In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen set off on one of the greatest journeys of exploration ever undertaken. The remarkable three-year project involved building a special ship, designed to ride out the savage pressure of the ice, to sail round the north of Russia into the Kara and Laptev Seas and then, using his intuition as to arctic currents, deliberately freeze the ship into the ice to drift towards the North Pole. From the drifting ship, Nansen and one of his men would then, using dog teams, make the last assault towards the North Pole across the pack. Characterised by Nansen's restless and endless innovation, the expedition was to be another in the litany of heroic failures. But its advances in technique, the sheer willpower that drove Nansen and Johansen, first north from the Fram and then south across the melting pack to the uncharted mass of Franz Josef Land, using sledge and kayak, under assault from walrus and polar bear and above all the temperamental and endlessly changing ice, was to l . CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK FOR FREE