Trapped in Ice: The Epic Ordeal of the Belgica Antarctic Expedition

“We are all in a madhouse.” These were the unambiguous words that one of the crew members of the Belgica summed up the atmosphere on board in the spring of 1898. The ship had then been immobile for several weeks, wedged in metres-thick polar ice, in Antarctic waters somewhere on the fringes of the known world. Eighteen men, adventurers, explorers, scientists and sailors, had been pushed to the brink of survival and survivability in an inaccessible and mysterious landscape by a mixture of adventure addiction and honourable ambition.

They were part of an expedition which, under the leadership of the Belgian Captain Adrien de Gerlach, set out on a multi-year voyage through the then unexplored parts of Antarctica. Not only did they want to penetrate further south than anyone had ever done before, de Gerlache wanted to circumnavigate Antarctica, then the greatest geographical unknown, which on maps was just a shapeless mass, to map it and to reach the South Magnetic Pole.

But that was a no-brainer. A proud expedition of bold and confident young men turned into a terrifying nightmare that robbed most of them of their youth, health and sanity. For almost a year, the ship was trapped in perpetual ice in the middle of a vast, frozen and seemingly limitless whiteness from which there was no physical or mental escape. Their bodies began to decompose due to unbearable weather conditions, illness and inactivity, and depression, melancholy and apathy took hold of their minds.

However, as the crew included some remarkable individuals with almost inhuman survival skills, the ghost ship and its captives miraculously overcame the ice, the cold, the sickness and the hopelessness. The story of the exploits and adventures of the Belgica is full of lessons about the complexity of human characters and relationships, and the importance of perseverance, resourcefulness and, ultimately, hope.

The Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-1899 was an extraordinary one before it even set sail from the port of Antwerp on 16 August 1897. It was the first expedition of its kind to be led by a small and young Belgium (it had gained independence from the Netherlands in 1830), with barely more than sixty kilometres of coastline and a virtually non-existent navy and fleet.

It was essentially scientific and exploratory. It brought on board a large number of scientists and officers from several countries, since the small size of Belgium made it impossible to provide enough qualified and experienced Belgian personnel. It also became the first truly international and multilingual naval expedition.

At the same time, it marked the beginning of the so-called heroic age of Antarctic exploration, which by 1922 had seen seventeen expeditions from ten countries and the achievement of both the magnetic and geographical South Pole. The latter was first reached in 1911 by one of the most famous polar explorers of all time, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. He was later the first to cross the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

And it was Amundsen who was one of the men who, at the start of his exploration career, was hardened in Belgium. He stood out not only for courage and endurance worthy of his Viking ancestors, but also for his almost obsessive need to test his physical limits. As he wrote in his diary, he enjoyed suffering and voluntarily subjected himself to ever new physical exertions. He saw this as necessary preparation for a future in which he wanted to achieve many new records, which he later did.

But perhaps the most tragic hero of this story, Captain Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery, a Belgian aristocrat and baron, was not able to achieve all his life’s goals. He was driven by a desire for achievement, alongside an insatiable appetite for navigation and the oceans. He wanted to prove himself to members of his powerful Belgian family, to his fellow citizens and to the financial backers of the expedition, but above all he feared how he would be treated by the media if he failed.

It was this fear that drove him to make one of the most rash and fatal decisions that led to the ship being stuck in the ice. This move cost the reclusive and reclusive de Gerlach not only his own health but also his peace of mind. He blamed himself for endangering the lives of the crew and indirectly causing the death of his most loyal follower on board and long-time childhood friend, Émile Danec.

The third main figure in this expedition saga was the eccentric, imaginative and self-sacrificing American doctor Frederick Cook. It is to him that most of the credit must go for the men’s escape from the grip of madness and disastrous physical debility. When the three-month polar night fell and the clock struck the hour, Cook provided physical and cerebral recreation, invented the first light therapy and introduced a dietary regime that cured the crew of scurvy. In the end, it was he who was instrumental in saving the ship from the ice ring. Dr Cook never knew how to put the gun to the corn.

