Fram (ship)

{{Infobox ship begin |display title=ital |infobox caption=Fram}}

{{Infobox ship image

|Ship image=Amundsen-Fram.jpg

|Ship caption= Fram in Antarctica during Roald Amundsen's expedition

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{{Infobox ship career

|Hide header=

|Ship country=Norway

|Ship flag={{shipboxflag|Norway}}

|Ship name=Fram

|Ship namesake=

|Ship ordered=

|Ship builder=Colin Archer, Larvik, Norway

|Ship laid down=

|Ship launched=26 October 1892

|Ship in service=1893

|Ship out of service=1912

|Ship homeport=

|Ship status= Preserved; on display at the Fram Museum, Oslo

|Ship notes=

}}

{{Infobox ship characteristics

|Hide header=

|Header caption=

|Ship type=Schooner

|Ship tonnage= {{GRT|402}}Amundsen, Roald, The South Pole; an Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 1910–12, Volume 2, Appendix I, "The Fram" (1912). Translated by Sydpolen.

|Ship length={{convert|127|ft|8|in|m|1|abbr=on}}

|Ship beam={{convert|34|ft|m|2|abbr=on}}

|Ship draft= {{convert|15|ft|m|2|abbr=on}}

|Ship hold depth=

|Ship propulsion=*Triple-expansion steam engine, {{convert|220|hp|0|abbr=on}}

Sails

|Ship sail plan=

|Ship speed= {{convert|7|kn|lk=in}}

|Ship range=

|Ship complement=16

|Ship notes=

}}

Fram ("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912. It was designed and built by the Scottish-Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer for Fridtjof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition in which the plan was to freeze Fram into the Arctic ice sheet and float with it over the North Pole.

Fram is preserved as a museum ship at the Fram Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Construction

Nansen's ambition was to explore the Arctic farther north than anyone else—to the North Pole, if possible. To do that, he would have to deal with a problem that many sailing on the polar ocean had encountered before him: the freezing ice could 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 of a shape designed to let the ice push the ship up, so it would "float" on top of the ice.

File:Fram 1893-1896 engineering drawing.jpg

Fram is a three-masted schooner with a total length of {{convert|39|m|ftin}} and width of {{convert|11|m|ftin}}. The ship is both unusually wide and unusually shallow in order to better withstand the forces of pressing ice. A disadvantage of this design is that it rolled more than most ships in heavy seas.

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 with almost no keel to handle the shallow waters Nansen expected to encounter. The rudder and propeller were designed to be retracted. The ship was also carefully insulated to allow the crew to live on board for up to five years. The ship also included a windmill, which ran a generator to provide electric power for lighting by electric arc lamps.{{cite book | last = Nansen | first = Fridtjof | author-link = Fridtjof Nansen | year = 1897 | title = Farthest North, Volumes I and II | chapter=ch 2 | publisher = Archibald Constable & Co. | location = London | ref = {{sfnRef|Nansen}} | url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30197}}

Initially, Fram was fitted with a steam engine. Prior to Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole in 1910, the engine was replaced with a diesel engine, a first for polar exploration vessels. The new engine allowed for a longer voyage without refueling.

File:Flag of the Fram.svg

The ship was launched on 26 October 1892.{{cite book|last=Arnesen|first=Odd|url=http://www.nb.no/nbsok/nb/c86dc2f373af14d9b6f1ce8ffe20d859?index=1#111|title=Fram – Hele Norges Skute|publisher=Jacob Dybwads forlag|year=1942|edition=2|pages=109–117}}

Historical expeditions

Fram was used in several expeditions:

File:Framprow.jpg in 2010]]

=Nansen's 1893–1896 Arctic expedition=

Wreckage found at Greenland from {{USS|Jeannette|1878|6}}, which was lost off Siberia, and driftwood found in the regions of Svalbard and Greenland, suggested that an ocean current flowed beneath the Arctic ice sheet from east to west, bringing driftwood from the Siberian region to Svalbard and further west. Nansen had Fram built in order to explore this theory.

