Appendix
Report of Captain Otto Sverdrup on the Drifting of the “Fram” from March 14, 1895
Chapter I
March 15 to June 22, 1895
As far back as February 26th Dr. Nansen had officially informed the crew that after he left the ship I was to be chief officer of the expedition, and Lieutenant Scott-Hansen second in command. Before starting, he handed me a letter, or set of instructions, which have been mentioned earlier in the volume.[1]
The day after that on which the postscript to my instructions is dated—i.e., on Thursday, March 14th, at 11.30 A.M.—Dr. Nansen and Johansen left the Fram and set forth on their sledge expedition. We gave them a parting salute with flag, pennant, and guns. Scott-Hansen, Henriksen, and Pettersen accompanied them as far as the first camping-place, 7 or 8 miles from the vessel, and returned the next day at 2.30 P.M.
In the morning they had helped to harness the dogs and put them to the three sledges. In the team of the last sledge there were “Barnet” and “Pan,” who all the time had been mortal enemies.[2] They began to fight, and Henriksen had to give “Barnet” a good thrashing in order to part him from the other. In consequence of this fight the last team was somewhat behind in starting. The other dogs were all the while hauling with all their might, and when the thrashing scene was over, and the disturbers of the peace suddenly commenced to pull, the sledge started off faster than Johansen had calculated, and he was left behind and had to strike out well on his snowshoes. Scott-Hansen and the others followed the sledging party with their eyes until they looked like little black dots far, far away on the boundless plain of ice. With a last sad lingering look after the two whom, perhaps, they might never see again, they put on their snow-shoes and started on their journey back.
At the time when the sledge expedition started the Fram lay in 84° 4′ north latitude and 102° east longitude. The situation was briefly as follows: The vessel was ice-bound in about 25 feet of ice, with a slight list to starboard. She had thus a layer of ice, several feet in thickness, underneath her keel. Piled high against the vessel’s side, to port, along her entire length, there extended from S.S.E. to N.N.W. a pressure-ridge reaching up to about the height of the rail on the half-deck aft and slanting slightly eastward from the ship. At a distance of about 160 yards to the northwest there extended in the direction from south to north a long and fairly broad ice-mound, the so-called “great hummock,” as much as 22 feet high in places. Midway between the Fram and the great hummock there was a newly formed open lane about 50 yards wide, while across her bow, at a distance of 50 yards, there was an old channel that had been closed up by the ice-pressure, but which opened later on in the spring.
