Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (31 page)
Read Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram Online
Authors: Charles W. Johnson
Amundsen and his men knew ice better. They brought the
Fram
in close where they found a natural ramp of snow leading from the sea ice up to the top of the Great Ice Barrier. Easily ascending, they selected a place two miles in, on the flat plateau; this spot was safely back on older ice not at risk of breaking off and, they believed, anchored to an island below. Here they erected the smaller, prefabricated station for the nine men who would be there, dubbed “Framheim” (
Fram
’s home), along with fourteen tent kennels for the dogs. Ahead, just beyond Framheim’s door and across a narrow belt of old, firm sea ice, stretched the South Road, a boundless highway of ice and snow as far as they could see. The flat surface of South Road was made for northern dogs pulling northern sledges, with northern men on skis keeping pace, to speed their way toward this other pole.
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POLES APART
The Arctic and Antarctic, as their names denote, are antipodes, opposite extremes of north and south where all the lines of longitude converge and disappear, and where there are no more lines of latitude. They are at the outermost limits of life on earth, beyond which there is nothing else but space. In these, at least, they share identities as our only two polar regions, and their lands are, for the most part, kinds of deserts, with annual precipitation less than the Sahara’s. As “polar” and “desert,” these are stark, tough places for living things, and few call them home. Their oceans, however, are rich with marine life, from seabirds to seals and whales, and several are endemic only to them.
Both, too, are not what they once were. In their rocks are fossils telling of much warmer, even tropical, times—trees, ferns, birds, and even dinosaurs. (Scientists in Nansen’s day did not have our present explanations for their presence, but they knew the mysterious fossils were significant and collecting them was an important if arduous scientific activity of Otto Sverdrup’s expedition, as well as of Robert Falcon Scott’s later in Antarctica. Some members risked—and in Scott’s party perhaps even gave—their lives to bring back prized specimens.)
But after these commonalities, it is hard to unite them in one sweeping comparison. It is perhaps easier to distinguish them.
One definition fixes them to mirror-image latitudes in each hemisphere: 66.5° N (Arctic Circle) and 66.5° S (Antarctic Circle), beyond which the sun never goes below the horizon at summer solstice and never above it at winter solstice. Another ties them to climate, especially the controlling influence of temperature on the growing season: they are both regions where the average temperature of the warmest month is below 50°
F
. A third says it is their living ecology, not just physical measurements, that makes them polar: they are realms (
biomes
) where trees cannot grow (land above
tree line
) and associated animals cannot live. What is circumscribed by these definitions is not the same, and each falls short of capturing the totality. But collectively they paint a broad, if not precise, picture of these immense, remarkable, and profoundly different regions.
There is a useful saying that the Arctic is mostly ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is mostly land surrounded by ocean. Though a bit too tidy, it does hold the key to a critical understanding—the 5.4 million-square-mile Arctic Ocean holds sway over the Arctic, while the continent of Antarctica, of equal size, dominates the Antarctic, leading to very different kinds of polar places. The Arctic is connected to other continents and other oceans; Antarctica is by itself, far removed, as one sea surrounding and isolating.
The Arctic Ocean is only 50 percent ice covered at its minimum in summer (and shrinking), and the warmer, open water moderates the climate over the entire Arctic, especially the coastal areas. In addition, the dark ocean surface absorbs sunlight and thus heat. Consequently, the Arctic has a great deal of vegetated land, even when covered with winter’s ice and snow: hunkered-down patches or more widespread
peaty
tundra
; carpets of mosses, shrubs, sedges, grasses, wildflowers, and lichens; and below these, the
permafrost
, permanently frozen ground. Tundra supports several abiding-year-round resident herbivores, mammal and bird (e.g., Arctic hare, lemming, musk ox, and ptarmigan). These, in turn, are sought by a number of predators (Arctic wolf, Arctic fox, gyrfalcon, etc.). Here are miracles in high places.
Antarctica is a harsher, more barren place. Almost all of it is permanently covered with an ice sheet (see “About the Ice,” p. 8) up to three miles thick, so enormous a mass as to hold 90 percent of all ice in the world (the Arctic’s only sheet is Greenland’s, only 12 percent the size of Antarctica’s). Its near-total white surface reflects the sun’s rays, rejecting its heat, and making things even colder—the lowest temperature ever recorded on earth was there, −129°
F
, at the continent’s interior. It has very few places with exposed soil or vegetation, even in summer. Its flora is mostly lichens pressing against the rocks or smudges of algae in the ice, and only a couple of tiny flowers. There are no land mammals. Only one species of vertebrate, the emperor penguin, has what it takes to be a year-round resident (a remarkable story of its own). Life is mostly at its margins and in the sea around, and mostly in the summer.
