CHAPTER XXXVIII 
THE TRANS-POLAR DRIFT. 
NANSEN AND THE VOYAGE OF THE FRAM 
Fridtjof Nansen, our foremost living Arctic worthy, 
a devoted scientific enquirer and a profound student 
of Arctic history, had alwa}^s taken a broad view of 
the Arctic problem, mainly with reference to currents 
and ocean depths. But the discovery of articles on the 
coast of Greenland which had drifted westward from the 
wreck of the Jeanette off the Liakhov Islands, first gave 
him the idea of his great enterprise 1 . Nansen conceived 
the project of forcing a vessel into the pack on the Siberian 
side, and being drifted across the polar ocean. From 
most Arctic experts the idea received no encouragement 
whatsoever, but I had a full belief, based on careful 
study, in the successful issue of such an expedition 2 . 
Every article of equipment down to the minutest 
detail was Nansen's own conception. Originality has 
always been a marked feature of his character. The 
matter of first importance then, in his projected enter- 
prise, was the building of a special vessel to come out 
uninjured after the long Arctic drift. In Mr Colin Archer 
of Laurvik Nansen found a constructor, careful and 
resourceful as himself, with long experience in boat 
and ship-building. The son of a Scotch boat-builder 
who had settled in Norway early in the last century, 
Colin Archer was brought up to the craft, and he was 
the very man to turn Nansen's ideas into realities. The 
result was the Fram. The main points were great 
strength, and sides constructed in such a manner that 
1 Announced in the Morgenblad by Professor Mohn in 1884. 
2 Quite unknown to Nansen I had come to a similar conviction in 
contemplating the results of the Nares expedition. In my Report on the 
origin, proceedings, and results of this expedition {R. G. S. Proceedings, 
1877), I pointed out that a current flowed across the polar sea from the 
eastern to the western hemisphere, that Franz Josef Land was part of the 
Spitsbergen group, rising from the same plateau with a deeper sea to the 
north, and that to overstep the boundary of the known polar sea, though 
attended by great difficulties, would reward with important discoveries 
the future explorer who boldly forced his way north in this direction. 
My Report came to Nansen's knowledge after his return home. 
