, the real wake-up call came. Another monster approached with its deep roaring, this time “alarmingly near” on the port side, forcing the
Fram
over. Cracks suddenly appeared around the ship, threatening to cut off access to the scientific equipment left on the ice, so men rushed out to retrieve it. Soon everyone prepared feverishly to abandon ship, bringing food, fuel, sledges, kayaks, and other supplies on deck, making them ready for quick transfer to the ice. Cases of dog biscuits went on the ice, too, near the kennels where the dogs were locked in. When things were as ready as they could be, the men went below to wait.

Nordahl, however, had taken one last look at what was happening outside and came running down to urge everyone topside. Water had gushed up through the cracks, poured onto the ice, and “already stood high in the kennel.” Hendriksen sped down the gangway, waded knee-deep through icy water to the flooded kennels, and opened the door to free the sodden, anxious dogs while dragging out those that cowered in the corner. Having narrowly escaped one disaster and duly forewarned of another, the men worked into the wee hours of the next morning to relocate the dogs and the forge (which was sitting over a crack) to a huge hummock of more stable ice. They also established a food and fuel depot there from the supplies that had been brought on deck. Now maybe they could rest a bit more at peace.

But the ice was not done with them yet. On January 4 a gigantic pressure ridge “towers higher and higher and bears right down upon us slowly . . . can actually see it creeping nearer and nearer. . . . I can hear the ice making a fresh assault, and roaring and packing outside. . . . This is an ice-pressure with a vengeance.”
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They knew a critical time was at hand. The men stuffed all their clothing into bags and brought them to the saloon, ready to grab and go. They slept the next night in their clothes, and at five-thirty in the morning, Sverdrup woke Nansen with the news that the great growling ridge was pressing at the
Fram
’s side, up to the highest rail. Nansen ordered that all the remaining provisions on deck be thrown to the ice and one of the boats be lowered.

By evening, however, it seemed the pressure had subsided. It was only a lull. It picked up again, even more powerfully, battering the ship and riding in a great rampart of ice and snow up and over the decks and awning tent. Hendriksen and Mogstad came running with shovels to attack the invader, a gallant but impotent effort against so massive a foe. Nansen rushed forward, under the awning sagging with the weight on top of it, to reach the doorway and ladder down to the saloon, fearing that any moment the ice would come crashing down and trap everyone inside. He made it to the saloon, yelled to those gathered there in the dark (in the confusion the lanterns had gone out), ordering them topside with their bags but using the starboard passageway and door, as those on the port were at imminent risk of being blocked by ice.

Nansen dashed up again, to where the dogs, having been brought on board, were in an enclosure under the awning that now threatened to collapse on them. With a knife he slashed the bindings tying the door shut and opened it, and the dogs, unhinged by all the commotion, charged out and down the gangway to the ice.

Everyone followed, bags of clothing and personal items in hand. In effect, the
Fram
was being abandoned as surely as a foundering ship at sea, with all the men off, standing on the ice, and peering into the dark to see what would happen next. With them were the dogs, sledges, kayaks, and depot supplies, their only means to stay alive and go on if they had to leave behind the wreckage of what had been their home, their protector, and their hope ever since leaving Norway.

But even with the ship half buried in the grinding ice, listing precariously, the men came back on board to wait until the last minute, if and when it came. “We are now living in marching order on an empty ship,” Nansen recorded at the time (and later in
Farthest North
). They spent that night aboard, with all the doors kept open so they would not jam shut and trap them inside. The next day and the day after were quieter, with only the occasional, more normal jamming and rumbling, and the tension aboard eased. The ice was settling; the worst was over.

The
Fram
had not yielded to the siege of ice, now well into the shrouds; it had not caved in or broken into pieces. It had done precisely what Colin Archer, visualizing what he had never seen, designed it to do. It had resisted to the utmost and then bit by bit wriggled free, its smooth hull slipping at last from the deadly squeeze; it rode up on the immense blocks as they passed under and by degrees righted itself. The men spent the next few days, and off and on for weeks, with picks, mauls, and shovels, clearing the mass of ice and snow from the awning and deck, and relieving the ship from that great wall that still lay against its port side. The
Fram
had held; it sustained no real damage, inside or out. Even the canvas awning was intact, if stretched out somewhat.

Now, their attention could turn back to what lay before them in the not-too-distant future: the sledge journey to the pole.

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THE MAD DASH

T
o allow as much time as possible to reach the pole and get south to the edge of the polar ice pack before summer, when conditions for sledging would be impossible, Fridtjof Nansen wanted to set out in February, well before the sun had shown its 1895 face. According to the prevailing wisdom among Arctic explorers, this was too early and too cold. Even March was pushing it. As was his manner when he had made up his mind after researching a topic exhaustively, Nansen brushed aside this accepted dictum. They simply must go then, to hell with risks, discomforts, and problems.

