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The Belgica trapped in sea ice in Antarctica - 1898
(internet image - coolantarctica.com) |
The
Dark of Antarctica
historical
essay and book recommendation
by
Gregory E. Larson
Preface:
How well would you
survive if trapped on a sailing ship in the ice off Antarctica, knowing that a
sunless winter was about to begin? The book, Madhouse at the End of the
Earth, unveils the story of the Belgian expedition to Antarctica, where the
ship and crew were trapped in the ice for the first “wintering” in Antarctic history
in 1898. The story continues to be researched as a study in how man is affected
by isolation, confinement, and darkness. NASA uses this century-old mission as
a resource for understanding physical, mental, and social issues that can
impact long-term space missions.
I found the book at the
library while browsing at random. Knowing that my brother-in-law, Michael
Farley, and his wife, Linda Anneberg, had just returned from an Overseas Adventure Travel cruise to Antarctica (December 2022), I was eager to learn
something more. (Thanks to Michael for allowing me to use his photo images
taken in December 2022 in the same area in the Gerlache Strait which was
discovered on the journey described in the book.)
Madhouse at the End of
the Earth (by Julian Sancton)
resonated with me on several levels. Having previously read about the race for
the south pole (1911) between Englishman Robert Scott, and Norwegian Roald
Amundsen, and another book about the Ernest Shackleton Adventure in 1914, I
concluded this early expedition by Belgian explorer Adrien de Gerlache in 1897
is “the story before the stories of Antarctica,” and it provides historical
context to the Amundsen and Shackleton adventures. As I began reading, I was
pulled into a drama that played out at the bottom of the earth 125 years ago.
The initial motivation
for Belgian seaman Adrien de Gerlache to explore Antarctica was to gain glory for
Belgium and to establish his fame in the annals of navigation and science. He
quickly learned that fundraising and selecting crew members were monumental
tasks. Even King Leopold of Belgium was lukewarm to the idea, and provided very
little financial and moral support.
Once he had a reasonable
amount of funding, De Gerlache purchased a used whaler ship, refurbished it,
and christened it The Belgica. His goal was to have Belgian seamen and
scientists for the entire crew, but he could not find all of the navigational
and scientific expertise there, so he cast his net far and wide. International
expeditions were rare in those times.
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Antarctica
(photo image courtesy of Michael Farley) |
De Gerlache selected a
Polish chemist and geologist (Henrik Arctowski), a Romanian zoologist (Emile
Racovitza), and a 24-year-old Norwegian First Mate, (Roald Amundsen). This was
to be Amundsen’s first trip to Antarctica. It was a time in Amundsen’s life
when he was eager to amass all the skills necessary to become an explorer in
his own right. His mind was like a sponge in learning by trial and error, and
he was physically fearless in his desire to be a successful explorer. He was an
expert cross-country skier having spent several treks in northern Norway.
De Gerlache had
difficulty finding a physician who wanted to make the trip but was able to hire
an American physician/surgeon, Dr. Frederick Cook of New York. At the last
moment he joined the crew in Rio de Janeiro. The navigator and the bulk of the
rest of the crew were a rag-tag bunch of French, Norwegians and Belgians that
were willing to join the expedition, which seemed sketchy at best.
Communication became a mixture of languages and hand signals.
As they neared the
southern tip of South America, numerous delays and fiascos almost doomed their
plans. Several crew members were kicked off the crew for fighting and drunkenness.
The scientists begged for extra time to research indigenous people. The clock
kept ticking. Finally, as they neared Tierra del Fuego in a storm, they became stuck
in a shallow passageway and made several attempts to pull off the rock. De
Gerlache could see his glory fading away, believing the voyage was doomed and
their lives hung in the balance before they had even set sail across the Drake
Passage towards the Shetland Islands and the Antarctica peninsula. Finally, the
ship broke free of the rock. They were delayed further by having to take on new
fresh water to replace what they had emptied to lighten their load.
