Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram by Charles W. Johnson Read Free Book Online

cold air coming through the hull. Then, moving toward the outside, there were successive layers of, in order, wool felt, softwood paneling, cork, and finally, next to the ship’s inside planking, a thick layer of tarred wool felt. The ceilings, where most of the heat would be lost, had additional layers, including two of just air and one of reindeer hair, for a total of fifteen inches of insulating material.

    FIGURE 6
    The saloon where the men ate and socialized in heated, well-insulated comfort. The skylight allowed natural light to come in from above.
    Attention to detail meant everything when it came to the comfort, or misery, of the crew. The floor consisted of half-foot-thick cork padding on top of the deck planks, then a wood floor, and then linoleum. All interior doors leading to the outside were small and extra thick, with several layers of wood and the spaces between packed with reindeer hair. Door thresholds were fifteen inches high, to act as dikes against the low-lying flood of cold air just beyond. The skylight into the saloon, allowing blessed natural light to come into the interior of the ship, was a place where a great deal of heat could be lost, so it was triple paned and air sealed. Even the heads of through-bolts were covered with felt pads, to keep the moist warmth from being conducted out and turning to ice as it hit the colder zones.
    For the crew there were other amenities, for example, the heated saloon with a well-stocked library and a player organ, and a dynamo (generator) for electric lights, to brighten the seemingly eternal winter’s dark, powered either by a wide-bladed windmill on the main deck or a human-driven treadmill below.
    If everything failed in one crushing, final catastrophe somewhere in the greatoceans or in the great ice, there was yet one more contingency that Archer had not overlooked. The Fram carried eight boats on deck, ready at the davits for lowering. Two were to serve as lifeboats in case of the ultimate emergency, whether plunked down on the ice or sailing an ice-strewn sea. They were big enough (twenty-nine feet long, nine feet wide) for the entire crew to live in, were covered with a deck, and held supplies for several months. If somehow the boats, too, were lost, the men could take to sledges across the ice, carrying kayaks for if and when they came to water.
    FIGURE 7
    Launch of the Fram at Colin Archer’s shipyard, Larvik, Norway, October 26, 1892.
    ››› Hundreds of people, including shipbuilders, sailors of the northern seas, workmen, family members, and friends, attended the launching at Archer’s yard on October 26, 1892. Nansen’s wife, Eva, christened the ship by breaking a bottle of champagne against the stem and speaking out its name officially for the first time: “ Fram skal den hede” (“ Fram shall she be called”). Then, as related by James Archer in his biography of his great-grandfather Colin, “one of thecarpenters hoisted a red pennant with white letters on the waiting flagstaff on board and foreman Ambjørnsen cut the last hawser. Tradition says that because of her weight Fram slipped down the ways a little early. She created a wave that took some spectators that stood too near, but no one was injured. A little boy, who had seen the whole ceremony, shouted enthusiastically, ‘Once more!’”
    ››› In the years to come, the Fram would carry its new flags—the Norwegian and its own—into the farthest, most unexplored reaches of the world.

I ››› THE FIRST EXPEDITION
1893–1896
    THE ARCTIC OCEAN ‹‹‹

FIGURE 8
    The Fram ’s route in Nansen’s and Sverdrup’s expedition between 1893 and 1896, including Nansen’s and Johansen’s fifteen-month sledge and kayak trip in 1895–96. Also shown are Sverdrup’s routes to and from Ellesmere Island region, 1898–1902 (see also figure 50). For scale, a direct line over the North Pole from southern Norway to northern Alaska is about 4,000 miles; Greenland is 1,650 miles in