Farthest north – volume one (illustrated)

In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen set sail for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures, and travel north with the sea's drift. Experts said that such a ship couldn't be built and that the mission was tantamount to suicide. Farthest North, first published in 1897 to great popular acclaim, is the stirring, first-person account of the Fram and her historic voyage. Nansen tells of his expedition's struggle against snowdrifts, ice floes, polar bears, scurvy, gnawing hunger, and the seemingly endless polar night that transformed the Fram into a "cold prison of loneliness." Once it became clear that the Fram could drift no farther, Nansen and crew member Hjalmar Johansen set out on a harrowing fifteen-month sledge journey to reach their destination by foot, which required them to share a sleeping bag of rotting reindeer fur and to feed the weaker sled dogs to the stronger ones. In the end they traveled 146 miles farther north than any Westerner had gone before, representing the greatest single gain in polar exploration in four centuries. Note from the Publisher: Having read both current authors on the subject of arctic exploration and Nansen, I found Nansen a must to read - as a contemporary of some of the less successful explorers such as John Franklin, Nansen , unlike modern critics, had great praise for Franklin, citing Franklin's creation of the vitamin C lozenge as one of the key elements in his (Nansen's) success. Many examples like this through Nansen's works esp Farthest North, show the value in reading the sources to any student of the subject and provide fascinating insight into the times.