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A Century Ago : the Nansen Drift Fridtjof Nansen Wanted to Reach the Pole by Having His Boat Caught in the Ice and Letting Her Drift

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A Century Ago : the Nansen Drift Fridtjof Nansen Wanted to Reach the Pole by Having His Boat Caught in the Ice and Letting Her Drift www.taraexpeditions.org A century ago : the Nansen drift Fridtjof Nansen wanted to reach the pole by having his boat caught in the ice and letting her drift. He will miss his objective by some 800 km but will bring back all his crew despite three very harsh wintering. In 1895, a Norwegian succeeded in com- pleting the fi rst Arctic drift on the Fram, the boat that is Tara’s ancestor. Prolonged for three long polar winters, the mission, however, was not able to reach the pole. Fridtjof Nansen was 32 years old when he Her rounded shapes should prevent the ice from March 1895, Nansen decides to leave the boat had begun on the journey. During the summer, started on his Arctic drift. His aim was to get crushing her, but it is especially her sturdiness and go with a companion to the North Pole the pack ice becomes more and more impracti- as close to the North pole as possible. It is after that enables her to resist to the pack ice grip : the by sledge. Th e two men are equipped with cable but at the end of August, they accost on having discovered in the south west of Green- hull is more than 80 centimetres thick. light kayaks and take 630 kg of equipment with land on the Franz-Joseph archipelago. Th ey re- land the remains of a vessel crushed by the ice, With a crew of 13 men, Nansen leaves Oslo them. After 23 days on the go, they give up on solve to spend their third Arctic winter. All the that had disappeared three years earlier off the on the 28th of June 1893. Th e boat is caught in the 8th of April. Th ey have reached 86°14’, the dogs are dead. In a sort of shelter, made of bear’s New Siberia coast, that Fridtjof Nansen concei- the ice more or less when planned, on the 20th highest latitude ever to be set foot on, but the skins, the two men brave the extreme winter ved the hypothesis of a major transpolar drift, of September, by 78°20’ Northern latitude. Th e pack ice is drifting in the opposite direction… temperatures. Th ey survive by hunting walruses liable to carry him there. drift begins but at a much slower pace than was barely advanced northward. Th ey turn round and polar bears. In the springtime, they leave Glorifi ed by his recent successful crossing anticipated by the explorer. At the end of the and go back beatin an extraordinarily trying their shelter and are picked up by chance by the of Greenland – a fi rst- he manages to raise fi rst polar winter, the Fram is located at only retreat. At the end of May, the two men have Jackson expedition in July. At about the same the funds to put up his costly expedition. He 80°north and on the 6th January of the fol- gone down to 82° North but their supplies are time, the Fram is freed from the ice. Th e entire builds the Fram (“Forwards!” in Norwegian), a lowing year (1895) at 83°40’ north! starting to run out and no land is on sight. Th ey crew triumphantly disembarks in Oslo on the three mast schooner, 39 m long and 11 m wide. At the end of the second winter, on the 14th have 16 dogs remaining out of the 28 dogs that 9th September 1895 Committing for the environment is a must ! Th e graphics studio be_pôles helps and advises its clients to elaborate a responsible communications policy that fi ts into a sustainable growth approach. Th is is why be_pôles has created ECOGRAPHIKTM ECOGRAPHIKTM is an ecological commitment charter for “sustainable communication”. It guarantees the use of ecological or recycled papers. It has signed partnerships with printers labelled IMPRIM’VERT. It anticipates on the visual pollution problems linked for instance to urban billposting. By integrating the ECOGRAPHIKTM charter to its work, the studio be_pôles commits itself in a long standing approach that is respectful of the environment. Be_pôles has been supporting Tara Expeditions for the past three years and the Ecological Pacte for the 2007 presidential elections in France “of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation”. Th e company off ers all its commu- nications skills : website, publishing tools. Be_pôles has produced the magazine Tara Expeditions. 