Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (5 page)

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.

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 passageways) to and from saloon.

K
–cook’s galley.
B
–chart room.
dy
–space for dynamo.
d
–main hatch.
e
–long boats.
i
–main hold.
l
–under (orlop) hold.
f
–fore hatch.
n
–fore hold.
o
–under (orlop) fore hold.
p
–windlass post.
1
–foremast.
2
–mainmast.
3
–mizzenmast.

But if for some reason the ice did catch, or the ship did not ride up, it nonetheless would be able to take whatever that implacable environment had in store: it would be built to the greatest measures possible for strength (its size, again, making that all the more practical), using the best materials for that purpose. First an eel, then an elephant.

With only two years to meet Nansen’s pressing schedule, Archer rushed to procure materials, many of them special ordered to ensure the long-term structural integrity of a vessel facing such duress, but also for the safety and comfort of the crew during long, cold, dark, winters of unknown number. Then in the fall of 1891, the feverish yet exacting work began, in Archer’s boatyard by the sea, not far from where he played as a boy.

The keel was a fourteen-inch square of American elm, with two lengths spliced together and 102 feet long overall. Archer chose elm because of its strength (its interlocking grain makes it nearly impossible to split) and its relative rot resistance, essential traits in a location that is so critical yet persistently moist. From the keel, at either end, curved up great oak timbers that were bolted together into four feet of solid wood at the pointed bow and stern above the rudder and propeller wells. Those ends, once the ship was planked, were “shod with iron casing” for ice ramming, forward or backward, whenever necessary.

From this backbone rose the “ribs,” the frames that would give the
Fram
its shape and to which the planking would be affixed. The nearly foot-thick frames, each two pieces riveted together lengthwise, were of straight-grained oak, a hard and durable wood that grips screws, nails, and spikes well. Flat iron straps immobilized the frame joints. The frames were unusually closely spaced, only an inch and a half apart for the entire length of the ship, providing extraordinary skeletal support for the hull. Between them, and between the inner lining and first layer of outer planking, a mixture of coal tar (a traditional sealing/preserving compound), softwood pitch, and sawdust was heated up and poured in, and when cooled it sealed the spaces with a flexible, waterproof binding.

There were, remarkably, four separate layers of planking for the hull. A “lining” of pitch pine boards four to six inches thick was attached to the inside of the frames. Then, to the outside were two layers of oak planking, each bolted independently to frames and keel, the first three inches thick and the second four inches. Finally, covering all that was yet another “ice sheathing”: three inches of greenheart, an exceptionally hard South American wood that could stand up to the severest pounding and abrasion. The ice sheathing was spiked in rather than bolted on, so that if it was stripped away it would not take the other planking with it. All together, this was more than two feet of solid wood laid on, thicker than the cannonball-resisting hull of the famed
USS
Constitution
(“Old Ironsides”). The
Fram
’s protective hide was a whopping three feet thick.

The triple exterior planking nearly encased the keel below, leaving only three or four inches exposed, and that which was exposed was rounded off. This would prevent the ice from grabbing onto it and flipping the ship on its side. Archer knew full well the sacrifice this meant for sailing, as a conventional ship this size would have a deep, heavy keel for stability and control: the
Fram
would roll, yaw, and wallow significantly in heavy, following seas and have a tough time making headway into the wind. He also knew that, though causing extra bouts of mal
de mer for the crew, and becoming difficult to steer at times, it would be a most seaworthy vessel and would ride the waves safely no matter how ominous they got. Crews of all three
Fram
expeditions would confirm that Archer knew what he was talking about, sometimes by their awful sickness on the tilting, pitching decks, but mostly with gratitude when things got nasty on the open ocean.

If the cross-section U-shape and toughness of the hull were the outward, first-line defenses against the ice, equally important was the internal structure and support that would keep that hull from collapsing from side pressures. For this, according to Nansen, “the inside was shored up in every possible way, so that the hold looks like a cobweb of balks [beams], stanchions, and braces.”
⁵

A cobweb, in its gauzy delicacy, does not seem the right analogy. In the dimness of the main hold, it appears as something other than a web or veil in those intersecting, crossing members; it projects more a seemingly eternal solidity and permanence, as if it were the interior of some great cathedral built of wood and iron instead of stone, where knees and networks of beams took on the role of vaults and buttresses. Each projected its solemn power in a different direction, to where the sacredness lay, for worship, struggle, or propitiation: the cathedral up toward the heavens and the
Fram
out toward the ice.

