Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram Read Online Free PDF Page B

perform the mission and storing enough food and supplies to last its duration, actually beyond it in case things went wrong or took longer than expected. (Based on the timing of drift of the Jeannette ’s remains, Nansen estimated his journey would take three years, but Archer planned for five, for both men and dogs.) This aligned well with Nansen’s conviction that a small crew, say no more than fifteen, was an appropriate size for an Arctic expedition, being more nimble, easier to manage, and easier to feed where food might be scarce, rather than the large, unwieldy groups, sometimes numbered over a hundred, that the British and Americans often sent out into these wildernesses.
    Fifth, Archer recognized that, despite spending most of its time out of water, in a rock-hard, quasi-terrestrial, unusually harsh environment, the ship would still have to be a ship, seaworthy and capable of traversing the great and unpredictableoceans, as well as navigating the shallower, tricky coastal zones, to and from its main goal. Nansen originally planned to reach the vicinity where the Jeannette had been beset, a terribly long cruise down the Atlantic Ocean, into the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal, to the Indian Ocean, thence to the Pacific, and north through the Bering Strait. Even his ultimate route, following Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s trailblazing of the Northeast Passage in the Vega fifteen years earlier (north around Scandinavia and then east along the Russian-Siberia coast), entailed a tough journey through mostly unknown waters north of a huge, bleakly wild section of the world.
    ››› In the summer of 1891, with all the ideas and considerations boiled down and melded into a single vision, Archer lofted the Fram into reality, at least on paper and in the collective minds of those who conceived of it. Not surprisingly, it would bear a strong resemblance, in overall shape and character if not in every detail, to its smaller contemporary under construction nearby, his first rescue boat, eventually to be named the RS1 Colin Archer (rescue ship 1). But it was more than just looking alike, or having the same builder, that bound the two vessels together: the Colin Archer was made of leftover lumber and other materials from the Fram . They were kin, from their very conception and in their bones and skin.
    At the main deck, the Fram would be 128 feet long, with a beam of 36 feet, an ungraceful, even tubby, three-to-one ratio for a ship (mimicking, again, his pilot and rescue boats), but necessary for its special purpose and to accommodate extensive internal bracing and buttressing. (There have been many unflattering similes offered on its looks: Roland Huntford, for example, variously described it as “rather like an egg cut in half,” “a cockleshell,” “hinting at the shape of a shoe,” or “a cradle” 4 ; my father called it a “bathtub.”) Its carvel-planked hull would be smooth and rounded, without protuberances, so that the ice could not catch or grip anywhere. Even the chainplates, the attachments for the mast-supporting shrouds, were inboard instead of where they would normally be, outboard, to keep this symmetry.
    Nansen had originally envisioned an even smaller ship, of perhaps half the final one, to make it more amenable to being pushed up by the ice. Amidships, the bottom became nearly flat, so that when the ship rode up on the ice, and without a deep keel to act as a tipping edge, it would remain upright instead of rolling to its side.

    FIGURE 3
    The internal structure of the Fram as originally built, showing living, working, and storage spaces.
    Rb –rudder well. sb –propeller well. S –saloon. s –sofas in saloon. b –table in saloon.
    Svk –Sverdrup’s cabin. Bk –Blessing’s cabin. 4k –four-berth cabins. Hk –Scott-Hansen’s cabin. Nk –Nansen’s cabin. a –workrooms. c –way down to engine room. R –engine room.
    M –engine. kj –boiler. g –companionways (ladders and