this successful feat of aviation was extremely comical, and those who saw it had a hearty fit of laughter.
As has already been said, we went very well for a time after reaching the Pacific, a fair wind for fourteen days together, and I began to hope that we were once more in what are called the "westerlies." However, nothing is perfect in this world, and we found that out here, as we had icebergs every day, and were constantly bothered by snow-squalls or fog; the former were, of course, to be preferred, as it was at any rate clear between the squalls; but fog is the worst thing of all. It sometimes happened that all hands were on deck the whole night to work the ship at a moment's notice, and there were never less than two men on the lookout forward. The engine, too, was always ready to be started instantly. A little example will show how ready the crew were at any time.
One Sunday afternoon, when Hansen, Kristensen and I were on watch, the wind began to draw ahead, so that we had to beat. It was blowing quite freshly, but I did not want to call the watch below, as they might need all the sleep they could get, and Hansen and I were to put the ship about. Kristensen was steering, but gave us a hand when he could leave the wheel. As the ship luffed up into the wind and the sails began to flap pretty violently, the whole of the watch below suddenly came rushing on deck in nothing but their unmentionables and started to haul. Chance willed it that at the same moment an iceberg came out of the fog, right in front of our bows. It was not many minutes, either, before we were on the other tack, and the watch below did not linger long on deck. With so few clothes on it was no pleasure to be out in that cold, foggy air. They slept so lightly, then, that it took no more noise than that to wake them. When I afterwards asked one of them -- I think it was Beck -- what made them think of coming up, he replied that they thought we were going to run into an iceberg and were trying to get out of the way.
It has happened at night that I have seen the ice-blink as far off as eight miles, and then there is nothing to fear; but sometimes in the middle of the day we have sailed close to icebergs that have only been seen a few minutes before we were right on them. As the voyage was long, we sailed as fast as we could, as a rule; but on two or three nights we had to reduce our way to a minimum, as we could not see much farther than the end of the bowsprit.
After two or three weeks' sailing the icebergs began gradually to decrease, and I hoped we should soon come to the end of them; but on Sunday, March 5, when it
was fairly clear, we saw about midday a whole lot of big bergs ahead. One of the watch below, who had just come on deck, exclaimed: "What the devil is this beastly mess you fellows have got into?" He might well ask, for in the course of that afternoon we passed no less than about a hundred bergs. They were big tabular bergs, all of the same height, about 100 feet, or about as high as the crow's-nest of the Fram. The bergs were not the least worn, but looked as if they had calved quite recently. As I said, it was clear enough, we even got an observation that day (lat. 61º S., long. 150º W.), and as we had a west wind, we twisted quite elegantly past one iceberg after another. The sea, which during the morning had been high enough for the spray to dash over the tops of the bergs, gradually went down, and in the evening, when we were well to leeward of them all, it was as smooth as if we had been in harbour. In the course of the night we passed a good many more bergs, and the next day we only saw about twenty.
In the various descriptions of voyages in these waters, opinions are divided as to the temperature of the water falling in the neighbourhood of icebergs. That it falls steadily as one approaches the pack-ice is certain enough, but whether it falls for one or a few scattered icebergs, no doubt depends on circumstances.
One night at 12 o'clock we had a temperature in the water of 34.1º F., at 4 a.m.
33.8º F., and at 8 a.m. 33.6º F.; at 6 a.m. we passed an iceberg. At 12 noon the temperature had risen to 33.9º F. In this case one might say that the temperature gave warning, but, as a rule, in high latitudes it has been constant both before and after passing an iceberg.
On Christmas Eve, 1911, when on our second trip southward we saw the first real iceberg, the temperature of the water fell in four hours from 35.6º F. to 32.7º
F., which was the temperature when the bergs were passed, after which it rose rather rapidly to 35º F.
In the west wind belt I believe one can tell with some degree of certainty when one is approaching ice. In the middle of November, 1911, between Prince Edward Island and the Crozet Islands (about lat. 47º S.) the temperature fell.
Towards morning I remarked to someone: "The temperature of the water is falling as if we were getting near the ice." On the forenoon of the same day we sailed past a very small berg; the temperature again rose to the normal, and we met no more ice until Christmas Eve.
On Saturday, March 4, the day before we met that large collection of bergs, the
temperature fell pretty rapidly from 33.9º F. to 32.5º F. We had not then seen ice for nearly twenty-four hours. At the same time the colour of the water became unusually green, and it is possible that we had come into a cold current. The temperature remained as low as this till Sunday morning, when at 8 a. m. it rose to 32.7º F.; at 12 noon, close to a berg, to 32.9º F., and a mile to lee of it, to 33º F.
It continued to rise, and at 4 p.m., when the bergs were thickest, it was 33.4º F.; at 8 p.m. 33.6º F., and at midnight 33.8º F. If there had been a fog, we should certainly have thought we were leaving the ice instead of approaching it; it is very curious, too, that the temperature of the water should not be more constant in the presence of such a great quantity of ice; but, as I have said, it may have been a current.