Despite failing to meet its original objectives, the expedition made history as the first to overwinter in Antarctica and successfully return home. In addition, over the course of two years, its scientists collected hundreds of new specimens of fauna and flora, discovered and mapped countless new islands, bays, straits, reefs, glaciers, explored the geological structure of the continent and made numerous meteorological and oceanographic measurements. But more than its scientific contributions, Belgium remains famous for the stories that its fate has written.

The unknown Antarctica

The southernmost and most remote continent, fifth in size among the continents with a surface area of 14 million square kilometres, was the one that most attracted adventurers at the end of the 19th century because of its inaccessibility and mystery. Some 1 000 kilometres from the southernmost tip of South America, it was the least known part of the world at the time, and although some successful expeditions had visited the Antarctic region in the decades before, they had not been able to penetrate its heart and chart its coastline, let alone its interior.

The conditions there are the most hostile and extreme for human survival. On this highest, driest, coldest and windiest continent, virtually completely covered by an average ice cover of more than two kilometres thick, temperatures plummet to minus 90°C, winds blow up to a hundred metres per second, while the polar night descends for long, monotonous months. Divided into a larger East Antarctica and a smaller West Antarctica, it completely encircles the South Pole.

Thinking about what lies in the far south of the planet preoccupied the ancient Greeks, who were convinced that the northern hemisphere they knew must be balanced by a similar mass in the south. This belief has endured for centuries, as its name – Antarctica, the counterpart of the Arctic – suggests.

It was almost certainly reached by the Polynesians in their incredibly seaworthy and robust canoes in the 7th century AD. Then, from the 17th century onwards, it was only occasionally on the list of explorers, whalers, sealers and pirates due to inhospitality.

James Cook, on his second voyage (1772-1775), crossed the South Pole for the first time, and at the same time discovered that what was then called Terra Australis did not occupy most of the southern hemisphere, as had been assumed. The landmass that he did not see did exist, but it was supposed to be much smaller.

It was first sighted by the Russians around 1820, and it was also the first landfall of American whalers, driven there by the desire to make money, in the same period. In the mid-19th century, the Americans realised that it was a continent in its own right, surrounded by sea, unlike the Arctic, which is a frozen sea surrounded by continents. But they did not penetrate further than its shores, and the imagination was increasingly stirred by the wonder of what lay within. And so Antarctica became the most coveted prize for explorers, drawn by its very treachery.

After half a century of the first expeditions to Antarctica, all the world’s major geographical associations agreed that the time had come for a new era of exploration, and at the 6th International Geographical Congress in 1895, they made it a priority for the rest of the century. A fierce chase for laurels began.

But such feats came at an astronomical price, which made it all the more extraordinary that a small and inexperienced Belgium should stand alongside the great maritime powers. At that time, it was already making a big show of its international ambitions in Africa, where the insatiable King Leopold II had just acquired the vast territory of the Congo for his own possession.

Antarctic fever did not only grip geographers and adventurers, but was also omnipresent in the popular consciousness. In popular culture, it was immortalised in the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by the famous Jules Verne. In 1897, he began to write a new series of stories about Antarctica, such as The Sphinx of Ice and The Secret of Antarctica.

And that was the year Belgium entered the world’s list of polar expeditions. Captain Adrien de Gerlach, who had dreamed of his own expedition for years, managed to put all the pieces of the complex puzzle together, starting with securing sufficient financial support.

A small Belgium with big ambitions

Coming from one of Belgium’s most prominent noble families, and whose relatives were involved in the founding of the country, de Gerlache had an unusual fascination with ships from an early age. He spent hours building miniature ships and, in his teens, trained as a common sailor on foreign ocean liners.

As a member of the admittedly small Belgian Navy, he soon became one of its greatest hopes, with a particular talent for reading winds and currents. His father was disappointed by his lack of interest in a military career, so the shy and introverted boy spent his life trying to prove to his father that he could prove himself in other ways. The pressure he put on himself almost buried him.

But on 16 August 1897, standing on the bow of the freshly painted, newly rigged 35-metre trimaran with the meaningful name of Belgica, bobbing impatiently in the mouth of the Scheldt River in Antwerp, he glowed. On that day, which marked the official start of the expedition and for which he had waited all his life, the 31-year-old was a Belgian national hero. In addition to the 20 000-strong crowd, his family came to greet and admire him, saying goodbye to the budding seafarer on board his ship.

