Nansen’s Fram Expedition (1893–1896)

Background

In September 1879, Jeannette, an ex-Royal Navy gunboat converted by the US Navy for Arctic exploration, and commanded by George W. De Long, entered the pack ice north of the Bering Strait. She remained ice-bound for nearly two years, drifting to the area of the New Siberian Islands, before being crushed and sunk on 13 June 1881. Her crew escaped in boats and made for the Siberian coast; most, including De Long, subsequently perished either during the boat journey or in the wastelands of the Lena River delta. Three years later, relics from Jeannette appeared on the opposite side of the world, in the vicinity of Julianehaab on the southwest coast of Greenland. These items, frozen into the drifting ice, included clothing bearing crew members' names and documents signed by De Long; they were indisputably genuine.

In a lecture given in 1884 to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Dr. Henrik Mohn, one of the founders of modern meteorology, argued that the finding of the Jeannette relics indicated the existence of an ocean current flowing from east to west across the entire Arctic Ocean.

Plan

In February 1890 Nansen addressed a meeting of the Norwegian Geographical Society in Oslo (then called Christiania). After drawing attention to the failures of the many expeditions which had approached the North Pole from the west, he considered the implications of the discovery of the Jeannette items, along with further finds of driftwood and other debris from Siberia or Alaska that had been identified along the Greenland coast. "Putting all this together," Nansen said, "we are driven to the conclusion that a current flows... from the Siberian Arctic Sea to the east coast of Greenland," probably passing across the Pole. It seemed that the obvious thing to do was "to make our way into the current on that side of the Pole where it flows northward, and by its help to penetrate into those regions which all who have hitherto worked against [the current] have sought in vain to reach."

Nansen's plan required a small, strong and manoeuvrable ship, powered by sail and an engine, capable of carrying fuel and provisions for twelve men for five years.

Finance

Nansen's original estimate for the total cost of the expedition was 300,000 kr. After giving a passionate speech before the Parliament of Norway (Storting), Nansen was awarded a grant of NOK 200,000; the balance was raised from private contributions which included 20,000 kroner from King Oscar II of Norway and Sweden. The Royal Geographical Society in London gave £300 (about NOK 6,000). Unfortunately, Nansen had underestimated the financing required—the ship alone would cost more than the total at his disposal. A renewed plea to the Storting produced a further NOK 80,000, and a national appeal raised the grand total to NOK 445,000. According to Nansen's own account, he made up the remaining deficiency from his own resources. His biographer Roland Huntford records that the final deficit of NOK 12,000 was cleared by two wealthy supporters, Axel Heiberg and an English expatriate, Charles Dick.

Ship

To design and build his ship Nansen chose Colin Archer, Norway's leading shipbuilder and naval architect. Archer was well known for a particular hull design that combined seaworthiness with a shallow draught, and had pioneered the design of "double-ended" craft in which the conventional stern was replaced by a point, increasing manoeuvrability. Nansen records that Archer made "plan after plan of the projected ship; one model after another was prepared and abandoned". Finally, agreement was reached on a design, and on 9 June 1891 the two men signed the contract.

Nansen wanted the ship in one year; he was eager to get away before anyone else could adopt his ideas and forestall him. The ship's most significant external feature was the roundness of the hull, designed so that there was nothing upon which the ice could get a grip. Bow, stern and keel were rounded off, and the sides smoothed so that, in Nansen's words, the vessel would "slip like an eel out of the embraces of the ice". To give exceptional strength the hull was sheathed in South American greenheart, the hardest timber available.

Crew

For his Greenland expedition of 1888–89 Nansen had departed from the traditional dependence on large-scale personnel, ships and backup, relying instead on a small well-trained group. Using the same principle for the Fram voyage, Nansen chose a party of just twelve from the thousands of applications that poured in from all over the world. One applicant was the 20-year-old Roald Amundsen, future conqueror of the South Pole, whose mother stopped him from going. The English explorer Frederick Jackson applied, but Nansen wanted only Norwegians, so Jackson organised his own expedition to Franz Josef Land.

To captain the ship and act as the expedition's second-in-command Nansen chose Otto Sverdrup, an experienced sailor who had taken part in the Greenland crossing. Theodore Jacobsen, who had experience in the Arctic as skipper of a sloop, signed on as Fram's mate, and a young naval lieutenant, Sigurd Scott Hansen, took charge of meteorological and magnetic observations. The ship's doctor, and the expedition's botanist, was Henrik Blessing, who graduated in medicine just before Fram's sailing date.

Voyage

Before the start of the voyage Nansen decided to deviate from his original plan: instead of following Jeannette's route to the New Siberian Islands by way of the Bering Strait, he would make a shorter journey, taking Nordenskiöld's North-East Passage along the northern coast of Siberia.

On 9 October Fram had her first experience of ice pressure. Archer's design was quickly vindicated as the ship rose and fell, the ice being unable to grip the hull.

On 17 February 1895 Nansen began a farewell letter to his wife, Eva, writing that should he come to grief "you will know that your image will be the last I see."

The change of direction to south-west provided much better travelling conditions, probably because the course to Franz Josef Land was broadly parallel to the lines of disturbance in the ice instead of perpendicular to them.

As the base for their winter quarters, Nansen and Johansen found a beach in a sheltered cove on what is now called Jackson Island, with a plentiful supply of stones and moss for building materials.

Before his departure from Fram, Nansen appointed Sverdrup as leader of the rest of the expedition, with orders to continue with the drift towards the Atlantic Ocean unless circumstances warranted abandoning the ship and marching for land.

Reunion and reception

In the course of the expedition, rumours circulated that Nansen had reached the North Pole, the first as early as April 1894, in the French Newspaper Le Figaro. In September 1895 Eva Nansen was informed that messages signed by Nansen had been discovered, "sent from the North Pole". In February 1896 The New York Times ran a dispatch from Irkutsk, in Siberia, from a supposed Nansen agent, claiming that Nansen had reached the pole and found land there. Charles P. Daly of the American Geographical Society called this "startling news" and, "if true, the most important discovery that has been made in ages."

Experts were sceptical of all such reports, and Nansen's arrival in Vardø quickly put paid to them. In Vardø, he and Johansen were greeted by Professor Mohn, the originator of the polar drift theory, who was in the town by chance. The pair waited for the weekly mail steamer to take them south, and on 18 August arrived in Hammerfest to an enthusiastic reception. The lack of news about Fram was preying on Nansen's mind; however, on 20 August he received news that Sverdrup had brought the ship to the tiny port of Skjervøy, south of Hammerfest, and was now continuing with her to Tromsø.

Assessment and aftermath

The traditional approach to Arctic exploration had relied on large-scale forces, with a presumption that European techniques could be successfully transplanted into the hostile polar climate. Over the years this strategy had brought little success, and had led to heavy losses of men and ships. By contrast, Nansen's method of using small, trained crews, and harnessing Inuit and Sami expertise in his methods of travel, had ensured that his expedition was completed without a single casualty or major mishap.

Although it did not achieve the objective of reaching the North Pole, the expedition made major geographical and scientific discoveries. Sir Clements Markham, president of Britain's Royal Geographical Society, declared that the expedition had resolved "the whole problem of Arctic geography". It was now established that the North Pole was located not on land, nor on a permanent ice sheet, but on shifting, unpredictable pack ice. The Arctic Ocean was a deep basin, with no significant land masses north of the Eurasian continent—any hidden expanse of land would have blocked the free movement of ice.