Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram (10 page)

Henrik Blessing, too, conducted routine “scientific” research of his own each month, weighing the men and assessing levels of hemoglobin in their blood, as a way of tracking their well-being over time. With illnesses and accidents rare, Blessing was not exactly gainfully employed as a doctor, so he added “veterinarian” to his medical responsibilities and helped Nansen (and later took over from him) in the study of the aurora borealis, the northern lights that so often shimmered, pulsed, and waved over them in such otherworldly, often spectacular, and sometimes stupefying ways.

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The days, if you could call them such, those long, sunless twilights progressively darkening with descending winter, were full with this constant, often numbingly cold, repetitive work and were interrupted only by “night” and sleep, meals, Sunday rest, emergencies or special events (such as hunting), and observance of Norwegian holidays, which were usually marked by longing and yearning, as well as celebration. Meals, as might be expected, were welcome, much-anticipated events. They were the social parts of the day as well, when all the men gathered (except those on watch) at the big table in the saloon, partook of food and drink together, warmed themselves by the stove, were cheered by the glow of electric lights, conversed, and retired to the galley for a postprandial smoke (the galley was the only place smoking was permitted, except on special occasions), accompanied
by what is normal at such times: small talk, jokes, stories, agreements, and disagreements.

One day was like another. Breakfast, at eight, was a typically robust Norwegian one of “hard bread (both rye and wheat), cheese [four types] . . . corned beef or corned mutton, luncheon ham or Chicago tinned tongue or bacon, cod-caviar, anchovy roe; also oatmeal biscuits or English ship-biscuits—with orange marmalade or Frame Food jelly [an extract of wheat bran, a health food diet of the time, supposedly good for building one’s ‘frame’]. Three times a week we had fresh-baked bread as well, and often cake of some kind . . . beverages [were] coffee and chocolate.” Dinner was at one in the afternoon, and “generally consisted of three courses—soup, meat, and dessert; or soup, fish, and meat; or fish, meat, and dessert; or sometimes only fish and meat. With meat we always had potatoes and either green vegetables or macaroni.”
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The favored drink was bock beer, which had been amply donated by their generous patron, Ringnes Brewing Company. Supper, at six, offered the same as breakfast but with tea for the drink. Special occasions, say a holiday or a birthday of one of the crew, called for fancy
several-course dinners, with a printed menu and accompanied by music of their own making.

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On polar expeditions, food was always one of the biggest concerns, if not
the
biggest. Poor provisioning of it was the fatal flaw in many an enterprise, leading to malnutrition, starvation, and death. Scurvy was especially dreaded. It was a formerly rare disease that became common when ships started to take long sea voyages for trade. Between 1500 and 1800, it killed more than two million sailors and incapacitated millions more for various lengths of time. Other than outright famine, writes authority Kenneth Carpenter in his book
History of Scurvy and Vitamin C
on its history, “scurvy is probably the nutritional deficiency disease that caused the most suffering in recorded history.”

It was known also as
purpura nautica
, with the first word indicating its lurid outward sign (spots or splotches of deep purple on the body, and of the gums) and the second signifying who got it most often, sailors. As the disease progresses, the limbs swell grotesquely and become unbearably painful, the purple darkens to black, the gums grow mushy, teeth fall out, open sores ooze pus, the breath turns rank, and diarrhea comes. The body decomposes while it is still alive. Most cruelly, the mind, though fogged, is still aware of what is going on. Once past a certain stage, death is inevitable, and a mercy.

Many factors were thought to be the causes: bad air in the ship or from the ocean, bad food or lack of food at all, dearth of fresh vegetables, bad water, and so forth. Even though it was known early on that fresh citrus, or its juice, could prevent scurvy, the
reason
—lack of vitamin C—was not discovered until 1927.

Unlike many early explorers, the Inuit did not get scurvy, though their diets were virtually lacking in fruit and vegetables (except berries and some leafy plants in summer, or the entrails content of herbivores such as caribou, musk ox, or hare). It would be a wise and astute explorer, such as Nansen, to adopt their ways of eating. For the fresh, often-raw meat and blubber of animals they killed contained the vitamin C scant or absent in canned and packaged foods brought from home.

For this first
Fram
expedition, and those to come, food was never an issue. There was plenty of it stashed away in the hold, thanks to Nansen’s meticulous planning and preparation, for all men and dogs over a full five years, and it was nutritionally balanced, with a wide variety of meats, vegetables, fruits, and starches, many of them canned so they would be available throughout the trip. As much as possible, they ate fresh meat—or at least thawed from frozen stores—of animals shot on land or sea: seals, walruses, polar bears, caribou, foxes, and even birds of various kinds. Scurvy never once showed itself. (The dogs, ever hungry and on the lookout for wild game, also relished a change from their usual diet of dried fish and hard biscuits.)

As a result, all ate well. Not only did they have enough to eat, of the right kinds of food, but also they actually gained weight during the first year of the trip, so that, as he writes in
Farthest North
, Nansen became a mite concerned: “We looked like fatted pigs; one or two even began to cultivate a double chin, and a corporation.” Indoor living and reduced physical activity, then as now, Arctic or no, could gradually soften the toughest. He and Sverdrup set up an outdoor exercise regime of walking and skiing for everyone, to burn off extra fat.

The hours after supper were another social opportunity for some, smoking and conversing in the galley, reading in the saloon from the well-stocked library, or later playing cards or making music there. For others, it was a chance to retreat to the comfort of their own bunks, for relaxation, reflection, or writing in their
diaries or simply to be alone for a while. By midnight, the lights were out and everyone was in bed, but for the lone night watch who kept awake and alert for what the dogs might sense and warn, and for what the ice might say.

They had not expected polar bears, being winter and so far from the open water of the looser pack ice where seals, the bears’ main prey, would be. But on the night of December 12, they were in for a surprise. While playing cards in the saloon that evening, they heard the dogs raising a ruckus on deck; they thought it was probably a fox, prowling around on the ice. Mogstad investigated but could see nothing, though the dogs kept up, even increased, their agitation. Nansen, feeling sure it must be a bear to rouse the dogs to this degree, went up with Johansen to look, yet they too found nothing. It was the same for Nordahl, who had the watch until relieved by Peder Hendriksen, who found that three dogs were missing, those nearest the starboard gangway. So it was a natural conclusion that all the commotion was over the three who had broken loose and run away into the night.

In a normal morning routine, Hendriksen and Mogstad fed the remaining dogs and then put them on the ice, but this time Hendriksen grabbed a lantern
and the two went out, both unarmed, to investigate. Some way from the ship, they heard the dogs and in the semidarkness saw a bear rushing at them full tilt, surrounded by the snarling pack. The men turned on their heels to run back to the ship, but Hendriksen, wearing clunky wooden shoes, was slower than Mogstad, got separated from him, and slipped, slid, and fell over the icy hummocks. Now and then he looked back, holding up the lantern to the dark. All was quiet, nothing, until on a flat stretch he saw the bear roaring straight at him from the side.