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would always be well down in the water, beneath the floes, additionally shielded by the overhanging stern. The screw was protected aft by a double sternpost (and, aft of that, the rudder itself) and below by a massive skeg, all reinforced by iron straps bolted through and through. Unlike most screws, with three blades, the Fram ’s had only two. When need be, the blades could be set in a vertical position and thus protected by the sternpost against passing ice.
    As a hybrid of engine and sails, the Fram was technically “an auxiliary screw steamer rigged as a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner.” 6 Its fore- and mizzenmasts were the same height and shorter than the mainmast, each carrying a gaff-rigged fore-and-aft sail. The pine masts were big and stout, to carry a lot of canvas (720 square yards, or 6,480 square feet) needed to propel such a heavy, bulky ship. The mainmast was 22 inches in diameter at the partners (main deck level) and, with topmast, 130 feet tall. The foremast also had a square-rigged foresail and topsail that could be raised and lowered by lines leading to the deck. This design was chosen over the more customary, tradition-bound square rigs used in Arctic sailing, mostly on the strong advice of Otto Sverdrup. He knew it would be much easier for the small crew, as everything could be handled from the main deck, requiring no climbing of masts, or extra hands, for furling or unfurling. Perched on the topmast, over one hundred feet above the water, the crow’s nest was “as high as possible so as to have a more extended view when it came to picking our way through the ice.” 7

    The three-cylinder, 220-horsepower engine was driven by steam from a huge boiler (as were the winches) and fired by coal, kerosene, or both. It was not just any ordinary engine: it could run on all three cylinders when full power was needed, say, for getting through a tough patch of ice, but in more benign times any one or two of them could be shut off to save fuel. The ship lugged over 250 tons of coal when it set off on its first expedition, estimated to be enough for four months of nonstop running (which, of course, it would never do, being either under sail when at all possible or locked in the ice the rest of the time). At full speed under power, in fair weather, it could lumber along at six or seven miles per hour.
    FIGURE 5
    Fram ’s engine room. The original engine was steam driven, off a boiler. Here, in 1910 with the third expedition on the way to Antarctica, it has been replaced by a new diesel engine. Note the massive wooden knees for bracing the ship’s sides and the engineers in the confined spaces.
    The coal (and sixteen tons of petroleum) would also serve other critical purposes: to cook the food and heat the living quarters. One coal-burning stove was in the common space (saloon) and one, a cookstove, in the galley; both radiated warmth not only in those spaces but also to the cabins, or sleeping quarters, which surrounded the saloon and galley. There were six cabins, four private for those “in command” of the expedition or its scientific activities and two four-man cabins for the remaining nine (originally, the crew was to be eight, but a ninth was taken on after the Fram left Christiania).
    Besides the arrangement of rooms that allowed for efficient thermal pooling and distribution, interior construction was a marvel. The living spaces were, in effect, a collective box wrapped overhead (ceiling), bulkhead (wall), and floor in layer upon layer of materials that could, individually or together, do their best to ward off intruding cold, preserve what precious heat there was, and properly deal with a devil—moisture—that often became a problem if not a curse on many an Arctic sojourn. The most interior wall paneling was lined inside with a linoleum (invented in England forty years earlier) that served as a barrier to the warm, moist air, which otherwise would condense to frost and ice as it encountered