Farthest north; being the record of a voyage of exploration of the ship "Fram" 1893-96, and of a fifteen months' sleigh journey by DrNansen and LieutJohansen . east alongthe edge of the ice. Almost lost the petroleum launchin the evening. The waves were constantly breakinginto it and filling it, the gunwale was burst in at twoplaces, and the heavy davits it hung on were twisted asif they had been copper wires. Only just in the nick oftime, with the waves washing over us, some of us managedto get it lashed to the side of the ship. There seemed tobe some fatality about this boat. Thursday, Augus
Farthest north; being the record of a voyage of exploration of the ship "Fram" 1893-96, and of a fifteen months' sleigh journey by DrNansen and LieutJohansen . east alongthe edge of the ice. Almost lost the petroleum launchin the evening. The waves were constantly breakinginto it and filling it, the gunwale was burst in at twoplaces, and the heavy davits it hung on were twisted asif they had been copper wires. Only just in the nick oftime, with the waves washing over us, some of us managedto get it lashed to the side of the ship. There seemed tobe some fatality about this boat. Thursday, August 17th. Still beating eastward undersail and steam through scattered ice, and along a marginof fixed ice. Still blowing hard, with a heavy sea as soonas we headed a little out from the ice. Friday, August i8th. Continued storm. Stood south-east. At , Sverdrup, who had gone up intothe crows-nest to look out for bears and walrus on theice-floes, saw land to the south of us. At 10 I wentup to look at it—we were then probably not more than10 miles away from it. It was low land, seemingly ofthe same formation as Yalmal, with steep sand-banks,. VOYAGE THROUGH THE KARA SEA 157 and grass-grown above. The sea grew shallower as weneared it. Not far from us, small icebergs lay lead showed steadily less and less water; by there were only some 8 fathoms; then, to our sur-prise, the bottom suddenly fell to 20 fathoms, and afterthat we found steadily increasing depth. Between theland and the blocks of stranded ice on our lee there ap-peared to be a channel with rather deeper water and notso much ice aground in it. It seemed difificult to conceivethat there should be undiscovered land here, where bothNordenskiold and Edward Johansen, and possibly sever-al Russians, had passed without seeing anything. Ourobservations, however, were incontestable, and we imme-diately named the land Sverdrup s Island, after its dis-coverer. As there was still a great deal of
Size: 1203px × 2077px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthornansenfridtjof1861193, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890