Then there is the human element. Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Arctic, sparsely but continuously, for thousands of years, adapting to what the land and sea offered and demanded. Four million native peoples now occupy this region: Inuit of Canada and Greenland, Saami (formerly Lapps) of Scandinavia, and several others of Russia. Nonindigenous people have joined them, too, in year-round settlements.
But Antarctica is another story. No person ever saw it until 1820 or set foot on it until 1821. No one lives there permanently, or ever has. As many who have been there have felt and said, it is a place beyond imagining, where superlatives are inadequate. In the minds of some, it is the closest thing we have to another planet.
FIGURE 87
January 15, 1911 (midsummer), at the Bay of Whales, Antarctica. Supplies are loaded on the sledge at the edge of the Great Ice Barrier, for transportation to Framheim, the base camp and shelter for those making the expedition to the South Pole.
Just after midnight on February 4, the watchman on the
Fram
had gone below to the galley for a cup of coffee. When he returned to his post on deck he saw, in disbelief, another ship not far away, moored to the barrier. The
Terra Nova
had come in silently, like a specter. Soon, men from the
Terra Nova
came over to the
Fram
(Scott and his shore party were not among them; they had stayed back at the Hut on Ross Island). The
Terra Nova
had left McMurdo Sound and sailed to King Edward VII Land east of the Bay of Whales, where a party from the ship was to land and investigate this unmapped territory. However, it had been unable to land and was returning to McMurdo, following the edge of the Great Ice Barrier when they, no doubt in total shock, happened upon the sleeping
Fram
.
FIGURE 88
Famous chance meeting of the
Fram
(foreground) and
Terra Nova
, at the Bay of Whales, the edge of Antarctica’s Great Ice Barrier, February 4, 1911. They would never be together again, nor would their commanders ever see each other.
Early that morning, Amundsen and the others from Framheim, coming with empty sledges to ferry more supplies back, arrived and joined the crowd. Later there would be other visits back and forth, members of the
Terra Nova
to Framheim, members of the
Fram
and Framheim to the
Terra Nova
. It was all very proper and civilized yet somehow surreal, with these two dark ships from half a world away near each other, together but totally alone in the vastness of where they were and the enormity of what they faced.
The
Terra Nova
left in the afternoon of the same day it arrived, February 4, as if it could not wait to get back and pass the urgent, unsettling news on to Scott. For the first and only time, the rivals had met on the field of battle and, from behind the veneer of cordiality, took the measure of each other. The Norwegians were more resolved than ever. The British came with an underlying unease, even worry, that the Norwegians looked tough and efficient, were all good skiers, and had many dogs to pull the sledges. Their feeling, if not put in actual words, was that the Norwegians were ready and knew what they were doing.
Amundsen and Scott had come to contend with Antarctica and each other, to reach and claim a spot where life itself is barely possible and where human beings really do not belong for very long. Although nothing but a simple spot upon the ice, a point upon a map, it was worth the whole world to them.
24 ›
THE SOUTHERN OCEAN
O
n February 15, 1911, with good-byes from those staying behind at Framheim, the
Fram
left the Great Ice Barrier. The nine on the ice would begin setting out depots, to relay themselves south toward the pole and back; they would go as far as they could before the dark and cold confined them to Framheim for the winter, where planning and work would continue for the push south in spring. Under written orders from Roald Amundsen, Captain Thorvald Nilsen, with his crew of nine aboard the
Fram
, were to go to Buenos Aires for tidying up, fixing up, and reprovisioning before heading out across the Atlantic to Africa and back, to conduct the first ever oceanographic surveys of the Southern Ocean. When done, they were to go back to Buenos Aires and then south to the Bay of Whales to pick up the shore party about the time it returned (hopefully) from the pole. Amundsen also directed that if he were too ill to continue, or had not survived, Nilsen was to take over command of the expedition and go back to the original plan: to explore the north polar basin.
With Nilsen carrying his official orders to Buenos Aires where they would certainly be made public, Amundsen was broadcasting for all to hear that he intended to take the
Fram
north all along, to traverse another entire ocean from south to north, toward the other pole. Did he really plan to go, or was there another motive, perhaps to assuage any bad feelings that influential people back home might still have, including Fridtjof Nansen and the king? As so much that went on in the mind of Amundsen, it is hard to know. He would not always divulge his deepest thoughts and feelings, even to his diary.
