Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (29 page)

On August 13, 1905, they were able to steam away from Gjøahavn, taking a track well south off the continental shore. Less than a week later, they cleared the constricted passage between big Victoria Island and the mainland, and into the last stretch of the Northwest Passage. Two days after that they met an American whaling ship coming the other way, and the captain informed him of clear sailing all the way to Alaska; the
Gjøa
could complete its journey before another winter caught it out.

Encountering increasing ice, Amundsen headed not to Alaska but to King Point on Canada’s Yukon coast, with its small Inuit presence (again, whether due to ice or something else, he chose not to proceed a short way up the coast to Herschel Island, with its larger, mixed settlement and harbor for whaling ships). There they prepared for a third winter. It would be a winter without Amundsen.

In mid-October he left with his dogs and sledge, in the company of two Inuit
and a whaling-ship captain also stranded at King’s Point because of the ice, to find a telegraph office to send out word of the successful navigation of the Northwest Passage. The office happened to be in the tiny settlement of Eagle City on the Yukon River in Alaska, over the mountains, a month and a half and eight hundred miles away. The first telegram was to Nansen, not only to break the news but also to request more money to be wired. He would not return to the
Gjøa
until March 12, five months hence. (He had good reason to leave the ship hastily to deliver the news. Through his brother Leon, Amundsen had made a lucrative contract with one newspaper back home for the exclusive story. But his news leaked out to the American press, and the contract became null and void. Amundsen’s financial woes continued.)

When the
Gjøa
reached Nome, Alaska, at the end of August that year, it was not by intention. The ship was under sail only after damage to its screw; then the gaff broke and forced it into harbor for repairs. Still, the town turned out in force, in welcoming congratulations. After only a few days there, Amundsen packed his bags and boarded a steamship headed to San Francisco, leaving his ship and mates behind.

The
Gjøa
made it to San Francisco later, after Amundsen had left for points east and on to other matters. It never had the glory of sailing home, as had the
Fram
, into the hearts of its citizens. Amundsen sold the ship to help pay his bills, to a group of Norwegian ex-patriots in San Francisco, who in turn donated it to the city. There it stayed for sixty-five years, outdoors but never sailing and slowly deteriorating through the punishment of the elements, neglect, and lack of protection. In one account from the 1960s, “The hippies had a special sense of appreciation for Gjøa. They liked to climb the rig and found out that the vessel was an ideal place for overnighting. . . . One hippie told us what a great pleasure it was to touch the ship’s frames, experiencing the voyage through the Northwest Passage on a [
sic
]
LSD
-trip. Remains of coal inside the ship clearly showed that fires had been lit to keep warm.”
²

In 1972, the
Gjøa
finally made it home, rescued by its own people. It did not make it back on its own, as would have been so fitting once, but on the deck of another ship. It was put up on blocks on Oslo’s Bygdøy Peninsula, right next to the building housing the
Fram
. It stayed there for several decades, outside and under tarps, still waiting for a new home like the
Fram
’s. It looked a rather forlorn, hunkered-down waif that visitors on the way to the
Fram
would pass with
barely a second look. But even without going aboard, one could sense Amundsen’s powerful but distant presence.

In 2013, the king opened the large new expansion to the Fram Museum where the
Gjøa
now resides, with a detailed exhibition of the history of the Northwest Passage.

22 ›
THE GREAT DECEPTION

I
t was to be a pivotal moment, a day in late September 1907, a year after Roald Amundsen’s completion of the Northwest Passage, when their lives took sharp right-hand turns away from each other. Amundsen had come to Fridtjof Nansen’s home seeking an answer to a question he had posed a few months earlier. Though newly garlanded with honor and respect, Amundsen still needed the older explorer’s greater weight and authority for his latest idea: to repeat what Nansen had done with the
Fram
but taking it one step further and actually crossing the North Pole and into the record books.

For this trip he had not been so bold as to ask Nansen specifically for the
Fram
. On paper the Norwegian government owned it, but Nansen had the gravitas and moral authority to decide its use. Perhaps he had hinted that the
Gjøa
, which he had not yet sold, could do the job. If so, it might have been a cagey strategy, for Nansen told him that if he were to attempt the feat, the
Fram
was the only ship capable. Would it be available? Nansen stopped short of an outright offer, as he still had simmering in his mind to take the
Fram
himself to Antarctica and from there trek to the South Pole. He would have to think about it. Amundsen had planted the seed in ground he hoped would be fertile.