At the end of January, with anticipated departure only weeks away, preparations picked up speed. New clothing, sleeping bags, tents, sledges, sledge sails (an innovation from his Greenland crossing, to ease the hauling when the wind was following), dog harnesses, and other equipment had to be completed, tested under different conditions, and altered as necessary. Skis needed modification and prepping for Arctic conditions and the kind of travel that would be coming, and the skiers needed practice with the dogs and loaded sledges. Henrik Blessing gave lessons in first aid to Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen, who then tried out procedures on each other.

They looked for ways to minimize weight and bulk, while ensuring enough food for them and the twenty-eight dogs. Otto Sverdrup had an ingenious idea to deal with all three concerns at once. Pemmican, the Native American food adopted and adapted by explorers for Arctic travel, was to be one of the nutritionally complete, energy-rich staples on the trip, combining dried meat, fat, and fruit. They were taking 650 pounds of it, but the tins in which it was packed would add significant weight and be bulky. Sverdrup’s thought was to take the pemmican out of the tins, warm it so it could be kneaded, and put it in bags made in the shape of chocks to support the kayaks atop the sledges. Once in place, the chocks, three per kayak, each weighing around one hundred pounds, would freeze in their shape.
So, the chocks would support the kayaks on the journey, protect them over rough terrain, save a great deal of room on the sledges, and be consumed along the way—edible boat chocks! It was a clever invention of Sverdrup’s practical mind, regardless of the rather limited market for such a product.

Nansen had set February 20 as the day to go. As it drew near, he fell into another bout of self-doubt and brooding, as seemed to happen when big changes were about to take place. His unpredictable, obsessive behavior troubled, even annoyed, many of the others. In his anxiety about getting ready for the journey, he became meddlesome, flitting constantly from one to the other, directing and correcting, though usually they knew better than he how something was to be done. He could be quick to anger when things went wrong or, harder for some to deal with, would skulk and withdraw socially. Even the officers closest to him, diplomatic Sverdrup and balanced but acerbic Sigurd Scott-Hansen, made chiding private comments in their diaries, while the man who was to be in his sole company for months, Johansen, complained about his needing to be right and interfering with the work of others. Scott-Hansen hinted that they would be as glad to see him go as he was to leave.

They were not ready on February 20, and reset departure for the 26th. The preceding night a bittersweet good-bye party took place. After that, Nansen
stayed up late writing letters home, to leave on the
Fram
. He also wrote a letter to Sverdrup, giving him full command of the ship and making him expedition leader from then on. The crew of the
Fram
also wrote letters that Nansen and Johansen took with them, in the event that they made it home and the ship did not; these were on tiny sheets of paper, with the words miniaturized and crammed together, to save weight.

On the morning of the 26th, with Sverdrup, Scott-Hansen, Blessing, Peder Hendriksen, and Ivar Mogstad to accompany them away, Nansen and Johansen strode out on skis, driving eager dogs hauling four loaded sledges, one behind the other, all to cheers and cannon salutes from those left behind on the
Fram
. Off they raced, skimming over the snow and disappearing into the half-light. A fine, picturesque send-off it was, but soon they encountered steep ice hills the dogs could not surmount so had to be helped up and over, one at a time. Then, speeding off again, Nansen’s sledge hit rough ice, breaking its three crossbars and supports, and forcing them to return to the ship for repairs. On the way back, two sledges collided, snapping the hauling bar of one. They arrived at the ship, somewhat chagrined but grateful the weaknesses of their essential vehicles were discovered so early in the trip, for later on and far away it all might well have led to disaster.

Their last night aboard, actually the
second
last one, was feted with a display of lights from the electric lamp raised high on the
Fram
’s main topmast and from torches and a bonfire on the ice surrounding it. It must have been a remarkable, ghostly sight, the barren ice and its captive ship illuminated in the darkness this way. Two days later, with the sledges repaired, reinforced, and modified to prevent similar mishaps, and with two more sledges to lessen the loads on each, they took off again, escorted by the same party of five, this time without the booming gun salute.

They soon found the sledges were still too heavy for the dogs to haul smoothly or well and were forced to unload some of the provisions, including two of the edible chocks. After covering only four miles after leaving the
Fram
, they stopped early and set up camp for the night, all seven men together in one big tent. The next morning late, they all continued together until the send-off party, giving their good-byes and good lucks, turned back in order to reach the
Fram
by evening.

Nansen and Johansen headed north, struggling over increasingly difficult ice. They stopped early again and assessed their situation. The sledges were still too heavy and the going too slow. With the loads and in this cold, it would be too
hard on the dogs. They could make better time later in the month when the days were lighter and the ice smoother. Nansen decided to turn back, once again. Back again, they set to redesigning and repacking the sledges one more time and had another reviewing and rethinking of what they should do.

