It is the universal practice on board ship to divide the day and night into watches of four hours; the two watches into which the crew is divided relieve each other every four hours.  But on vessels that sail to the Arctic Ocean, it is customary to have watches of six hours.  We adopted the latter plan, which, on its being put to the vote, proved to have a compact majority in its favour.  By this arrangement of watches we only had to turn out twice in the course of twenty-four hours, and the watch below had had a proper sleep whenever it turned out.  If one has to eat, smoke, and perhaps chat a little during four hours’ watch below, it does not leave much time for sleeping; and if there should be a call for all hands on deck, it means no sleep at all.

To cope with the work of the engine-room, we had from the beginning the two engineers, Sundbeck and Nodtvedt; they took watch and watch, four hours each.  When the motor was in use for a long time continuously, this was a rather severe duty, and on the whole it was just as well to have a man in reserve.  I therefore decided to have a third man trained as reserve engineer.  Kristensen applied for this post, and it may be said in his praise that he accomplished the change remarkably well.  Thorough deck-hand as he was, there might have been reason to fear that he would repent of the transfer; but no, he quickly became life and soul an engineer.  This did not prevent our seeing him on deck again many a time during the passage through the west wind belt, when there was need of a good man during a gale.

The motor, which during the Atlantic cruise had been a constant source of uneasiness and anxiety, regained our entire confidence under Sundbeck’s capable command; it hummed so that it was a pleasure to hear it.  To judge from the sound of the engine-room, one would have thought the Fram was moving through the water with the speed of a torpedo-boat.  If this was not the case, the engine was not to blame; possibly, the screw had a share of it.  The latter ought probably to have been somewhat larger, though experts are not agreed about this; in any case, there was something radically wrong with our propeller.  Whenever there was a little seaway, it was apt to work loose in the brasses.  This disadvantage is of very common occurrence in vessels which have to be fitted with lifting propellers on account of the ice, and we did not escape it.  The only remedy was to lift the whole propeller-frame and renew the brasses —­ an extremely difficult work when it had to be done in the open sea and on as lively a ship as the Fram.