File:PSM V57 D433 The ship named fram.png

]]

He undertook an expedition that came to last three years. When Nansen realised that Fram would not reach the North Pole directly by the force of the current, he and Hjalmar Johansen set out to reach it on skis. After reaching 86° 14' north, he had to turn back to spend the winter at Franz Josef Land. Nansen and Johansen survived on walrus and polar bear meat and blubber. Finally meeting British explorers, the Jackson–Harmsworth expedition, they arrived back in Norway only days before the Fram also returned there. The ship had spent nearly three years trapped in the ice, reaching 85° 57' N.{{cite book |author-link=Apsley Cherry-Garrard |last=Cherry-Garrard |first=Apsley |date=1922 |title=The Worst Journey in the World |publisher=Carroll & Graf Publishers |page=xxii}}

=Sverdrup's 1898–1902 Canadian Arctic islands expedition=

File:Fram on the high seas, 1910.webp

In 1898, Otto Sverdrup, who had brought Fram back on the first Arctic voyage, led a scientific expedition to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Fram was slightly modified for this journey, its freeboard being increased. Fram left harbour on 24 June 1898, with 17 men on board. Their aim was to chart the lands of the Arctic Islands, and to sample the geology, flora and fauna. The expeditions lasted until 1902, leading to charts covering {{cvt|260000|km2}}, more than any other Arctic expedition.{{cite book |last=Kenney |first=Gerard |date=1984 |title=Ships of Wood and Men of Iron: A Norwegian-Canadian Saga of Exploration in the High Arctic |publisher=Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina |isbn=0-88977-168-5}}

=Amundsen's 1910–1912 South Pole expedition=

File:Fram 1910-1912 Diesel Engine.jpg, Fram was fitted with this diesel engine]]

File:Flag of the Fram (South Pole expedition).svg

Fram was used by Roald Amundsen in his southern polar expedition from 1910 to 1912, the first to reach the South Pole, during which Fram reached 78° 41' S.

Preservation of ''Fram''

The ship was left to decay in storage from 1912 until the late 1920s, when Lars Christensen, Otto Sverdrup and Oscar Wisting initiated efforts to preserve it via the Fram Committee. In 1935, the ship was installed in the Fram Museum, where it now stands.

Named after ''Fram''

File:Portrett av Colin Archer.jpg designed the ship]]

File:Fram Model 1898-1902.jpg

Fram Island (Ostrov Frama), an island close to the Komsomolskaya Pravda Islands, Laptev Sea
Fram Islands, a group of islands off the coast of Antarctica
Fram mesa, a plateau in Antarctica
Fram Formation, a rock formation on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada known for being where Tiktaalik roseae was discovered{{cn|date=August 2024}}
MS Fram, a cruise ship which tours polar regions
Framheim (literally "Home of the Fram"), Amundsen's Base at the Bay of Whales in Antarctica during his quest for the South Pole
Fram Rupes, an escarpment on Mercury
Fram crater, a small crater on Mars, visited by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2004
Fram Basin, the deepest point in the Arctic Ocean
Fram Strait, a passage from the Arctic Ocean to the Greenland Sea and Norwegian Sea, between Greenland and Spitsbergen.
Fram, a play by Tony Harrison, premièred at the National Theatre London, 2008
In Arthur Ransome's children's book, Winter Holiday, the children use the name Fram for their Uncle Jim's houseboat, trapped in the ice on the lake which becomes the inspiration for some of their adventures.
The Adventures of Fram, the Polar Bear (Romanian: Aventurile lui Fram, ursul polar), a children's book written by the Romanian author Cezar Petrescu which was also made into a TV series in Romania;
Fram2, a 2025 SpaceX mission on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the first crewed spaceflight to pass over the Earth's poles.{{cite news|last=Harwood|first=William|date=4 April 2025|title= Space tourists complete first-ever flight around Earth's poles|publisher=CBS News|url= https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/space-tourists-complete-first-ever-flight-around-earths-poles/ar-AA1CjwGS|access-date=18 April 2025}}