Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram by Johnson Charles W

Author:Johnson, Charles W. [Johnson, Charles W.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: ForeEdge
Published: 2014-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 60

Ready to head out. Under spectacular fjord cliffs, a team prepares to take boxed-up supplies out, probably to set up a depot as support for later, longer trips.

Sverdrup had guessed right. They indeed had made it to the west coast of Ellesmere, though they still could not know its full extent. Sverdrup christened it “Bay Fjord,” still its name today. As they found no food in this barren, gameless expanse to feed the dogs, they did not descend to explore but returned to the Fram.

Through spring and into summer, by twos and threes they would go out on sledging trips of days or weeks. The mapmakers were to survey the coast; the scientists were to collect samples of emerging plants, rocks, and animals; and others of the crew were to investigate new territory, while all would hunt musk oxen and newly appearing seals and polar bears. They would return to the ship with their goods, whether meat, maps, or specimens; drop them off; and then rest and get ready for the next excursions. A skeleton crew remained on board—the cook, engineers, and essential sailors—to look after the ship in all contingencies, continue preparations for the Greenland expeditions, salt away and store the meat coming aboard, and fix equipment of the returning sledgers.

Sverdrup was especially keen to continue forays into western Ellesmere. Fort Juliana once again was an important intermediate staging area, from which the teams fanned out north and west, to find new pathways through valleys and over mountains to what lay beyond. One of the first teams out was to have been Rudolf Stolz and Per Schei, but Stolz had been laid low with snow blindness, so the doctor, Johan Svendsen, never having been on a sledging trip, readily volunteered to substitute.

They departed on June 2, along with another team of Sverdrup and botanist Herman Georg Simmons. Both teams traveled together for two days up Hayes Sound, where they separated, Schei and Svendsen continuing west up the sound toward Beitstad Fjord and Sverdrup and Simmons to Fort Juliana, thence further north.

But after encountering open water, rotting ice, and impassable cliffs, Sverdrup and Simmons retreated to Fort Juliana, driving all night and arriving in the morning of June 6. As they were getting ready to sleep, from inside the tent, they were surprised to hear a man’s voice outside, asking to come in. It was Svendsen, who had been stricken with snow blindness and chest pains, and had to be led back by Schei.

He quickly began to recover, with hot food and the attention of his friends, and refused Sverdrup’s offer to take him back to the ship. In a few days he was well enough to remain by himself to look after things at Fort Juliana while the others resumed the aborted trip up Beitstad Fjord. Four days later, loaded with bear and ox meat, they hastened back to Fort Juliana and Svendsen. What they saw when they got there was shocking.

In his retelling of the episode in New Land, Sverdrup gave a tidy, simple statement that they found Svendsen dead.

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