Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (14 page)

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.

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

F
or 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 together 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

Also, Nansen confided that “it became more and more of a riddle to me that we did not make greater progress northwards.”
²²
(His statement is a bit puzzling, as much as he was aware of Arctic Ocean currents.) He quickly proposed a solution to the riddle, which perhaps should have been obvious, as it would be to the unfortunate Salomon Andrée the following year, that “the ice was moving southward, and that in its capricious drift, at the mercy of wind and current, we had our worst enemy to combat.”

With all these, plus trying to figure how far away Franz Josef Land was (450 miles) and how long it would take them to get there with spring bringing deteriorating sledging conditions, Nansen, the personification of rational strategist, had plenty of reason for not continuing. It was one of his most admirable qualities, to offset some less so: though he may have craved it, no glory, no matter how big the prize nor how close to attainment, was worth the risk of even one life when he knew the odds were so much against him. On April 8, after not quite a month into the trip, Nansen “determined to stop, and shape our course for Cape Fligely [the most northern extent then known of Franz Josef Land].”
²³
They had reached 86°13.6’ north, 260 miles from the pole. There was a prize after all, a new “farthest north” on the globe, for any person, anywhere, of all time. What they would have no way of knowing then, of course, was that seven months later the
Fram
would be carried to within a few miles of that record, then and still “farthest north” for a wooden ship.

Though the days were lengthening and warming as they made their way south, bringing relief from frigidity and gloom, the journey did not get any easier. New problems would merely take the place of those left behind. The traveling surface turned slushy in places under the stronger sun, making it miserable going for the weary dogs and men. On occasion they, men or dogs, even fell though hidden, melted potholes or gaps in the ice, into the bone-numbing sea. Leads appeared with increasing frequency, size, and complexity, requiring much time and long forays to scout the way through. The dogs, dwindling in number as they went on, were becoming progressively weaker and harder to encourage, or force, to go on. Before, when it was super cold, the days at least were mostly sunny and calm, but now, in April and May, they were often overcast; sodden with fog, wet snow, and freezing rain; or sometimes punishing with high winds, all dampening the men’s spirits and keeping them tent bound for long periods of time. They would have willingly exchanged those days, when temperatures might rise above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, for the hard, deep subzero ones earlier, when at least the traveling did not get so bogged down.

Whether due to exhaustion or simply because there was too much to do, they began to forget things, some critically important. Once Nansen left a compass behind, and because it was necessary for position finding and navigation, he spent several hours retracing his steps to find it. Even more serious, however, was when both men forgot to wind their watches after sleeping too long following a tiring day. It was a grave lapse, since it meant from then on they had no way of knowing exactly where they were. Precise longitudinal locations by celestial navigation could only be made in conjunction with the exact time. Otherwise, it could only be an approximation, or worse, a guess. Most of us could not begin imagine what it would feel like to be in such a circumstance: utterly alone in such a complete wilderness, where no one had ever been before, and without maps to show where they were or where they were going. There, little errors or miscalculations might mean catastrophe, in any number of ways: sudden death in the water or a slow one by freezing, starvation, or scurvy; attack by polar bears or walruses; stranded or lost on the ice; adrift or lost at sea; strangled by fear and terror; going crazy by degrees; or all of these at once. And what would happen if one of them should fall ill or be injured? Now, the gnawing uncertainty about where they really were plagued the men, these two tiny pinpoints in an unforgiving, seemingly endless, immensity.

But on they went through April and into May, navigating the fragmented pack as best they could, while the further south they inched the more their eyes searched the horizon for land. Land would be their oasis, its bedrock the anchor they needed to extricate themselves from the melting, shifting, drifting ice, before it was too late and the seasons turned to winter. Another National Day, May 17, came and went without the ceremonial, communal looking back as on the
Fram
. Instead, they had their private nostalgic remembrances and worries about the dogs in their steadily dying numbers, their own wearing out from the struggle, and the real possibility of being carried by the ice too far west and missing land entirely, to face an open ocean.

The days wore on through May, and there was still no sign of land. They were deceived by mirages that would rise over this icy desert or mistake distant low clouds for mountains. Disappointment would yield to despair, but they clung to the hopes they had. They were making progress, however torturous, so that Nansen consoled, “At last then we have come down to latitudes which have been reached by human beings before us, and it cannot possibly be far to land.”
²⁴
They began to see life, or signs of it: narwhals surfacing in the bigger leads, polar bear
and fox tracks on the floes, then a fulmar flying overhead, then a ringed seal lying on the ice, and later more and different birds, even a fish. So there would be a chance of getting food if theirs ran out. On the horizon dark sky would appear more frequently, not fleetingly but steady and unmoving, a far-distant indication of land or open water.