Nansen was torn, to his core. Since coming home from his expedition, his life had taken different, sometimes divergent paths, into the public world of politics and diplomacy, and privately into seclusion for writing, withdrawal in dark moods, and a troubled marriage with Eva. He had used his renown and charisma in Norway’s struggle for independence from Sweden, a “cold war” that culminated peacefully, and for Norway successfully, in 1905. He had become Norway’s first ambassador to Great Britain, a position that took him away from the ordinary and sometimes-oppressive life at home and into the exciting, tempting bright lights of foreign high society.

His absences and behavior also left him guilty and regretful at times, mostly about Eva. In letters to her, he expressed undying love and a desire to renew his
devotion and give more affection to her. To prove it, he told her to put aside any worries she had about him leaving for Antarctica, that it was more important to him to spend the time with her and attend to other pressing work. Moreover, he justified, a young Englishman named Ernest Shackleton was getting ready for an expedition to reach the pole and would no doubt succeed, making his own effort moot.

But still he waffled, still he dreamed, up until the very day that Amundsen came to his house for an answer. Nansen and Eva had returned from a holiday in the country, before he was to leave again for London. Amundsen arrived, expectant. Nansen knew it was time for a decision; it could wait no longer: would it be Eva or the South Pole? Nansen asked him to wait in the downstairs hall while he went up to the bedroom to talk to his wife. Amundsen stood quietly, hat in hand.

In the bedroom Eva, burying her own feelings, deferred and told her husband it was his decision, to do what he had to do. She would not try to influence him one way or the other. Nansen turned and left the room. He walked down the stairs to where Amundsen was waiting. Then he said the memorable few words that
would change not only their lives but also the course of history: “You shall have the
Fram
.”

›››
Barely a year later, just as Amundsen was beginning to make arrangements and prepare the
Fram
for his Arctic trip, a bomb dropped: the news that on April 22, 1908, the American Frederick Cook, Amundsen’s shipmate and friend from the
Belgica
expedition, had sledged to the North Pole, or so he claimed, via the route between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. Shortly thereafter, there was a second bomb: another American, Robert Peary, the driven Arctic veteran who had rebuffed Otto Sverdrup in Smith Sound, had also made it to the pole, the same way, on April 6, 1909. Or so
he
claimed.

Amundsen, seeker of historical gold, had just missed getting to the mother lode in time, or so he believed then (the claims of both men had not yet been doubted, debunked, and disputed as they would eventually be, a war of reputations that has continued up to this day). Unlike Nansen, his primary motivation was not scientific knowledge to be gathered on the trip. He wanted to cross the Arctic basin and stick the Norwegian flag on that single point at its apex, no matter what it took to get there. So the big question ran through his mind: what should he do, now that the prize is gone?

There was still another prize waiting, the South Pole, but it too was in jeopardy. In January 1909, Ernest Shackleton had come to within one hundred miles of it before forced to turn back. Now another Englishman, Royal Navy captain Robert Falcon Scott, was getting ready to sail to Antarctica for the next try. Amundsen quickly decided what to do. By his own admission, he would attempt a “coup,” to take the
Fram
south instead of north and snatch this prize from under Scott’s nose, just as Cook and Peary had snatched the North Pole from under his.

Scott would leave England in August 1910, aiming to arrive at Antarctica in its spring. It was already October 1909 when Amundsen made his move. He had precious little time to spare. He would secretly figure out the new logistics, revise preparations without tipping his hand, and make it “down under” in time to beat Scott to the pole. He knew he could not reveal his drastic change of plans publicly without risking the entire venture. Nansen might well withdraw his approval and prohibit the
Fram
from leaving if he knew, as he had sacrificed his own southern ambitions for Amundsen’s promise to go north. The king, and the government, might also disapprove, and both were essential funders of the expedition.

So the stealth began. He proceeded as if nothing had changed, professing that
he would still go to the Arctic on the scientific mission, taking the refurbished
Fram
(now with a diesel engine to replace the steam one) around Cape Horn, up the length of the Pacific, through the Bering Strait, and into the ice, to begin a drift like Nansen’s. In reality, however, he intended to sail directly to Antarctica, never stopping, and there set up a base station for ten men overwintering and to store the food, supplies, and equipment for the sledge trip to the pole the following spring. After dropping off the land party and all supplies, the
Fram
would sail away to conduct oceanographic surveys in the Southern Ocean over fall and winter, before returning in summer to pick them up.

Continuing the ruse, the seven-year stock of provisions for the Arctic would now feed and equip both the land party heading to the pole and the ship’s company while at sea. He had the base station constructed and then deconstructed and put on board, saying it was to be the observatory and laboratory for the scientific work. He arranged for one hundred sledge dogs to be delivered just before the
Fram
departed.