In a way, this was already the pinnacle of de Gerlach’s career, as the expedition was entirely his own doing. For three years he had planned every detail, promoted his ideas, asked for money, recruited the crew, procured and recorded supplies. It was to last two years, wintering in Australia in between and returning to Antarctica in the spring.

Against all expectations, he first secured the support of the Belgian Royal Geographical Society, to which he presented his ideas in 1895. He portrayed the expedition as a scientific exploration, promising new findings and evidence in geology, zoology, botany, oceanography and meteorology, measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field, the study of the poorly understood phenomenon of the southern lights, and the mapping of the coastline as far as Victoria, on the opposite side of the planet. This was a place that had been reached decades before by the British explorer James Clark Ross, whose southern record – 78°09′ latitude – de Gerlache was aiming to break.

But the members of the prestigious geographical association offered little more than symbolic support for the expedition. He had to look elsewhere for the necessary funds, estimated at 1.8 million dollars in today’s money. Most similar expeditions have fallen down on this very test.

De Gerlach was saved at the last moment by a last-minute contribution from Belgium’s richest tycoon, industrialist, inventor and philanthropist, Ernest Solvay. As he wrote his cheque, other donations began to trickle in, and then de Gerlache remembered another remarkable gesture and asked his fellow citizens for help. He received hundreds of contributions, ranging from five francs to several thousand francs.

With the money raised, he was finally able to afford a sailing boat. When he saw a battered and aged Norwegian whaler called Patria, it was love at first sight. His instincts proved correct and the durable steamer, renamed Belgica, played a key role in the success of the expedition after her conversion from whaler to research vessel.

On the day of departure, the ship was so loaded with supplies, coal and miscellaneous equipment that it could barely rise above sea level. It was also carrying half a tonne of tonite explosive, which is said to be more powerful than dynamite in fighting ice. At first sight, it looked as if de Gerlache had thought of everything.

The Belgian national anthem was played, flags were waved and cannon volleys were fired. Such moments of national greatness were rare in the short history of the young country, and even behind the inexpressive facade of de Gerlach’s confident face, strong emotions were rising.

As his parents were leaving the ship, he gave them one last quick glance, waved to the crowds, shouted “Vive la Belgique!”, then looked out to sea.

De Gerlache and his crew were now on their own.

And who were these men who were prepared to put their lives on the line for glory and adventure?

A crew from a dream or hell?

De Gerlache was less lucky in recruiting crew members than in logistical and administrative matters. This was due, on the one hand, to his innate inability and lack of interest in understanding the human character and, on the other, to a shortage of suitably qualified candidates. De Gerlache was reluctant to accept foreigners into his team, convinced that he would quickly become a target for the Belgian media.

When the expedition became international, he was indeed vilified in the newspapers, but this was nothing compared to the escalation of tensions between Belgian and foreign crew members in the early months of the expedition.

One of the first to join the expedition was the loyal Émile Danco, who not only did not ask for payment but even contributed his own funds. He was joined by two other scientists, Henryk Arctowski, a brilliant Polish chemist and geologist, only 23 years old, but already well established, and, on his recommendation, the Romanian zoologist Emil Racovitza. The former was serious and strict, the latter good-natured and amusing, which often helped to shorten the long and monotonous Antarctic hours.

As crew members, de Gerlache easily recruited a number of enthusiastic and rugged Norwegians with experience of surviving in extreme weather, navigating between ice floes and icebergs, and polar skiing.

In July 1896, he received a letter, the contents of which so intrigued him that he wanted to meet the writer as soon as possible: “/…/ I am 24 years old, have taken part in many expeditions, have all the necessary qualifications, including a navigation examination, the best possible medical certificate, and I can ski perfectly well…”.

The undersigned’s name was Roald Amundsen. Despite the fact that Amundsen had applied for the post of ordinary seaman, de Gerlache appointed the muscular 90-kilogram modern Viking as first mate.