Although the crossing of
the Drake passage was uneventful, they floated into a sea of icebergs as a
storm came up. Waves crashed against the ship, causing water to pour onto the
deck. Coal had clogged some of the scuppers and caused the overflowing seawater
to pour into the hatches and into the inhabited areas. As two of the crew
attempted to unclog the scuppers, one of the men fell overboard when the ship jolted
against an iceberg. The crew made several futile rescue attempts but the man died of hypothermia and drowning.
It was another failure on a voyage that had barely started.
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Lemaire channel at the Gerlache Strait - Antarctica
(photo image courtesy of Michael Farley) |
Finally, On January 23,
1898, they spotted land in Antarctica. They were now at the edge of the
explored world. As the weather cleared, they realized they were at the mouth of
a huge inlet into the peninsula at Graham Land. It was the most idyllic time of
the expedition. The summer light was good, the strait was relatively calm, and
the unknown territory seemed like a dreamland full of new mountains, and
wildlife. Their hopes to create a detailed map of the strait were not
fulfilled. The weather was too foggy or cloudy to allow them to make celestial
observations. Expeditions onto the mountains with a theodolite were fruitless
due to the poor visibility and the rugged, icy terrain. On rare, clear days,
the sea with the icebergs and the mountains around them shone in full beauty.
Once out of the strait,
and with very little to show for the journey thus far, de Gerlache contemplated
what to do next. He wanted very badly to have some type of headline grabber for
the expedition. With the Antarctic summer on the wane, he made a quick decision.
In confidence with the Belgian navigator, de Gerlache decided to see if they
could break the southernmost latitude (71°10' S) recorded in 1774. He gave
orders to turn south and with a stormy wind behind them, they sailed over
eighty miles in 24 hours and recorded their southernmost location at 71°31' S. But
the sea ice continued to form and the ship became quickly trapped. After a day
of being stuck in what looked like a frozen plain, the magnitude of their
predicament sunk into the commander and crew. They would be the first in
history to winter in Antarctica. After a few days in the foreboding, frozen
spot, de Gerlache wrote in his diary, “We are no longer navigators, but a small
colony of prisoners serving their sentence.” They wondered if they would
survive their entrapment.
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Icebergs at Melchior Islands - near Gerlache Strait - Antarctica
(photo image courtesy of Michael Farley) |
In the beginning, the
crew busied themselves, reorganizing their supplies and building huts on the
ice for the scientists. As the expedition’s physician, Cook realized he had a
huge responsibility to try to continually keep the morale of the ship to a
level that would get them through the ordeal. Cook and Amundsen spent much time
brainstorming activities and would share ideas on how to plan future
expeditions to the polar regions. On a sled exploration away from the ship, the
two designed a new tent that worked well in high winds. On another trip, they
built an igloo. Their active minds and their friendship created a strong
antidote against the oncoming darkness.
Eventually, the sun
refused to rise on the northern horizon and the darkness of winter set in. The
crew’s morale began to sink with the onset of continual darkness. Cook recorded
the physical and mental deterioration. One of the crew had a congenital heart problem,
and in the extreme conditions, eventually died. Morale sank even further.
Cook instituted daily
walks outside the ship, during the brief northern glow of daytime, or nighttime
walks in moonlight. One of the men penned it the “madhouse promenade” in his
journal. But the physical activity was not enough to help the men keep their
strength. Cook noticed the onset of scurvy on several of the crew. He also
noticed that the few people (including Amundsen) that ate raw seal meat showed
no signs of scurvy. Most of the men hated the taste of the meat, but once they
noticed that those who ate it remained healthy, they finally began following
Cook’s recommendations. He also began what is considered the first light
therapy for depression. Cook had a deep belief that light was a necessary
ingredient for life, and had the depressed men stand naked before a bonfire,
telling them that their mood would improve. In most cases it was helpful. The
men appreciated the attention given to them by Cook.