In the course of the week following March 5 the bergs became rarer, but the same kind of weather prevailed. Our speed was irreproachable, and in one day's work (from noon to noon) we covered a distance of 200 nautical miles, or an average of about 82 knots an hour, which was the best day's work the Fram had done up to that time. The wind; which had been westerly and north-westerly, went by degrees to the north, and ended in a hurricane from the north-east on Sunday, March 12. I shall quote here what I wrote about this in my diary on the 13th:
"Well, now we have experienced the first hurricane on the Fram. On Saturday afternoon, the 11th, the wind went to the north-east, as an ordinary breeze with rain. The barometer had been steady between 29.29 inches (744 millimetres) and 29.33 inches (745 millimetres). During the afternoon it began to fall, and at 8
p.m. it was 29.25 inches (743 millimetres) without the wind having freshened at all. The outer jib was taken in, however. By midnight the barometer had fallen to 29.0 inches (737 millimetres), while the wind had increased to a stiff breeze. We took in the foresail, mainsail, and inner jib, and had now only the topsail and a storm-trysail left. The wind gradually increased to a gale. At 4 a.m. on Sunday the barometer had fallen again to 28.66 inches (728 millimetres), and at 6 a.m.
the topsail was made fast.[3]
The wind increased and the seas ran higher, but we did not ship much water. At 8
a.m. the barometer was 28.30 inches (719 millimetres), and at 9 a.m. 28.26
inches (718 millimetres), when at last it stopped going down and remained steady till about noon, during which time a furious hurricane was blowing. The clouds were brown, the colour of chocolate; I cannot remember ever having seen such an ugly sky. Little by little the wind went to the north, and we sailed large
under two storm-trysails. Finally, we had the seas on our beam, and now the Fram showed herself in all her glory as the best sea-boat in the world. It was extraordinary to watch how she behaved. Enormous seas came surging high to windward, and we, who were standing on the bridge, turned our backs to receive them, with some such remark as: 'Ugh, that's a nasty one coming.' But the sea never came. A few yards from the ship it looked over the bulwarks and got ready to hurl itself upon her. But at the last moment the Fram gave a wriggle of her body and was instantly at the top of the wave, which slipped under the vessel.
Can anyone be surprised if one gets fond of such a ship? Then she went down with the speed of lightning from the top of the wave into the trough, a fall of fourteen or fifteen yards. When we sank like this, it gave one the same feeling as dropping from the twelfth to the ground-floor in an American express elevator,
'as if everything inside you was coming up.' It was so quick that we seemed to be lifted off the deck. We went up and down like this all the afternoon and evening, till during the night the wind gradually dropped and it became calm. That the storm would not be of long duration might almost be assumed from its suddenness, and the English rule --
Long foretold, long last; Short notice, soon past' -- may thus be said to have held good.
"When there is a strong wind on her beam, the Fram does not roll so much as usual, except for an occasional leeward lurch; nor was any excessive quantity of water shipped in this boisterous sea. The watch went below as usual when they were relieved, and, as somebody very truly remarked, all hands might quite well have turned in, if we had not had to keep a lookout for ice. And fortune willed it that the day of the hurricane was the first since we had left the Barrier that we did not see ice -- whether this was because the spray was so high that it hid our view, or because there really was none. Be that as it may, the main thing was that we saw no ice. During the night we had a glimpse of the full moon, which gave the man at the wheel occasion to call out 'Hurrah!' -- and with good reason, as we had been waiting a long time for the moon to help us in looking out for ice.
"In weather like this one notices nothing out of the ordinary below deck. Here hardly anything is heard of the wind, and in the after-saloon, which is below the water-line, it is perfectly comfortable. The cook, who resides below, therefore reckons 'ugly weather' according to the motion of the vessel, and not according to storms, fog, or rain. On deck we do not mind much how it blows, so long as it is only clear, and the wind is not against us. How little one hears below deck
may be understood from the fact that yesterday morning, while it was blowing a hurricane, the cook went about as usual, whistling his two verses of 'The Whistling Bowery Boy.' While he was in the middle of the first, I came by and told him that it was blowing a hurricane if he cared to see what it looked like.
'Oh, yes,' he said, 'I could guess it was blowing, for the galley fire has never drawn so well; the bits of coal are flying up the chimney'; and then he whistled through the second verse. All the same, he could not resist going up to see. It was not long before he came down again, with a 'My word, it is blowing, and waves up to the sky!' No; it was warmer and more cosy below among his pots and pans.
"For dinner, which was eaten as usual amid cheerful conversation, we had green-pea soup, roast sirloin, with a glass of aquavit, and caramel pudding; so it may be seen that the cook was not behindhand in opening tins, even in a hurricane.
After dinner we enjoyed our usual Sunday cigar, while the canary, which has become Kristensen's pet, and hangs in his cabin, sang at the top of its voice."
On March 14 we saw the last iceberg; during the whole trip we had seen and passed between 500 and 600 bergs.
The wind held steady from the north-east for a week and a half, and I was beginning to think we should be stuck down here to play the Flying Dutchman.
There was every possible sign of a west wind, but it did not come. On the night of the 17th it cleared; light cirrus clouds covered the sky, and there was a ring about the moon. This, together with the heavy swell and the pronounced fall of the barometer, showed that something might be expected. And, sure enough, on Sunday, March 19, we were in a cyclone. By manoeuvring according to the rules for avoiding a cyclone in the southern hemisphere, we at any rate went well clear of one semicircle. About 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon the barometer was down to 27.56 inches (700 millimetres), the lowest barometer reading I have ever heard of. From noon to 4 p.m. there was a calm, with heavy sea. Immediately after a gale sprang up from the north-west, and in the course of a couple of days it slowly moderated to a breeze from the same quarter.
Sunday, March 5, a hundred icebergs; Sunday March 12, a hurricane; and Sunday, March 19, a cyclone: truly three pleasant "days of rest."
The curves given on the next page, which show the course of barometric pressure for a week, from Monday to Monday, are interesting.
By way of comparison a third curve is given from the north-east trade, where there is an almost constant breeze and fine weather.
On this trip the fore-saloon was converted into a sail-loft, where Rönne and Hansen carried on their work, each in his watch. The after-saloon was used as a common mess-room, as it is warmer, and the motion is far less felt than forward.
