Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (7 page)

Two years older than Scott-Hansen and, like him, a clergyman’s son, Henrik Blessing signed on as ship’s doctor, with his medical degree awarded just before the
Fram
’s departure. He had grown up near the Telemark region just north of Christiania and was an expert Nordic skier, as were most other members of the
Fram
. A rather reserved, perhaps shy, figure, Blessing’s main role was, of course, to keep the crew physically and mentally healthy, that is, treat illness or injury. He was also the “botanist” for the expedition; he collected specimens gathered from
land, ice, or water to document the heretofore undocumented part of the world ahead. (It was often the case on polar expeditions that the doctor was also the naturalist. This was partly due to an education that included the natural sciences but also because their unique job freed them from normal shipboard duties and left ample time for wandering about observing and gathering specimens of this or that.)

Theodor Jacobsen of Tromsø, thirty-eight, was chief mate serving under Sverdrup. He had more sailing experience than anyone else, twenty-three years of it since age fifteen, advancing all the way from cabin boy to skipper, in many oceans of the world, including the Arctic. He was an imposing man of considerable height, dark hair and long, dark beard, sharp features, and penetrating eyes. As a seaman, he was deft, levelheaded, and practical. Socially, he was a bit quirky and highly talkative but nonetheless respected as a man of “much feeling” who could stir the souls of homesick shipmates through his stories and moving songs.

The elder of the crew was forty-year-old Anton Amundsen (no relation to the more famous Roald), chief engineer. A rough-and-ready-looking man, he had spent twenty-five years in the Norwegian Navy as an engineer, but his career was
pockmarked and undermined by insobriety. Aware of the two-edged sword of his reputation as excellent engineer and robust drinker, Nansen took him on but with a stern written demand for him to abstain from alcoholic drinks from that moment on. Once aboard, Amundsen gained another reputation: a lone wolf who did not like to socialize in the usual, informal ways, yet one not shy about laying on others his strong, even dogmatic, opinions (though he had a wife and seven children, he claimed there is no such thing as “love,” only “arrangements”). Scott-Hansen, who knew of him through their military service, attributed his problems to an unhappy marriage and troubled life at home, from which he escaped by going to sea. (Amundsen himself as much as acknowledged this, in his application for a position on the
Fram
. He even fudged his age on the application, making himself younger, a sure indication of his desperation to get away.) Once at sea, however, and sober, he seemed to find peace of mind with near-absolute devotion to his work and machines.

Second engineer Lars Pettersen, thirty-three, had also been in the Norwegian Navy for years, as a machinist and blacksmith, skills readily transferrable to the
Fram
. He also served as one of the engine stokers and practically took over cooking for the entire crew later in the expedition. He had taken a risk when he applied to Nansen, knowing full well his requirement of a Norwegian-only crew, for he was actually Swedish. But he had a good cover: his parents were Norwegian, he had lived many years in Christiania while in the navy, and he spelled his name the Norwegian way (Pettersen) instead of the Swedish (Petterson). His ruse was good enough to get him on board, but eventually his secret was uncovered. By then, however, his good nature and hardworking habits overruled any nationalistic bias and he became a popular, fully accepted member of the crew.

Nansen had asked only one other besides Sverdrup to join the expedition (all the rest had had to apply), because of the reputation he had in skills that would be of highest value to the expedition: Tromsø native Peder Hendriksen (in
Farthest North
, Nansen spelled it “Henriksen”). Hendriksen had spent twenty of his thirty-four years as sailor, harpooner, and hunter, many on sealers north of Scandinavia and Russia. He was soon to prove that his reputation was well earned and showed himself also to be one of the more good-natured of the men, fond of entertaining with enthralling, if often off-color or even brutish, stories from his
rough years at sea. Like many on the
Fram
, in addition to the primary duties, he could be a jack-of-all-trades when the moment called.

Short, stocky, powerful Hjalmar Johansen, twenty-seven and from southern Norway, was another who was a superb athlete (a champion gymnast and Nordic skier) and had military education and training. Though very bright and hardworking, Johansen, like Anton Amundsen, had particular difficulty living a normal life at home. He struggled with a steady career and fell into periods of heavy drinking for illusory relief. So it may well have been to escape his own self-created problems that he had been so eager to participate in the voyage: he pestered Nansen relentlessly until finally appointed to the only open position, stoker, a duty unfamiliar to him. Also like Amundsen, once away and settled in to a new life of far different responsibilities, he was a model of dedication to the tasks at hand,
including assisting Scott-Hansen with the scientific observations. He, as it turned out, was to play one of the biggest roles in the expedition, albeit away from the ship, one that was to have significant personal repercussions afterward.

Bernhard Nordahl from Christiania, thirty-one and another navy veteran, had multiple duties: electrician, stoker, and scientific assistant. The first of these would be most valued, for he was the one to keep the innovative yet problematic electric light system working, for even though the illumination from this new technology was meager, the men would be drawn to it like moths to candle flames, not just to
see
but also to keep their spirits alive through the long, oppressive darknesses to come. That he was aboard at all was by coincidence. He had come to the waterfront in Christiania just to see the
Fram
as it was being loaded for the voyage and had run into Hjalmar Johansen, an old acquaintance now on the crew. Through Johansen’s urging and his sway with Nansen, Nordahl applied and was signed on but only for the trip up the coast to Tromsø, during which he would teach others to operate the electrical system. It would turn into a much longer cruise for him, whether by his own design or that of Nansen, and one can only imagine what his wife, at home with five children, felt about this sudden, shocking, and irreversible change of plan.