The Fram was a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner with an auxiliary engine of 200 indicated horse-power, which was calculated to give her a speed of 6 knots, when moderately loaded, with a coal consumption of 2.8 tons a day.

The vessel was designed to be only large enough to carry the necessary coal-supply, provisions, and other equipment for a period of five years, and to give room for the crew.

Her principal dimensions are: 

Length of keel 103.3 English feet
Length of waterline 119’
Length over all 128’
Beam on waterline 34’
Greatest beam 36’
Depth 17.2’

Her displacement, with a draught of 15.6 feet, is 800 tons.  The measurements are taken to the outside of the planks, but do not include the ice-skin.  By Custom-house measurement she was found to be 402 gross tons register, and 807 tons net.

The ship, with engines and boilers, was calculated to weigh about 420 tons.  With the draught above mentioned, which gives a freeboard of 3 feet, there would thus be 380 tons available for cargo.  This weight was actually exceeded by 100 tons, which left a freeboard of only 20 inches when the ship sailed on her first voyage.  This additional immersion could only have awkward effects when the ship came into the ice, as its effect would then be to retard the lifting by the ice, on which the safety of the ship was believed to depend in a great measure.  Not only was there a greater weight to lift, but there was a considerably greater danger of the walls of ice, that would pile themselves against the ship’s sides, falling over the bulwarks and covering the deck before the ice began to raise her.  The load would, however, be lightened by the time the ship was frozen fast.  Events showed that she was readily lifted when the ice-pressure set in, and that the danger of injury from falling blocks of ice was less than had been expected.  The Fram’s keel is of American elm in two lengths, 14 inches square; the room and space is 2 feet.  The frame-timbers are almost all of oak obtained from the Naval Dockyard at Horten, where they had lain for many years, thus being perfectly seasoned.  The timbers were all grown to shape.  The frames consist of two tiers of timbers everywhere, each timber measuring 10 to 11 inches fore and aft; the two tiers of timbers are fitted together and bolted, so that they form a solid and compact whole.  The joints of the frame-timbers are covered with iron plates.  The lining consists of pitch-pine in good lengths and of varying thickness from 4 to 6 inches.  The keelson is also of pitch-pine, in two layers, one above the other; each layer 15 inches square from the stem to the engine-room.  Under the boiler and engine there was only room for one keelson.  There are two decks.  The beams of the main-deck are of American or German oak, those of the lower deck and half-deck of pitch-pine and Norwegian fir.  All the deck planks are of Norwegian