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

end of Norway and headed into the North Sea, where it soon revealed its open-water character in the building swells. It “rolled like a log, the seas broke in over the rails on both sides. . . . Seasick I stood on the bridge, occupying myself in alternately making libations to Neptune and trembling for the safety of the boats and the men.” 1
    Aboard were expedition leader Nansen and ten of the eleven-man crew. Otto Sverdrup, already appointed captain, was to be picked up later near Trondheim, halfway up the coast, nearer his home (a twelfth member would be hired in Tromsø). Nansen had selected the rest of the crew from the applications that had deluged him from around the world once news of the expedition had gone public. Even with so many to choose from, it was not easy to pick the select few who would go, for each man had to be a complete package of appropriate skills, physical strength, seamanship, skiing ability, and mental acuity. Nansen, out of national pride (especially as Norway at the time was struggling for independencefrom Sweden) and the desire for cohesiveness, had also wanted an all-Norwegian crew. Moreover, each would have to possess a personality blending patience, forbearance, resiliency, and sufferance of privation, both social and material, qualities impossible to gauge from a written application. Only when all were on board, living and working in such close quarters, in such conditions, would these come to the fore, and be tested. He had wanted scientists, too, but none had applied for such a long and dangerous expedition.
    Whalers and other long-distance merchant mariners of those times were accustomed to extended trips away from home, sometimes, like the Fram ’s projection, for two or three or more unbroken years. For them there was at least assurance of relief by a change of scenery or of climate, through meeting other ships, or by landfall on a new and foreign shore to pick fruit, gather bird eggs, or engage in some kind of diversion. The men of the Fram would be stuck with each other on a solitary, isolated ship in an unremitting, lifeless expanse of ice, enduring months of sunless winters and unspeakable cold, day after day, month after month, year after year, until they broke free and went home, if and when that might be. Yes, it would take a special breed of person, more than just a smart, tough, skiing sailor, to make it through to the end and without going crazy in the process.
    As on many ocean-going ships even today, the crew was a cast of characters, with varied backgrounds, training, education, and personalities. Some were married, some not. Some were outgoing, even boisterous, and others were quiet and reserved. Besides being relatively young men (most in their thirties), their only other common denominator was that they were all Norwegian—or were supposed to be—to satisfy Nansen’s prideful nationalistic intent and for the bond and concord arising, in theory at least, from sharing the same cultural identity.
    The personnel organization was not as rigid and hierarchical as in the navy, with everyone assigned a rate and rank within departments, but more as on a merchant ship around duties and skills, and, because the crew was small, assisting others as situations demanded. Everyone worked side by side and ate meals together. Notwithstanding, there was a recognized formal cadre of “officers” in charge and “mates” to carry out their orders, the officers with the luxury of their own private cabins: Nansen as expedition leader (overall commander), Sverdrup as captain of the Fram , and Sigurd Scott-Hansen as navigator and second-in-command, while Henrik Blessing was in the special category of ship’s doctor. (The roles of “expedition leader” and “captain” sometimes got confused in their overlapping, fuzzy jurisdictional, and ego lines.)

    FIGURE 10
    Otto Sverdrup, captain. After Nansen departed with Johansen for the North Pole, Sverdrup became expedition leader as well.