Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (9 page)

Just as they came face-to-face with freeze-up in the Arctic winter, they also had to confront the torment of little things. Lice had infested the ship, probably from their Siberian guests earlier. So, just as the ice was about to take them in as one of its own, they spent the whole day cleaning bedding, steaming clothes, and washing and disinfecting both men and dogs. Surely Nansen, even in this critical time, despite worry and aggravation, would have taken note of a somewhat humorous irony: the simultaneously external battle against the ice and internal one against the lice.

Nansen’s diary entries, and passages later in
Farthest North
, from this period of the voyage are revealing. Pages and pages are devoted to hunting big prey, perhaps indicating how important it was to the future of the mission, or maybe also because recounting the stalking and the killing made for good stories. He also references new discoveries and corrections or revisions to those made earlier. The
many detailed descriptions of, and his speculations about, the physical environment they pass through show his love of simple observation and pure science. Yet he is also the poet, expressing, often lyrically, awe or reverie at transcendent, unearthly wonders, or even just of little, ordinary things (“Oh! How the snow refreshes one’s soul, and drives away all the gloom and sadness from this sullen land of fogs! Look at it scattered so delicately, as if by a loving hand, over the stones and the grass flats on shore!”). He offers glimpses into private quandaries and worries masked by his uncompromising outward stance as leader (“Sverdrup thought it would be safer to stay where we were. . . . I gave orders to set sail”). Sometimes, too, the melancholy steals in, a familiar but haunting shadow that is to come and go for the rest of his life.

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There was an eerie, tragic coincidence in this region where the
Fram
lay next to the ice. Bennett Island, where Nansen had wished to go, had been discovered in 1881 by George De Long on the
Jeannette
and named by him for the owner of the ship and sponsor of the expedition. After the
Jeannette
had been crushed and lost, De Long and his crew made their way to Bennett Island on foot, hauling boats filled with supplies and trying to get to the New Siberian Islands and then to the Lena River.

Twenty years later, Baron Eduard von Toll, Nansen’s old friend and first-expedition angel, participated in a Russian venture on the vessel
Zarya
to find “Sannikoff Land.” It was forced to overwinter twice in the New Siberian Islands. Toll and his party continued their search on sledges and in kayaks, and ended up on Bennett Island. The
Zarya
attempted to pick them up there later but was stopped by the ice. Toll and the others apparently left the island in November 1902, heading for the mainland, but were never seen again.

This, then, was another kind of gyre, a tragic swirl of circumstances and history from which neither De Long nor Toll escaped. The
Fram
, on September 24, 1893, almost exactly halfway in time between the deaths of those two men, was now at the edge of the ice, poised to plunge in.

4 ›
INTO THE ICE

S
eptember 25, 1893. At 78.5° north latitude, with nighttime temperatures falling well below freezing and the sea slush rapidly solidifying into ice around them, Fridtjof Nansen, without mincing words in
Farthest North
, summed up the situation: “It really looked as if we were now frozen in for good, and I did not expect to get the
Fram
out of the ice till we were on the other side of the Pole, nearing the Atlantic Ocean.” They hastened to get the
Fram
ready for the fast-approaching winter.

First, and worst, was shifting coal from the hold to the bunkers not only for later use but also to achieve the best possible trim for when the ice finally locked them in position—it would not be good to be living indefinitely at a permanent list. It was hard, dirty work, with the fine coal dust drifting and seeping into every crack and crevice, into lungs and eyes. “An unpleasant contrast—everything on board, men and dogs included, black and filthy, and everything around white and bright in beautiful sunshine.”

They then unshipped the rudder to safety on deck but left the screw where it was for the time being, to act as reinforcement for the below-water structures at the stern. As it would not be used while the ship was icebound, the engine was broken down, its components cleaned, oiled, and stored away. Heat from then on would come from the stoves in the galley and saloon, and light from the dynamo-powered electric lights or, failing that, oil lamps. The energy for the dynamo could be generated by a below-deck mechanical “horse-mill” (treadmill) that the men would walk upon (thereby getting some exercise as well) or by the tall windmill that was now put up on the foredeck. The windmill was laborious to assemble and had to be turned manually to face the wind; when it blew hard, someone had to climb up to “reef” the four cloth vanes. However, it proved its worth for quite awhile, until it broke down for good the next winter. With the windmill in place, the image was unusual for a polar ship, as if an oddly constructed, out-of-place Dutch windmill had been plunked down in this alien, barren icescape.
The horse-mill was never used, probably for the same reasons that so many home treadmills today sit quietly in basements, gathering dust: it was too boring and isolating, and there was always something else to do.

Even with the engine disassembled, the somewhat-grumpy and feisty chief engineer Anton Amundsen “looked after that engine as if it had been his own child,” Nansen noted in
Farthest North
. “[Not] a day passed, winter or summer, all these three years, that he did not go down and caress it, and do something or other for it.”