On March 14, almost a month after Nansen originally planned to start, they stood on the ice and made ready to leave. In the low light of the new Arctic day, they prepared to set out again, with three sledges lightened to 440 pounds each of pared-down supplies and food for men for one hundred days and only thirty for the dogs. After yet another indulgence of celebration the night before, they made their farewells again, though good-natured joker Theodor Jacobsen refused because, he said, they kept coming back after each good-bye. Cannons saw them off again, and seven others skied along as company. One by one they dropped back and returned to the ship, Sverdrup first, then Mogstad, and then, after a night together in the big tent, the remaining five. After breakfast, as Nansen relates in
Farthest North
, “we shook hands with our companions and, without many words being uttered on either side, started out into solitude. Peder [Hendriksen, who had wanted to go] shook his head sorrowfully as we went off. I turned around when we had gone some little way, and saw his figure on top of the hummock; he was still looking after us. His thoughts were probably sad; perhaps he believed that he had spoken to us for the last time.”

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Scott-Hansen, Bernhard Nordahl, and Hendriksen watched them “until they looked like little black dots far, far away on the boundless plain of ice” and then turned to ski back to the
Fram
, now under the sole command of Sverdrup.
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He had inherited a tough job. The crew had been ambivalent in their feelings about Nansen, ranging from admiration of his drive and ambition to disgust with his overweening micromanagement, and from enjoyment of his company when he was convivial to avoidance when dark and gloomy. With his strong, willful personality, he had served as a big magnet for the men to vent (usually in private or with each other) frustrations, criticisms, and anger. Yet they knew deep down they owed him a lot. His genius had conceived the whole enterprise in the first place. Everyone aboard had wanted to be part of it, for their various reasons, and he was the one who hired them. Largely through his obsessions—in-depth research to learn from predecessors and history, and exhaustive planning and preparation—he had brought them safely and comfortably to where no other ship had ever been. As a charismatic personality often can, he could fill a room, or a ship, with
his charm or suck it empty with his gloom. When he left for good, he took with him his big presence, for better or worse, and left a big hole behind.

Most of the crew, even Sverdrup, expressed privately that they were glad to see Nansen gone, that the mood aboard had improved markedly in his absence. But Scott-Hansen, though young, was wise in the ways of ships and sailors, and knew what could happen. “Now that they don’t have Nansen to blame, they’ll take it out on the captain [Sverdrup] and me [now second-in-command].”
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It would take an experienced, knowing leader to prevent that from happening, especially as the grind of time and high-Arctic confinement took their toll on spirits. Sverdrup was, by temperament and training, just that person. He knew about ships and how they worked, about the dynamics of crews running them. He was quiet and methodical, not flashy and compulsive, and never asked anyone to do what he himself could not. He did not try to ingratiate himself with the others, nor felt the need to gain their approval, but kept a dignity and remove of authority while still remaining approachable. He knew when to leave alone and when to jump in. He watched and weighed everything closely. He gained trust and allegiance, not by demanding, but by earning.

Sverdrup kept them working. They rearranged living quarters (he moved into Nansen’s cabin, Jacobsen into his, thus giving the others more elbow room) and tidied up from the messes left behind after the hectic work to get Nansen and Johansen on their way. Most importantly, they attacked the “Great Hummock,” the pressure ridge that since the end of January had lain ominously against the ship’s port side and was still a threat to bulldoze it. They spent the next ten days hacking away at the twenty-two-foot-high mound, reducing its height in half while carving a thirteen-foot-wide open lane alongside the ship, loading sledges with the ice debris, and carting it away, all the while in temperatures around -40 degrees. They then built a long, low-angled gangway to bridge the gap and provide easier access to the ice.

Sverdrup, even with his increasing confidence in the
Fram
’s ability to handle whatever the Arctic threw at it, left nothing to chance and continued to prepare for the worst. Over the next few weeks the men made new sledges, kayaks, skis, and snowshoes (which Sverdrup felt were better than skis for hauling heavy sledges over tough terrain). They apportioned and set aside emergency rations. Sverdrup ordered them to take part in daily two-hour runs on skis, partly for exercise and partly to keep their skills honed for real emergencies.

With the warming and loosening up of spring, such as it was, the ice began
its anticipated shifting, rearranging, and rifting, subjecting the
Fram
to renewed buffeting and banging. As in the previous spring, a lead opened up near the ship, a tantalizing avenue north to possible open water. Sverdrup knew it would be worthless to try to work the ship into and up the lead, however temping it was, since it was still stuck fast in the ice. So the passive drift continued its agonizingly slow, uncertain way. For a month they had almost been at a standstill, gaining only a few miles of latitude and longitude. Each day in these “Arctic doldrums,” though perhaps pleasant to the body, was a torment to emotions. The mood aboard rose with the speed and direction of propitious drift and fell with the calm and the
Fram
’s lethargic loitering. Like watching a clock to urge the time to go faster, they anxiously checked the plumb line lowered in the ocean, willing it to angle the right way in the currents. They almost envied Nansen and Johansen in their escape from the interminable sameness.