Fram
1892
Build by Colin Archer, Larvik, Norway, 1892.Polar resarch vessel, Barquentine rig, Auxillary steam engine, 220 ihp, replaced by petrol motor, 360 hp.
Overall length 127.95 ft. (39.00 m ).
Extreme breadth 36.09 ft. (11.0 m )
Maximum draught 15.58 ft. (4.75 m)
Gross tonnage 402.
Fram was the first vessel specifically built for the purpose of Polar exploration. She was given sides 28 to 32 inche thick, and her hull was diveded into three watertight compartments.
There were sixty - eighy diagonal timber braces below the main deck to countract inward pressure, and both the screw and the rudder could be raised into vertical shafts in the hull when in danger of being damaged by ice. Most importantly, the hull was shaped in such a way that it would tend to be pushed upward out of ice as pressure increased. Many features of her design were adopted by subsequent Polar research vessels.
Since Fritjof Nansen, for whom she was build, hoped to reach the North Pole through being carried there by currents in the Artic Sea, Fram had to be designed by Colin Archer to withstand being frozen in the Polar ice for two or more winters. Though the Pole was not reached.
Fram spent three years in the ice, and achieved a further north latitude than any surface vessel before or since. In 1912 she was employed by a second Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, for his successful expedition to the South Pole. She is now fully restored and preserved in a building in Oslo, not far from Amundesen's Gjøa and Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki.
Owner:
Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum
Bygdøynesveien 37
Oslo
Norway.
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