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HISTORY
Fram
("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions in the Arctic
and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof
Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between
1893 and 1912. Fram was probably the strongest wooden ship ever
built. It was designed by the Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer
for Fridtjof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition in which Fram was
supposed to freeze into the Arctic ice sheet and float with it
over the North Pole.
Fram is said to be the wooden ship to have sailed farthest north
and farthest south. Fram is currently preserved in whole at the
Fram Museum in Oslo, Norway.
Construction
Nansen's ambition was to explore the Arctic farther north than
anyone else. To do that, he would have to deal with a problem
that many sailing in the polar ocean had encountered before him:
the freezing ice would press and crush a ship. Nansen's idea was
to build a ship that could survive the pressure, not by pure
strength, but because it would be in a shape designed to let the
ice push the ship up, so it would "float" on top of the ice.
Nansen commissioned the shipwright Colin Archer from Larvik to
construct a vessel with these characteristics. Fram was built
with an outer layer of greenheart wood to withstand the ice and
almost without a keel to handle the shallow waters Nansen
expected to encounter. The rudder and propeller were designed to
be retracted into the ship. The ship was also carefully
insulated to allow the crew to live onboard for up to five
years.
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