›››
Nilsen estimated it would take two months for the
Fram
to get from the Bay of Whales to Buenos Aires, even with the uncertain conditions of pack ice, icebergs, and the notorious weather of the region. When they dropped anchor just outside Buenos Aires on April 17, it had been sixty-two days since leaving the barrier—two
months exactly, figuring truncated February. Nilsen had an amazing ability, whether due to unusual astuteness or uncanny intuition, or both, to make accurate
ETA
s (estimated times of arrival). When the
Fram
left Madeira on September 9, he said it would arrive at the Great Ice Barrier on January 15. Four months and fourteen thousand miles later it was there, on January 14. He was off by just one day but in his favor. When leaving Buenos Aires on June 8 to begin the round-trip Atlantic crossing, some eight thousand miles in all, he wanted to be back at that city on September 1, to stay on schedule for Antarctica. He arrived on September 1. Amundsen had requested him to be back at the barrier as early in the new year (1912) as possible; he got there on January 8, after an absence of eleven months.
FIGURE 89
A contemplative Captain Thorvald Nilsen, with Antarctica in the background. He took the
Fram
farther than any of the commanders or other captains of the expeditions.
On the journey from the barrier to Buenos Aires, the
Fram
did a bit of everything a ship can do, from pushing through or circumventing pack ice to dodging icebergs, chugging through unexpected calms by diesel engine, sailing full and by, or running free, and even battling a hurricane. Nilsen described in his diary how the
Fram
behaved during that hurricane, meeting monster waves barreling in on it and riding high over them, and then dropping into the troughs so vertiginously that it felt as though they were leaving their feet in free fall. The
Fram
was a marvel, accepting and fending off the monstrous ocean with the same grace as it did the monstrous ice. Was it any wonder, Nilsen asked rhetorically, that one grows to love such a ship?
›››
At the end of March, a month and a half after leaving the barrier, the
Fram
rounded Cape Horn and turned north along the east coast of South America. Unusually for that region and, especially, for that time of year, their passage was easy: fair, sunny weather; light and following winds; and gentle seas. It continued so all the way to Buenos Aires, giving the crew the opportunity to spruce up the ship, and even paint it, before coming back into civilization. On Easter Sunday night, by the light of the moon, Nilsen sounded the depths and used stars to navigate to take the
Fram
up Rio de la Plata (La Plata River). In the wee hours of Monday morning, they saw the light of the Recalada Lightship, marking the entryway to Buenos Aires, dead ahead. It was the first light they had seen, other than from the heavens or their own lamps, since leaving Madeira seven months ago. When, five hours later outside Buenos Aires, they dropped anchor, it was also for the first time in all those months.
FIGURE 90
The
Fram
’s three masts carried fore and aft sails for easier handling by a small crew working from deck. The foremast also had a square-rigged yard, shown here, requiring men to climb for furling and unfurling. The ship encountered the extremes of conditions in the Southern Ocean, from the doldrums’ dead calm to a hurricane, tropical heat, and iceberg cold.
The reception in Buenos Aires was not what they expected. The many months without calling in at ports for resupply had drained stores. Food and fuel were running low, sails wearing out, and ropes fraying. There was no money to pay the crew their owed wages. Amundsen had assured Nilsen that everything would be taken care of when they got there, thanks to the patronage of a wealthy Norwegian immigrant there, Don Pedro Christophersen. Christophersen had been excited about the news of the
Fram
going north again with Amundsen and had offered
to supply provisions if and when it stopped off on its way around South America. What Amundsen did not tell Nilsen, however, was that he had not disclosed to Christophersen the secret plan, going south instead of north, for fear he would disapprove and withdraw his offer. Moreover, Amundsen dared not ask for more money from the Norwegian government, Nansen, or other funders back home, for the same reason. Perhaps he just hoped for the best or maybe he thought Nilsen was the man who could get what he needed somehow. Either way, Amundsen, safely out of range, let Nilsen sail blithely into a possible line of fire.
Nilsen hastened off the ship to meet Christophersen and his brother, the Norwegian foreign minister. They told him that Amundsen had made no prior arrangements with them for provisioning, nor had he given Nilsen a letter to give to them so requesting. The Norwegian government had not put any additional money in account for them. Without these, Christophersen and his brother informed Nilsen, there was nothing they could do; there was no money and no supplies. Nilsen was dumbfounded. He must have wondered what went wrong. Had signals been crossed, or was the
Fram
out of sight, out of mind for Amundsen now that the main event was underway in Antarctica? Was this oceanographic trip a real, legitimate part of the entire expedition or a pretense to appease powers-that-be back home?
