Voyage of the FRAM

Fridtjof Nansen was the first person to put forth the idea of Arctic circulation and to truly discover the Arctic Ocean basin. He based his hypothesis on the ill-fated ship JEANNETTE that was crushed by the ice in 1881 near the New Siberian Islands. The JEANETTE, in trying to find a passage to the North Pole, entered the Bering Strait in 1879, was set in ice, and drifted for two years until she was crushed. Her remains were discovered in 1884 near Julienhaab on the southwest coast of Greenland. Nansen then hypothesized that this wreckage had been carried by a current flowing from the region of the New Siberian Islands, passing near the North Pole, and then descending southward to the North Atlantic along the east coast of Greenland. To verify this, Nansen executed the most remarkable expedition of the FRAM from 1893 to 1896 to study polar currents and the oceanography of the Arctic. He built the FRAM so that when the ice set around her, she would be raised up onto the ice and drift with the ice pack. He did this successfully in this most fascinating voyage of the Arctic. The following account is taken from Nansen's writings of his expeditions in FARTHEST NORTH, 1898.