Amundsen’s life was largely guided by the example of his father, a brave captain about whom many legends circulated. He died at sea when Roald was 14 years old. All his other role models were adventurers – from the tragic Arctic explorer John Franklin, ‘the man who ate his boots’, who commanded the ships Terror and Erebus, which were crushed by ice and claimed many lives while attempting to cross the Northwest Passage, to Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian national hero.

Nansen crossed Greenland on skis, trapped in the ice by boat and spent the winter in a stone hut he built himself, feeding on bears and walruses, among other things. Amundsen’s desire to be subjected to similar ordeals bordered on obsession. “Strangely enough, it was the suffering of the crew that attracted me most in Franklin’s story. I had a strange desire to go through such suffering myself.”

From his teens onwards, he systematically tested his physical and mental capacities in preparation for a future in which he saw himself as the leader of his own expeditions. He dropped out of school, he had no interest in women, but instead slept with the window open in winter, skied for hours on icy plateaux during the dark winter months, buried himself in snow while resting, and so on. But because he also needed ship experience, he signed up for the de Gerlach expedition. He even learnt French and Flemish to be up to the challenge.

Two months before departure, Georges Lecointe, another of the rising hopes of the Belgian Navy, joined the expedition. He became captain of the Belgian, second only to de Gerlach in the hierarchy. Unlike the (too) calm captain, Lecointe was a natural leader, open, enthusiastic, approachable and likeable.

But still, the ship was missing the man with the most indispensable profession – a doctor. Once again, fate had intervened. He received the following telegram: “May I join your expedition in Montevideo, bringing Arctic equipment and some Eskimo dogs? Dr. Cook.”

Frederick Cook was a 32-year-old general practitioner from Brooklyn, by then already well-known for his participation in the Arctic expedition of Robert Peary, who had set out to reach the northern limits of Greenland a few years earlier. Cook’s story is typical of the American dream come true. A descendant of immigrants, he worked hard to build his way out of poverty through entrepreneurship, perseverance and an incredible talent for creative problem-solving.

He started earning money at the age of twelve by working in factories, and he also went to school diligently. Later, he took on new businesses as fast as he could, selling them as soon as they became successful and starting new ones. At the same time, he trained as a doctor and tried to establish himself as a family father, but his young wife and baby died tragically.

He tried to heal his heartbreak by escaping as far as possible into the unknown. So it was on board Peary’s ship that he left New York for the first time, completely unskilled in seamanship and unprepared for polar conditions.

Cook had an incredible survival instinct and immediately proved himself in the difficult and unpredictable conditions. Few men have been able to outwit death so many times. Among other things, one night while sleeping outdoors, he was buried in snow and barely escaped from his snow-covered grave with his nerves steady enough to save him from imminent death.

In addition to his humility before the forces of nature, he felt a renewed passion for life and devoted himself completely to acquiring practical skills – building igloos, tanning animal skins, cross-country skiing, dog sledding and observing the Inuit way of life and eating. And he began to dream of his own expedition.

He was drawn to the icy polar peaks by an inexplicable magnetism and an unquenchable thirst for adventure, unusual for a family doctor from the American suburbs. His thoughts wandered mainly to the unexplored Antarctic, as he sensed the same opportunity as de Gerlache. He too presented plans for an expedition almost identical to de Gerlache’s, raising money and seeking sponsors through lectures on his Arctic experiences.

He had almost succeeded in persuading the famous tycoon and financial giant Andrew Carnegie, but he changed his mind at the last minute because he did not consider the proposal profitable enough. Cook’s expedition was thus adrift. He asked his late wife’s sister to marry him and tried to settle into a quiet family routine. Then he saw de Gerlach’s advertisement in the newspaper and his life never returned to normal.

The same was true for all the other crew members, who were not (yet) aware of this.

A bad trip

Immediately after sailing, they turned their attention to much more trivial matters, namely quarrels and alcohol. Initially, there were thirteen Belgians and ten foreigners on board and there was immediate hostility and suspicion between the two camps. The hot-blooded Belgians took every opportunity to engage in patriotic banter and stereotypical insults at the expense of other peoples. “These foreigners, God damn them, they want to be better than us Belgians!” A poor chef, whose only sin was to eat monotonous food, was beaten bloody because he was French.