June arrived. Only six worn-out dogs were left, and food was getting low. Still no land was anywhere ahead, and with each passing day without the sight of it, their apprehension grew. As if to quell fear and conjure up what they needed, they took to repairing the kayaks, the only means they had to escape the ice and get to land when it appeared, whatever and wherever it was. The rough-and-tumble sledge rides had been hard on the kayaks, with the covers holed and seams split, and ribs cracked or broken. With precious little replacement stock on hand, they had to be creative with alternatives (for example, to seal the seams they used a made-up compound of the stove’s blubber oil, soot from its burning, and Nansen’s drawing pastels crushed into powder). It was slow and exacting work to get them tight and strong again, these fragile, tippy vessels that would have to carry them and everything they had, and absolutely needed to survive, dry and safe over lethally cold waters, for who knew how long or under what conditions.

Nansen’s diary entry from June 11 (in
Farthest North
) encapsulates, in a poetic sort of way, the desperation and desolation they felt about the predicament they were in with yet an underlying appreciation for life itself:

It had been three months since leaving the
Fram
, when they had imagined themselves long since home. But here they were, in their tent on the pack, confined by a spell of heavy snow. They slept a good deal to kill time, but Nansen spent long hours trying to figure and refigure where they were, going over what data he had and holding an internal debate of all the possibilities and likelihoods. He reluctantly accepted the possibility that they were too far west and would miss Franz Josef Land completely, and thus face a long open-sea traverse to Svalbard. His main concern was not the journey itself but, before they set out, getting enough game they would need crammed into the interior of the kayaks.

June was drawing to a close, and on they trudged, with dwindling rations and fuel, with only three dogs left, and through heavy wet snow that stuck to skis and sledge runner and made traveling a misery, only to confront either nasty pressure ridge barriers or increasingly numerous lanes around which they had to detour at great expense of time and labor. Finally, they decided to speed up their advance by paddling down or across the bigger lanes—at some risk to the kayak skins from the abrasion of brash (loose, fragmented ice)—with the kayaks side by side and the skis lashed to them as cross-struts, the sledges athwartships at the bows and sterns, and the dogs riding atop them. Then, while in this mode of ferrying, a serendipitous event happened: a large bearded seal surfaced near the kayaks, which Johansen was able to shoot and Nansen harpoon to keep from sinking. Within the blink of an eye their fortunes and prospects changed; from a state of want they suddenly had enough food for a month.

They needed yet more speed if they were to get free of the ice in time, so they discarded everything they could to make the sledges lighter, keeping only what was essential: food, guns, ammunition, necessary equipment, and barest clothing. Everything else went: extra tent, spare skis, winter clothes, first aid kit, and even the precious sleeping bag they had shared. From then on they would be making do with lightweight summer garb and camping equipment, and eating what they killed. If they were not able to escape by fall, they would have to stop in time to find or build a new shelter on land they had yet to see, gather food by their guns and stockpile enough for the long winter, and make new blankets, sleeping bags,
boots, and clothes from the hides of animals they shot. It was yet another version of a Nansen trademark, another “gå fram.”

Troubles came in unexpected ways. Once, when attempting to secure another harpooned bearded seal, their rig partially capsized, and Johansen’s kayak filled with water before the whole assemblage of kayaks, sledges, dogs, Johansen, and bearded seal could be hauled up on the ice; fortunately, the soaking only caused the loss of some gunpowder and flour. Another time the blubber and oil in the cooking lamp caught fire, filling the tent with choking smoke and burning holes in it, before the men escaped and then managed to extinguish the fire before everything went up in flames. One of the sledge/kayak sails had to be sacrificed to patch the gaping holes.

Mostly it was boredom and impatience as they waited for the snow to melt so they could make better time, or time at all, and as they strained their eyes continually to catch that first longed-for glimpse of land. “Here we lie far up in the north,” Nansen bemoaned in
Farthest North
, “two grim, black, soot-stained barbarians, stirring a mess of soup in a kettle, and surrounded on all sides by ice; by ice and nothing else—shining and white, possessed of all the purity we ourselves lack.” The appearance of polar bears was both a break from the drudgery and a welcome refilling of their larder.

After another tough stretch of days against ridges and through slush, while zigzagging around or paddling down or across lanes, they stopped to reconnoiter from the vantage of a tall hummock. Then came the discovery: “Wednesday, July 24th. At last the marvel has come to pass—land, land, and after we had almost given up our belief in it! . . . Drift-white, it arches above the horizon like distant clouds, which one is afraid will disappear every [any] minute. The most wonderful thing is that we have seen this land all the time without knowing it.”
²⁵
Its distant whiteness they had first thought to be snowfields and then, because it appeared to change shape, clouds (the movement was probably due to mirage-like wavering of ever-present mists). Now, through the telescope, Nansen saw what he had not seen before: a long band of black between the horizon and the supposed “clouds,” the black of rock beneath the white of snow-capped peaks.