12 Le Journal Tara Expeditions - Damocles N° 1 - dec. 2006 TARA EXPEDITIONS AND DAMOCLES Magazine free of charge published by Tara and Damocles. Photos by Francis Latreille, François Bernard, Jean Collet, Grant Redvers, Sebastião Salgado and Tara Arctic. Graphics design and lay out www. be-poles.com TARAWAKALe SARL 52 chaussée de l’Etang 94160journal Saint Mandé France - 00 33 1 42 01 38 57. Legal representative and publication manager : Etienne Bourgois. Editor in chief : Eric Biegala. Translation from French into English : Caroline Emmet. Printing company : DDBZ, Bidart France. Date of publishing and legal deposit : 1st of December 2006 RUNNING Tara, the polar schooner AGROUND BEFORE has bet on its ability to drift NIGHTFALL Things could have run smoothly… After all, it on the pack ice during the next was just a matter of coming alongside an ice floe! In short, Tara was supposed to moor on the two years. On board, scientists edge of the ice sea, the crew sticking two stakes in the ice to compel the boat. Then, one just had to wait for the ocean to freeze entirely to have will take turns to study a polar base form around the boat, to contain its tents, oil stocks, tractor and scientific equipment. the climate warming impact A drifting base, supposed to cover 1 800 km in the next two years within the International Polar Year Program. It was in any case the theoretical plan. on the Arctic pack ice. The first “We first had to head as much north as possible” explains Etienne Bourgois, the expedition chief. challenge : to have the boat’s The aim was to have the ship moor the ice by 81° of northern latitude. Tara was not able to go beyond 80°. Then, one had to find the right ice 160 tons rise up on the ice! floe. “We had to make fast the boat on a large and solid piece of pack ice made of pluriannual ice so as to disembark the material” adds Bernard Buigues, the other Tara Arctic expedition initiator. The mooring ofTara in the ice would not have been possible without the help of the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn that opened the way to the schooner and enabled to spot from the bridge the proper ice floe : an ice plate of a sizeable span measuring 5 x 3,5 km. Having departed from Lorient on the 11th of July 2006, Tara was thus moored on Septem- ber 3rd after a few administrative complications in Russia that delayed her meeting with the Kapitan Dranitsyn. A final thrust allowed her to rise on the ice, lying down on half of her length. On port side : the compact pack ice, on starboard side : sparse drifting ice pieces. Four additional days to disembark the equipment, establish a base on the floe and the two heli- copters flew off. The eight men of the crew who were going to hibernate together found them- selves on their own. A short time after, the wind rose… In a couple of hours, the wind strengthened. On September 12th it reached 40 knots (75 km/h). The ocean had had the time to freeze around the boat… but barely. In open water, a heavy swell appeared with the storm. On September 13th mid-day, was the first surge of adrenalin. The swell had caught up with the ice floe : the floe dislocated itself “like a mirror being shatte- red” recounts Grant Redvers, the chief of the base. “Imagine hundreds of ice pieces scattered on a 10 km2 area with some carrying a tent others a tractor or an oil reserve. It was impossible to go af- ter them on foot, Tara could not be manoeuvred as she no longer had her rudder blades and the size of the ice pieces prevented us from using the annexe… One had to wait for the sea to refreeze” Bernard Buigues further explains. Ten days were neces- sary to gather up every thing without any losses. There must have been a god for Arctic bases. Mid-October night fell, the polar night that will last until March. And the pack ice remai- ned alive. On the 27th, a lead opened ten meters away from Tara. At three in the morning on the 31st, the ice creaks changed into “atrocious ripping sounds as if something was reducing a thick pages 2-3 page 4 page 10 page 12 metal shield into shreds… In my cabin it felt like being in hell” Matthieu Weber, the boat’s engi- The great The sailboat Eight men A century neer wrote in his diary. An enormous piece of pack ice had risen to overlap another piece a planetary from the far in the ago : the few meters away from the boat and at the speed collapse end of the earth winter Nansen drift of 10 cm/second! The toilets laid out on the ice two days before were swept away by the assault. Climate warming is taking The schooner was designed Alone in the polar night, The Norwegian had The scientific equipment also installed nearby place three times faster for extreme conditions like in a space capsule his boat caught in the ice was rescued in extremis.
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