Free Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram by Charles W. Johnson Page A

out of Vardø, and they were not yet halfway to Cape Chelyuskin. There were still many days and nights ahead confronting the ice, self-questioning where they really were, and having trepidation about what lay in store before reaching the distant, misty, almost mythical place.
    In the early morning of September 10, almost six weeks after leaving Vardø and two and a half months since Christiania, the Fram finally stood off Cape Chelyuskin. It had completed the first long, perilous leg of the journey and had “escaped the danger of a winter’s imprisonment on this coast.” 6 It was a time for celebration: a cannon salute to a desolate shore, ceremonial flags raised to no one but themselves, and a party in the specially decorated saloon, with music, cigars, and even an alcoholic punch, though it was early morning. With the attainment of this milestone, Nansen obviously was feeling euphoric and charitable, and perhaps even somewhat forgiving, after the disquieting Vardø episode.
    If the plan were followed, the Fram would round Cape Chelyuskin and the eastern side of the Taimyr Peninsula and head south to the mouth of the Olenek (today’s Olenyok) River at the foot of the peninsula. There, again as arranged by Toll, additional dogs would be waiting to be picked up. Nansen, it being later than he expected with the ice so unpredictable and coastal shallows a constant worry for grounding, decided not to risk delay and getting trapped far from his strategic first winter destination, thereby losing a year or possibly never getting out at all. Instead, he turned northeast, into open water, aiming toward the New Siberian Islands as directly and quickly as possible. The dogs and their driver waited for a ship that never showed.
    By September 16, they knew they were off the Lena River, though it was more than one hundred miles away, from the water that was considerably warmer (a torrid 35 degrees Fahrenheit), less saline, and brown from the mud and silt the Lena carried into it (its delta fans out 250 miles across in the coastal shelf of the Laptev Sea). They proceeded on this course for a few days, always against a current and mostly in open water, and dodging south only when encountering floes. As they came closer to the New Siberian Islands, Nansen wanted, indeed needed, to get as far north as possible. “Now it is to be proved,” he wrote in Farthest North , “if my theory, on which the whole expedition is based, is correct—if we are to finda little north from here a north-flowing current.” It was a critical time, a pivotal decision. To the north they turned, hoping the sea would continue to stay open and praying to find the theoretical current that would sweep them into the ice and on their frozen way to the pole.
    Two days later, still blessed with an open passage, they figured that they were directly off the westernmost of the New Siberian Islands, though they could not be absolutely sure. Nansen toyed with the idea of going in to see and to find depots of food and supplies that Baron von Toll, ever the loyal friend and supporter of the expedition, had cached, just in case the Fram ran into trouble there. Caution prevailed. Northward they continued, setting their sights on so-called Sannikoff Land above the New Siberians, a place no human had ever been but that earlier explorers of this region, Toll included, swore to have seen from a distance (it was indeed illusory). From there, they would push north and east as far as they could before the ice clamped down on them for the first long winter.
    The gods remained remarkably benign, even hospitable. The weather was unusually warm for that time of year, there were no storms to impede their progress, the seas ran open, and they went “as fast as steam and sail can take us.” It almost lulled them into believing it might go on this way right up to the pole. Otto Sverdrup “even talks seriously of the open Polar Sea, which he once read about; he always come back upon it, in