The commandant had to be rid of four of his insolent crew early on. The men carried on early in the voyage in Punta Arenas, drinking hard and fighting in all-night revelries. He was a poor disciplinarian, giving in to the crew’s demands and making scenarios ripe for mutinies by an emboldened crew. The trip started badly, with de Gerlache not well able to discipline his feisty crew. He wrote in a journal, “Could there be a more melancholy, a more maddening, or a more hopeless region than this? Storms, tempests and steady howling winds with snow are our constant lot …The sky is always cloudy and dirty the air is always wet, cold and agitated under such circumstances the human mind assumes a like attitude.” Frederick Cook, the ship’s photographer, was also a fine writer. The author hunted up the crew’s logs and diaries, and readers will wonder whether the shipmates will collide with the bottom of the ocean or escape and return to Belgium awash in glory.ĭr. Sancton has turned this saga into an adventure that becomes quickly horrific. “The combination of fear, fatigue, depression and disorientation, darkness and isolation and the risk that the Belgica might be crushed in the ice at any moment, and the monotony of days that dragged on … the infestation of rats, the ship-wide illness with no obvious cause made most of the men feel as if they were losing their grip on sanity.” The voyagers were not prepared for the months of endless, sunless days. One cat’s fate at the hands of the commandant was sealed early when de Gerlache was so sick he threw the poor beast overboard, forcing all on board to hear the yowling for many minutes. Everyone aboard from the bridge to the hatch to the engine room and the top deck suffered from seasickness. In short order, the vessel withstood storms from the Bay of Biscay near France, making the ship whiplash wildly. Only 13 Belgians, 10 foreigners and two cats were aboard. The men were setting off for uncharted lands, unknown waters. The ship, the Belgica, set off from Belgium in 1897 amid flourishes, firing cannons and jovial music playing to the pleasure of hundreds in the port. He writes about culture and travel for Departures magazine as a senior features editor and is reported to have written from all seven continents. “Madhouse at the End of the Earth” author Julian Sancton has written a masterpiece.
Going to the continent of Antarctica (on a three-year voyage) may not be everyone’s idea of a great time - although more than 50,000 people cruised to the continent during the austral summer in 2018-2019 - but for commandant Adrien de Gerlache, 31, who amazingly never learned to swim, and a handful of sailors, it was their longstanding dream.
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