Amundsen discussed his plan only with closest friends and confidants, those who would help make it all work while keeping the lid on. His brother Leon, his at-home voice and business manager, would make his way to Madeira independently, in advance of the
Fram
’s arrival, to bring letters for the crew and receive letters to go home, including Amundsen’s near-obsequious confessionals and self-justifications to Nansen, the king, and government officials. Leon was also to handle all the fallout when the world learned about what was happening.

›››
His handpicked crew of twenty was the by now usual mix of sailors and engineers necessary to perform all the functions of the expedition. Two had been with him on the
Gjøa
and proven themselves, cook Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm and mate Helmer Hanssen. Two others, Sverre Hassel and Jacob Nødtvedt (as had Lindstrøm earlier) came recommended by Otto Sverdrup from the second
Fram
expedition. At Nansen’s urging, Amundsen also accepted first-expedition luminary Hjalmar Johansen, though reluctantly. Unhappy and disconsolate in his job with the military, and struggling as a divorcé and father of young children, he had fallen back into old ways, drifting, drinking heavily, and running out of money. On several occasions he, and his desperate wife, had asked Nansen for financial help, which out of loyalty and concern for his old companion he obliged. Now Nansen saw a new opportunity for his rehabilitation with Amundsen, and Amundsen had no choice except to accommodate him. Nansen could not know
that the personalities of these two headstrong men would not mesh and that Johansen’s new lease on life would be far different than hoped or imagined.

The three officers were all navy men. Thorvald Nilsen, the
Fram
’s captain, was a lieutenant, young at twenty-nine but holding a new captain’s certificate with several years’ experience in deepwater sailing in the merchant marines. The first mate was another lieutenant, Kristian Prestrud, in appearance neat and preppy, and in manner refined. Like Nilsen, he was twenty-nine and had additional experience in the merchant marines. Second mate Hjalmar Gjertsen, a fresh-faced, boyish-looking, athletic man of twenty-five (he, like Johansen, had been a champion gymnast), also had several years at sea under his belt.

So too at the Naval Academy in Horten, Amundsen found other general crew members, one of whom, Oscar Wisting, would go on to have a long association with Amundsen, spanning many years and subsequent polar endeavors. Wisting, a seasoned sailor of thirty-nine, would be a jack-of-all-trades on the
Fram
, to do a bit of everything from cook to tinsmith, navigator, doctor, dog handler, and sledger.

Gjertsen and two others to whom Amundsen offered positions on the
Fram
had met him in 1909 when he came to Horten to conduct a rather unusual but clever experiment, one that showed Amundsen’s openness to trying something new and innovative. He had the idea of using kites to lift a man high off a ship (sort of a precursor of today’s sport of paragliding), to get a better view across the pack ice and more easily pick a way through leads. He engaged Martin Rønne, a forty-year-old sailmaker at the shipyard, to sew the kites (it would take more than one to do the job) and a lightweight fabric chair for the high-flying lookout.

Rønne and Gjertsen, both slight, light men, also tested the kites. The kites worked, sort of. It took seven to lift a man some two hundred yards into the air, but they were hard to control and keep aloft. The entire scheme was dropped, however, when lightning killed the then captain watching on deck (Nilsen took over his position). Amundsen hired Rønne anyway, to be the expedition’s maker and fixer of sails, dog harnesses, boots, sleeping bags, tents, and even clothes. A busy man he was to be with his sewing machine, sail twine, and sewing palm, and a genial one whose Italian-like face always had a gentle smile shining from behind his big, broom-like mustache.

Several came on board through other connections. Prestrud knew the rugged seven-seas sailor Halvardus Kristensen from his naval duty and had recommended him. Carpenter and handyman Jørgen Stubberud had worked on fixing up Amundsen’s new house outside Christiania, and so his known skills were to be put to good use on the ship and sledging expeditions. Amundsen happened to meet a Norwegian skiing (and ski-jumping) champion, and expert ski maker, Olav Bjaaland at an event, and quickly seized the opportunity to offer him a position. Another navy man, Ludvig Hansen, came with the reputation of fine tinsmith and sailor. Big and square-jawed, seasoned Andreas Beck from northern Norway had much useful experience in Arctic regions, as harpooner and skipper aboard sealing and whaling ships, and as an ice pilot on a scientific expedition to Svalbard. Karenius Olsen, at seventeen, was the youngest on board and was put to work in a variety of duties, including as cook.