The first big mistake of the commander of the expedition was not to interfere in such conflicts, which quickly took on unnecessary proportions. De Gerlache was undoubtedly an excellent seaman, but on the other hand he was reserved and haughty and, when it came to managing relations, a particularly insecure leader.

Criticisms of his leadership (in)abilities multiplied rapidly. In the absence of authority, resentments built up between the men and they regularly fist-bumped each other. Captain Lecointe was the first to discipline them and, together with Amundsen and Cook, they soon became a natural leadership trio.

Discipline problems always occurred close to land, which attracted sailors with temptations such as public houses and pubs. They would leave the deck without permission and return drunk and hot. During a stopover in Rio de Janeiro, they jealously looked at luxury sailing ships and compared their seemingly clumsy and outdated ship to them. This, of course, did not help to improve the atmosphere.

The chaos continued during the next stopover in Montevideo, and was even worse in the Chilean port of Punta Arenas, where the ship arrived on 1 December 1897 through the Strait of Magellan, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Punta Arenas was a place of total anarchy, every other building was without a building, and the men there tasted their last moments of freedom. Some of them were so given over to debauchery and alcohol that their brakes gave way completely and a mutiny almost broke out.

De Gerlache even asked the Chilean port authorities to intervene. Some of the most troublesome sailors and even the cook were simply dismissed, a few deserted and the crew was reduced to a mere nineteen men. It was completed by much more unwelcome visitors – rats.

Then it soon got real and the men forgot their nationality overnight.

On their way around the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, they encountered their first severe storms. The back winds pounded against the side of the ship, tossing it about so much that the men could not stay on their feet, and huge waves swamped the deck and with it the galley and laboratories.

While others were plagued by seasickness, de Gerlache came back to life. Finally, he had the chance to show his mettle. He steered the Belgica through the storm with such determination and expertise that no one ever again doubted his navigational skills. The ship also proved to be an excellent ship, responding to commands and executing complex manoeuvres with agility.

By the time the ship entered the dangerous waters of Tierra del Fuego, it had accumulated so many delays that it became clear that it would be difficult to reach its desired destination of Victoria Land, on the other side of Antarctica, in time. The journey was also slowed down by the two budding scientists Racovitza and Arctowski, who wanted to study every unexplored patch of land in detail and examine every blade of grass. Since the expedition was essentially scientific, de Gerlache could not stop them from doing so.

Amundsen enjoyed himself too, swimming in cold mountain streams, climbing every icy peak and crawling over dangerous narrow ridges. Cook, in his role as ship’s photographer and amateur anthropologist, managed to take beautiful and priceless photographs of the Ona.

Indescribably beautiful

The men celebrated their first Christmas on board the ship with excitement and anticipation of the adventures to come. The captain even surprised them with a Christmas tree and presents, and they looked forward to them like little children. The atmosphere was unforgettable – fraternal and warm, with grog drinking and music.

In January 1898, they had one last contact with civilisation, with the administrators of the penal colony in Argentina, where they replenished their supplies and then took seven days to reach the Antarctic region. De Gerlache led them steadily through dense fog between floating icebergs, and Amundsen wrote: “I cannot help admiring his daring. Always forward. I will follow him to the end and do my best to do my duty.”

When Carl Wiencke, just 17 years old, fell overboard during a fierce storm and they watched in horror as he struggled hopelessly against the raging ice-cold waves, the men were confronted with Antarctic reality for the first time. In its latitudinal zones, hypothermia makes a man pass out within minutes, and when he comes into contact with water he feels not cold but searing pain.

Almost instantly, young Wiencke’s body became grotesquely disfigured, darkened and puffy, even though he had fought to the last. Even after he had given in to the dance of the waves, he was still trying to breathe. The brave Lecointe even jumped in after him, held him around the waist for a few moments, and then the power of the ocean overcame them. The scenes of Wiencke’s agonising death followed the men for many months.

Only a day after his death, they saw a black dot on the horizon, the Antarctic continent. For many, it was the moment when a youthful dream came true. They sailed into Hughes Bay on the north-west coast of Graham Land and immediately began to disembark on previously unknown and uncharted islands.