Massive oak beams stretched across the ship, bracing it from side to side while supporting the decks above: the main deck of four-inch Norwegian pine and the lower (’tween) deck of three inch. The beams were attached to the ship’s side with large knees or brackets, 450 in all, of Norwegian pine hewn from the section of the tree between the lower trunk and upper roots, where the grain runs in a natural 90-degree curve. Wooden knees were used more than iron ones, as they were super strong with their swirling, interlocking grain yet also somewhat flexible, so when under great strain they would neither break nor pull away from the sides.

While the knees tied the hull and decks together, other structures further braced the interior in other ways. Great “breasthooks,” triangular wedges of solid wood and iron, bound the stem and stern to the sides. Vertical iron stanchions ran from the upper deck beams to the lower, and from the lower to the keelson (timbers on either side of and attached to the keel), to support the beams in their athwartship span. Diagonal wooden “stays” extended like arms from the beams to the hull, with their hands pressing out to keep the shape intact. As in Archer’s pilot and rescue boats, the below-deck space was divided into three compartments, separated by two watertight bulkheads, so that if one or even two were flooded the ship could still stay afloat.

Archer called it its “Achilles’ heel,” where both the rudder and the propeller protruded from the hull. These could provide an ideal place for ice to wreak havoc, not only by knocking out the steering and a vital means of propulsion, but also by opening a way for it to gain access to the ship’s interior. To counter this, Archer took a page from the sealers’ book, whose ships were built such that a damaged rudder or propeller could be taken off (unshipped) and a new one put on (shipped), though doing so for the rudder was very time consuming and laborious. Archer improved on this idea, so that a few men could unship both screw and rudder easily and quickly, should a situation arise suddenly, winching them up by chains through ironclad wells onto deck. The rudder, too, trussed by large U-shaped iron straps, was positioned near the bottom of the hull so that, when the ship was underway, it would always be well down in the water, beneath the floes, additionally shielded by the overhanging stern. The screw was protected aft by a double sternpost (and, aft of that, the rudder itself) and below by a massive skeg, all reinforced by iron straps bolted through and through. Unlike most screws, with three blades, the
Fram
’s had only two. When need be, the blades could be set in a vertical position and thus protected by the sternpost against passing ice.

As a hybrid of engine and sails, the
Fram
was technically “an auxiliary screw steamer rigged as a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner.”
⁶
Its fore- and mizzenmasts were the same height and shorter than the mainmast, each carrying a gaff-rigged fore-and-aft sail. The pine masts were big and stout, to carry a lot of canvas (720 square yards, or 6,480 square feet) needed to propel such a heavy, bulky ship. The mainmast was 22 inches in diameter at the partners (main deck level) and, with topmast, 130 feet tall. The foremast also had a square-rigged foresail and topsail that could be raised and lowered by lines leading to the deck. This design was chosen over the more customary, tradition-bound square rigs used in Arctic sailing, mostly on the strong advice of Otto Sverdrup. He knew it would be much easier for the small crew, as everything could be handled from the main deck, requiring no climbing of masts, or extra hands, for furling or unfurling. Perched on the topmast, over one hundred feet above the water, the crow’s nest was “as high as possible so as to have a more extended view when it came to picking our way through the ice.”
⁷

The three-cylinder, 220-horsepower engine was driven by steam from a huge boiler (as were the winches) and fired by coal, kerosene, or both. It was not just any ordinary engine: it could run on all three cylinders when full power was needed, say, for getting through a tough patch of ice, but in more benign times any one or two of them could be shut off to save fuel. The ship lugged over 250 tons of coal when it set off on its first expedition, estimated to be enough for four months of nonstop running (which, of course, it would never do, being either under sail when at all possible or locked in the ice the rest of the time). At full speed under power, in fair weather, it could lumber along at six or seven miles per hour.