The
Fram
was dead in the water, so to speak. No food came aboard, no fuel, and no materials they needed. The men had no money to spend in town. Nilsen pondered what to do. The oceanographic cruise could be abandoned. They could just sit in port while waiting to return to the barrier. The shore party could not be left on the ice, of course, so the Norwegian government would have to come up with the money by then. The journey to the Arctic could also be abandoned.
Seeing the
Fram
just sitting idle in the harbor day after day must have gotten to Christophersen. In a display of support for Amundsen and his grand scheme, he came forth to cover all expenses for the
Fram
while in Buenos Aires and provided everything it needed for the oceanographic trip. His gesture was, of course, a great relief to Nilsen and the crew. Soon the loading began and the men could leave the ship for a change of scene in town.
On June 8, the
Fram
departed, amply loaded and carrying ten men of the original crew, four new men hired on (three Norwegians and a Norwegian-speaking German) to make up for those left in Antarctica, and twenty live sheep and a large flock of chickens for later eating. Unfortunately, they also had unwanted stowaways that boarded in Buenos Aires: great swarms of flies that accompanied them
out to sea; moths that ate into their woolens; influenza viruses that leveled several men; and, most repugnant and persistent of all, rats—the scourge of sailors—to plague them for months, despite trapping, shooting, securing sources of food, and when they returned to Buenos Aires, taking on a vigilante cat.
Fridtjof Nansen had written a letter to Nilsen, and this was waiting for him in Buenos Aires. It was an encouragement for their scientific work to come and assurance that it, rather than the adventure itself, would be the real
Fram
legacy. In the letter he also seemed to be taking a swipe at Amundsen, who perhaps believed the mission otherwise. For Nilsen and the crew, his words must have been heartening after all that had happened, to have a little light shine on them instead of being left in the dark.
Nilsen designed a route across the southern Atlantic to the coast of Africa, but with shortcut contingencies should they fall behind schedule, to make it back to Buenos Aires for resupply, and then to Antarctica at the appointed time. The weather and seas were kind to them, in blessed respite from the more demanding conditions they had experienced further south and from the uncertainty they faced in Buenos Aires. The northwest trades took them almost all the way to Africa; the southeast trades brought them back, and the latter were so fair and steady that they did not have to turn on the engine for a month. On the way east they reached a milestone: the distance the
Fram
had traveled since it left Christiania was the equivalent of once around the world (about twenty-five thousand miles). On the way back they passed a landmark 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa: the remote island of St. Helena, where Napoleon died in exile.
At one-hundred-nautical-mile intervals, oceanographers Alexander Kutschin and Hjalmar Gjertsen did their work, assisted by the crew: plumbing the deep, collecting water and temperatures at various depths (using the eponymous Nansen Bottles, which were actually brass cylinders invented for and deployed on his Arctic expedition) and netting plankton samples. By the time they returned to Buenos Aires on September 1, almost three months after they left, they had covered eight thousand miles and taken nearly one thousand samples for analysis back home. They had done good work, Nansen would say later, though it would go largely unnoticed by the public, whose eyes were focused on Antarctica.
His work done, oceanographer Kutschin left the ship to go home, as did the veteran engineer Jacob Nødtvedt, calling it a day after so many years and so many miles aboard the
Fram
. One of the interim sailors, too, signed off, leaving a crew of eleven to make the journey back to the barrier.
The ship left Buenos Aires on October 5, reloaded through the good graces of Christophersen once again, including again live animals, this time sheep and pigs. On Christmas day, after coming across the first icebergs the day before, they shut the engine down and assembled for a special dinner that the cook had spent a week preparing, with roast fresh pork, drinks, and musical accompaniment by Andreas Beck on violin, Knut Sundbeck on mandolin, and Nilsen on flute. Cigars and presents were enjoyed all around after dinner, followed by accordion music from Ludvig Hansen and dancing by the lively Gjertsen and Martin Rønne. Then, Cinderella-like, the magic ended. In Nilsen’s deadpan words, “At ten o’clock it was all over, the engine was started again, one watch went to bed and the other on deck; Olsen cleaned out the pigsty, as usual at this time of night. That finished Christmas for this year.”
5
On January 8, after slow and grinding passage through pack ice, snow, and cold, they arrived at the barrier but had to stand off because of the weather. Two days later, the
Fram
came in close again, and nimble Gjertsen, at his own request, set out on skis across the remaining pack to the barrier and Framheim, to find out what had happened over the last eleven months.