Various shops were set up around the ship, to tend to every need: a carpenter’s shop in the main hold, a machine shop squeezed into the tight space of the engine room, a blacksmith shop temporarily on deck (later moved to the ice), a tinsmith shop in the chart room, and in the saloon a cobbler’s shop and a makeshift sail
loft, of sorts. Then, on a regular schedule, everyone got to their appointed or adopted trades: refurbishing or replacing damaged or worn parts and structures; soldering and welding metal implements; making new winter clothes for the men or harnesses for the dogs; splicing lines and steel rope; stitching sails; retooling watches and other instruments; building sledges and kayaks for future contingencies; and on and on. It was a lively place, and “keeping busy” was the watchword, for there was so much to do in preparation for the months to come, and as all seasoned seamen know, idleness on ships at sea (or in the ice) was the devil and would always lead to trouble.

For several days in late September and early October, the
Fram
stayed in the nether zone between the Arctic fall and winter, alternately frozen in and then released into newly appearing openings. During the floating stages, the ship was hauled forward (warped) by anchors and cables leading to floes, to be in a better position when final lockup occurred. At one point the ice parted into a huge lead north, and Nansen, feeling it a golden moment for heading where they wanted to go, ordered the engine reassembled, the rudder shipped, and the boilers made ready for firing, for a run in open water. The moment never came; that very night the ice came back with a vengeance, closed the lead, and shook the ship with its violent sideways pressure.

When the
Fram
was first frozen in, in late September, and began to drift, it was not always in the direction, or with the speed, Nansen had hoped for, indeed counted on. In fact, sometimes the ship went exactly the wrong way, south, or wandered about aimlessly for days and weeks on end, raising considerable anxiety on board over the possibility of being caught in a gyre or carried off into the polar equivalent of outer space. The crew took a keen but nervous interest in Sigurd Scott-Hansen’s periodic calculations of their position from the sextant fixes, since “the state of feeling on board very much depended on these results.”
⁷
Nansen himself wrestled with quandaries and uncertainties, at times in self-flagellation about what he had done (“
Why did you take this voyage?
”), at other times in philosophical resignation to whatever the fates might bring (“And if we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycle of eternity?”). All the while, however, he remained the scientist, puzzling over reasons for the whimsical ocean currents or describing how ice forms and works within the pack; he was still the poet, trying to find words for the admiration and awe he felt about the surreal Arctic realm they had entered.

As the sun dropped below the horizon on October 26, not to reappear for nearly four months, they remained in a state of flux and suspense, both physical
and mental. Their drift in a generally favorable northwest direction had been cancelled by a countering one to the southeast, so that they were essentially back where they began a month after first encountering the pack. As the ice built in the deepening cold and shifted with the currents, it boomed like cannons, rumbled like continuous thunder, and snapped like great cracking whips. Pressure ridges, the great, long slabs of ice being thrust against and upon each other, sometimes pressed against the ship, heaved it up, and shook it so violently that startled men came rushing up to deck, as people during earthquakes run from buildings seeking safety outside. There were unnerving sounds and sensations, especially upon entering a perpetual night and especially to those who had never experienced them. At other times, however, the ship floated quietly in a pool of water between the blocks, as the ice had not yet configured itself into a virtually solid, impenetrable mass. It was still early in the game; they were only at the edge of the vast unknown.

Despite worries over where they were headed, bouts of homesickness and melancholy, the onset of monotony, and the plunge over the precipice into winter,
life went on aboard the
Fram
. The men stayed engaged in their work, inside or out, whether tending to the daily necessities or preparing for future eventualities. Bernhard Nordahl was on deck with the windmill, keeping the recalcitrant gears and wheels moving in the cold, or below tinkering with the finicky dynamo, so that the cherished electric lights would stay on. Nansen was out on the ice continuing dog-driving practice, often in exasperation and anger at the dogs’ wildness, or at his own ineptitude. Adolf Juell was trying his best at cooking three meals a day, not always successfully or up to expectations. Lars Pettersen was at the forge, first on the foredeck and later moved to the ice, fixing broken fittings or hammering out new nails, bolts, knife blades, and anything metal that was needed. Ivar Mogstad was inside taking care of clocks, watches, and the scientific instruments. And Otto Sverdrup was in the saloon repairing torn sails, splicing lines, or stitching up leather harnesses for the dogs.

Some had special assignments to gather scientific data, performed either as their sole duties or in addition to their primary ones. Nansen laid great importance on this work, of course, as it was to him the primary purpose of the expedition. Scott-Hansen was the full-time principal overseer of various tasks, assisted by Hjalmar Johansen and, later, Nordahl. They recorded meteorological conditions (air temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, weather conditions, etc.) at least every four hours, quite often every two, around the clock. Every other day or so, if the clouds gave way, they took celestial bearings by sextant and watch to fix their position. Within a tent on the ice (later a more protective “igloo”) they made periodic recordings of the magnetic field as they drifted. They helped Nansen in measuring the salinity and temperature of the water, the thickness of the ice, and the direction and speed of currents.

Other investigations involved periodic dredges to sample what was living in and at the bottom of the sea, and soundings to determine how deep it was. Since the depth was so great, ten thousand feet or more, it sometimes took the entire crew, and several days, to pay out, take in, and splice on additional length of line. That the Arctic Sea was deep instead of shallow, as even Nansen had believed before he left, was one of the great surprises, and one of the more important discoveries, of the expedition.