They soon realised that what few maps of Antarctica existed, and were flawed, were completely wrong. They began to make discovery after discovery, and de Gerlache was already smiling at the thought of the Belgian newspapers reporting it.

Every islet, headland, coastline, fauna and flora was named, and Arctowski and Racovitza chipped away at every rock and scraped off every lichen. Racovitza discovered the only native Antarctic insect, the five-millimetre-long midge, which is still called Belgica antarctica today. But it was, of course, the penguins and their ducking, reminiscent of the human waddling in the first black-and-white films first shown in Europe during this period, that captivated them the most.

Racovitza collected 400 specimens of plants, animals, fungi, algae, lichens and 110 previously unknown species in a few weeks. The ship’s laboratory was like a miniature museum, and he described everything in detail. His work is certainly one of the most important legacies of this expedition.

But what captivated them all the most was the fairy-tale beauty of the landscape and the wonderful play of light among its many ice structures and phenomena. They sailed through gorges with mountains rising up to 1500 metres high, and icebergs glided calmly past them like seemingly friendly ghosts.

The horizon often offered stunning scenes that were nothing more than apparitions or fatamorphoses. This optical phenomenon is caused when light travels through layers of air, which vary in density due to the large differences in temperature. This causes light to refract and bounce, distorting the objects from which it bounces.

Cook, who was in the best physical condition next to Amundsen, was literally jumping from ship to shore, tirelessly pressing the shutter of his camera. His photographs were the first to immortalise Antarctica. He was most fascinated by the icebergs, so different in spite of the same origin.

Icebergs are formed when a part of a glacier breaks off and falls into the sea, which shapes each one differently. More than two thirds of the mountain is deep underwater, where it is influenced by the currents of the sea, which often move differently from the wind. This is why they are so dangerous and unpredictable.

Amundsen quickly realised that he would learn the most from Cook and the two men grew closer and closer. They had similar talents, interests and ambitions. On several occasions, they were on the verge of death while exploring on land. Attached to each other, they were able to pull themselves out of the glacial crevasses into which sometimes one, sometimes the other, had fallen.

Where?

De Gerlache steadily steered the ship southwards, even though the polar winter was drawing dangerously close and the nights were growing longer. They crossed the South Pole at about 66°50′ latitude around 15 February 1898, with considerable delay. They proudly hoisted the Belgian flag, but deep down, most of them were very worried at the sight of the endless ice. All around them they heard the sound of the sea slowly freezing and for the first time they faced the thought of their captivity. Until then, no one had ever wintered south of the Shetland Islands, let alone under the South Pole.

De Gerlache was aware of the risk and knew all too well the tragic fate of the Franklin expedition when, frozen in the Arctic ice in 1840, they all died of cold, starvation and disease. But it was not the lives of his men he had in front of his eyes, but the headlines. For they were still no further south than James Cook a hundred years before or James Clark Ross in 1842. Despite the fact that these two records were achieved on the other side of the hemisphere, de Gerlache wanted to beat them.

He saw the expedition’s only chance of achieving its goals as overwintering in Antarctica and continuing on its planned route in the spring. But when he informally asked his fellow travellers about this, they all objected. This was not in line with the original plan, and they did not have the right equipment, among other things. Even the ever-optimistic Cook was worried: “/…/ we are going deeper and deeper into the Antarctic silence.”

By then, Belgium was already as far south in the Bellingshausen Sea as anyone had ever been. But it was not enough. The calculating de Gerlache was thinking only of how to avoid failure. Captivity in the ice would have added a dramatic complication to the venture, the kind that journalists and people alike were hungry for.

It was also customary at the time for expedition commanders to describe their experiences in memoirs, and the more unusual and poignant these were, the better the books sold. Successful expeditions, where everything went according to plan, were of no interest to anyone.

So the die was cast, the crew of the Belgian was to spend the winter in Antarctica. But de Gerlache dared not reveal the plan to anyone other than Captain Lecoint, who, with a firm handshake and a meaningful look, expressed his support for his superior. The ship thus sailed on southwards without hesitation.

