After completing his Greenland Expedition, on February 18, 1890, the 29-year-old Fridtjof Nansen spoke at the meeting of the Norwegian Geographical Society with the original idea of reaching the North Pole. He believed that there was a circumpolar current between Bering Strait and Greenland, he proposed to reach it on a small ship and drift to a pole in the ice. The idea of Nansen was supported by the Parliament of Norway.
The motor-sailing schooner "Fram" was launched on October 26, 1892 in the Norwegian town of Larvik, and after a competitive selection of a team of 12 people on June 24, 1893, sailed from Pippervik Bay from Villa Nansen "Gothob" in Lusaker. Until July 15, the ship sailed along the coast of Norway, loading supplies, and on July 29 entered the Barents Sea, and on September 7 reached Cape Chelyuskintsy on the Taimyr Peninsula.
Nansen planned to reach a latitude of 80 °, but solid ice prevented this, and on October 5, the drift began from the Novosibirsk islands from 78 ° north. The Fram was moving at an average speed of 3 km / day and only on May 19, 1894, it reached 81 °. Considering that at this rate the drift to the pole will take 5-6 years, at the end of the summer Nansen decided to continue his journey to the pole by dog sledding and kayaking.
Photo © jnsm.com.ua
After two unsuccessful attempts in February, when they had to return due to the unsuccessful construction of the sleds, on March 14, 1885, Fridtjof Nansen and Yalmar Johansen began a nearly 800-kilometer trek to the North Pole, which was given up to two months.
However, the transition turned out to be extremely difficult - headwinds, frosts and exhausted dogs forced Nansen to abandon his plan on April 8. At 400 km from the target, they turned in the direction of Franz Josef Land, where polar explorers spent the winter in terrible conditions.
On May 21, 1896, the journey continued south using skis and kayaks (the dogs were eaten before wintering). On June 17, 1896, Nansen and Johansen accidentally stumbled upon an expedition by the Englishman Frederick Johnson, who on his ship Windward sent them home, where the Norwegians arrived on August 13, 1896. By a strange coincidence, Fram completed its 1041-day drift the same day, freeing itself from an ice trap.