Morale continued to
worsen. De Gerlache became depressed and locked himself for days in his cabin. A
few of the men became withdrawn and paranoid, shunning interaction with the
crew. One of the crew became catatonic. When he finally was able to
communicate, he was never the same. The nervous breakdown had caused permanent
damage. Another crewman, who went on a skiing expedition with Cook and Amundsen
became suspicious that they were out to kill him. His demeanor was forever
changed.
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Melchior Islands near Gerlache Strait - Antarctica
(photo image courtesy of Michael Farley) |
Winter passed and the ice
continued to hold the Belgica into the next summer. Cook was convinced
that if they could not free the ship from the ice, many would not survive a
second winter. Explosives were used in an attempt to loosen the ice floes, but
the ship remained locked firm. Finally, de Gerlache proposed they cut the ice
(one to two meters thick) with saws and create a channel of about a half mile
to open water. It seemed ludicrous. The task would be herculean, requiring an
unbelievable amount of manual labor to save the ship and crew. The men formed
two shifts, with all of the crew taking turns, except for the cook who prepared
the meals and blew the bugle on the deck to announce mealtime.
The crew’s spirits began
to rise. Their health also improved. To have something to focus upon helped
their overall morale. But the second summer was on the wane and it was a race
against time to free the ship. As they neared completion of the canal, sea ice
began forming again at night. Then the floes closed the canal shut for several
days. All hope was about gone, when miraculously, the canal opened up and de
Gerlache commanded to fire up the steam engine and unfurl the sails. The Belgica
began to move and increase in speed. At the end of the man-made canal a
barricade of ice had formed, but there was no turning back. De Gerlache ordered
full steam ahead and the sturdy ship plowed through the ice and into the open
water. Even though they were in an open channel, it took several days of
navigating around the ice to traverse eleven miles to open sea.
After surviving a storm
of biblical proportions at the south end of South America, they finally came to
port in Punta Arenas on March 28, 1899. De Gerlache declared the end to the
expedition and the crew split up as some decided to stay awhile in South
America. Amundsen escorted one of the Norwegian crewmembers, who continued to
remain paranoid, back to Norway. Others went with de Gerlache back to Belgium
where they seemed surprised when treated as heroes. Eventually, the strait which
they discovered was named The Gerlache Strait.
To this day, the
scientific value of the expedition continues to be seen. Many of the animal
specimens and organisms discovered have been kept in Belgian repositories. The
diaries of the crew are detailed, and Cook’s has special value in showing how
he dealt with the men’s physical and mental strain.
As for the three main
leaders of the expedition, Adrien de Gerlache never returned to Antarctica or
led any polar expeditions, but played a role as advisor to future polar expeditions
and to shipbuilders. Dr. Frederick Cook led an expedition to the North Pole and
claimed to be the first person to discover it – but without corroborating
evidence, scientists and publishers discounted the claim. Cook eventually was
convicted for unrelated financial fraud and sent to prison. Roald Amundsen
decided to set his sights on the discovery of the South Pole and in 1911 led a
group that claimed the South Pole before Scott’s ill-fated English expedition
was second to the South Pole but perished on their return route.
The author of Madhouse
at the End of the Earth, Julian Sancton, shares his thoughts in Author’s
Note at the end of the book. His excitement at finding the diaries, the
scientific information and descendants of de Gerlache resonated with me as a
writer of non-fiction. Sancton wanted to experience the Antarctic, so he
boarded the Hebridean Sky (the same ship my brother-in-law and his wife
took in December 2022) to experience the Gerlache Strait and the edges of the
Antarctica continent. He spent a week in the Antarctic summer, viewing (in
color) the same scenes in the black and white photos taken by Cook in 1898.
Sancton could only imagine what it was like to struggle to survive, day after
day, in the dark and seemingly unending Antarctic winter of 1898.
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Cruise Ship in Antarctica - 2022
(photo image courtesy of Michael Farley) |
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