But soon it could go no further south, and on 3 March 1898 the ship was stranded in the white desert, frozen in the middle of a rapidly forming ice sheet. No one knew exactly how big it was or how far they were from land. When the rest of the crew finally realised that it had been a deliberate decision, de Gerlach was accused of treason. He pretended that the rescue from the ice block and the escape back north was at hand. Of course this was not true, both de Gerlache and Lecointe knew that the ship was in fact drifting uncontrollably south-westwards.

Of course, no one had any choice but to accept the situation and soon there was too much to do to bemoan the fate. The ship had to be insulated to protect it from the cold and huge snow banks were built around it to keep the interior at a comfortable temperature.

Trapped in the ice

At the beginning, the mood was pleasant and optimistic, food and drink were plentiful, the men were healthy and eager for adventure. The officers’ room, where they gathered for meals and in the evenings, was fun and loud. Champagne and cognac often flowed in streams, and to break the routine they celebrated everything that could be celebrated, singing, playing the harmonium, telling jokes, and the amusing and talented cartoonist Racovitza delighted them every day with a new caricature.

Dr Cook soon became the most popular of them all, as he was concerned for the well-being of everyone and everything. Every day he checked their physical and mental well-being and took detailed notes of all the findings. What they missed most was the company of women and they were fed up with the soft and mushy food that always tasted the same, despite the different labels on the cans.

Tired of working outside, Cook soon began to worry about the effects of idleness – the men were becoming passive, sleeping longer and avoiding work duties. So he introduced regular trips outdoors and as much exercise as possible. The compulsory walks around the ship became known as ‘fool’s walks’.

Sam’s concern for others soon made him the busiest man on board, always in a good mood and available. He followed a strict routine, exercising, writing, taking photographs and constantly tinkering and improving his various polar equipment. Alongside him, Amundsen was also dedicated, always busy and enthusiastic, even praising the food with superlatives in his diary.

In addition to the monotony that slowly but steadily crept into every moment of the day, the prisoners were also affected by the increasing lack of light. The days were visibly getting shorter and soon merged into one with the night. Life around them faded away, as even the penguins and seals were no longer to be seen. At the same time, there was a constant danger of the ship being crushed by the ice, as indicated by the constant creaking of its wooden frame and floor.

The squealing of the rats, which had multiplied massively since Punta Arenas, echoed throughout the ship. All this took a heavy toll on mental health, and depression set in first, and soon, for many, frenzy and inattention.

Then, on 16 May, the sun disappeared completely from the horizon for seventy days.

Cook noticed increasingly severe indigestion in the men, which he initially attributed to canned food. Regular and detailed medical examinations also showed that the heart rates of most of the crew were becoming erratic and alarmingly high. They were getting weaker and weaker, their muscles were weakening and twitching, and then their face and ankles began to swell. Their skin became oily and they complained of headaches, dizziness, rheumatism and neuralgic pain. Everything pointed to a rapidly progressing general decay of the body and soon also of the spirit.

The men, worried, sulking, ill-tempered and depressed, were sitting around in a tired way, and no longer even wanted to talk. The solitude for which many had longed was not to be found on the small ship.

Cook had expected similar problems to those he had observed during his Arctic voyages, but this time the magnitude was far worse. Initially, he associated them mainly with a lack of light, so he came up with a very special kind of therapy. He invented the first light therapy in history – he persuaded men to expose themselves naked to the heat and light of a ship’s furnace for several hours every day. And indeed, their well-being soon improved, their heartbeats calmed down and some other symptoms disappeared.

But most of the latter remained. And even this mystery was soon solved by the amazing Dr Cook. He found that the crew were suffering from scurvy, a disease that many were convinced had been eradicated since its origins had been identified.

Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, essential for the formation of the protein collagen, which binds the body together. That is why, ever since James Cook’s voyages, ships have been stocked with lemon juice. Sometimes this was replaced by lime concentrate, as de Gerlache did, because they could not take fresh juice on such a long voyage.

But the concentrate soon lost its anti-scorbutic properties, as Dr Cook found out. And, having observed at close quarters the dietary habits of the Inuit, who had not suffered from scurvy in the past, he prescribed a similar diet for the men on the Belgian.

On the brink of survival

He prescribed large quantities of fresh penguin and seal meat and some of them improved immediately. Amundsen, for example, recovered after just a few days. But for Émile the Dane, who had a congenital heart defect, it was too late. He had long languished in front of his colleagues and calmly accepted his imminent death, satisfied that he had achieved something incomprehensible in his short life.

His death hit de Gerlach hardest, who had already been living in almost total isolation. He had already been plagued by depressive tendencies throughout his life, but since the Belgian woman was trapped in the ice, he had spent long hours alone in his spacious cabin. Instead of triumph, he felt regret and guilt for the fate of his men.

When Cook introduced a new diet on board, de Gerlache made another in a series of mistakes – he vehemently defended penguin meat and his scurvy steadily worsened. He did not want to admit that his choice of food and ship’s stores was not the most appropriate.

But then Cook saved Lecoint from death, who woke up one day completely paralysed and delirious. Although even the doctor did not believe he could save him, he did not give in. He put him in front of the stove, fed him with a penguin and kept him under constant supervision. The captain made a miraculous recovery, which finally eased the already very ill de Gerlach.

When the sun came out again after almost three months, the men on board were not the same as before. Weak, decrepit, aged and sick, they welcomed the sun with a desire to be reborn. But for many it was already too late and they had slipped too far into madness or sickness. One of them was so hysterical that he could no longer speak, even though there was nothing wrong with his vocal cords. When he regained his voice, he began to threaten to kill his superior.

Someone else was seized by the haunting and preferred to sleep with the rats in sub-zero temperatures to avoid contact with the others. He never recovered and after his return spent his life in a mental institution.

It was quite clear that most of the men would not survive another winter on the ship. But how to break free from the grip of the several metres of ice that had accumulated around her? There was a resignation to fate among almost everyone on board, except, of course, Cook. Even de Gerlache and Lecointe were still pinning their hopes on the half-tonne of tonite they could use to try to break the ice. But, to their horror, all the weather events had left more than half of it damaged and useless.

There was increasing disagreement between the commander on the one hand and the officers and Cook on the other as to the future of the expedition. His leadership had been in question ever since he took the fateful decision to drive the ship into the ice. Convinced that the ice around the ship would melt and break in the milder summer temperatures, he then tried to stubbornly insist that the ship would continue on its intended course. It would sail across the Pacific to French Polynesia, spend the winter in Australia, and then try to reach the South Magnetic Pole.

It was a utopian idea that was jointly rejected by Cook, Amundsen and Lecointe. The idea was to return to South America as soon as possible to recuperate in Punta Arenas, and then to continue their journey in their own way.

But before they could think about where they were going, they had to get out of the ice prison.

Redemption?

The ice near the ship was indeed about to crack, and Lecointe wanted to speed it up with tonite explosions. But these did not work, and the ice also started to freeze back rapidly. The several kilometres of ice around the ship remained intact, and in the gloomy atmosphere between the snowdrifts, the men were forced to celebrate a second Christmas on board. The exuberant board games, singing, jokes and presents were forgotten. In the silence, only the faint sipping of cognac could be heard.

But who, if not Dr Cook, was pulling new ideas out of his sleeve? Surrender was not an option for him and he forced the crew, and especially the scientists on board, to think with him. The melting of the ice around the ship could be accelerated by the power of the sun, he thought, by digging two V-shaped trenches to the sea.

Work on the trenches started in January, but unfortunately the water immediately froze back where the hole had been made. Despite the plan’s failure, Cook achieved something crucial – he roused men from their stupor and resignation to their fate.

De Gerlache came up with a new plan – he suggested digging a whole canal with ice saws instead of narrow trenches. It was a real construction project and, apart from the expedition itself, his most daring plan, unparalleled in the history of navigation.

They had to saw out plates of a special shape which could then be removed to the bank. The work required unimaginable physical effort from the weakened men, but they found the energy to keep sawing and digging in eight-hour shifts.

Arctowski used his machines to mark out the route where the ice was thinnest, and at the end the channel was to be seven hundred metres long and a hundred wide. Despite the ice often freezing back and being too thick to saw in places, the men were electrified and in better spirits than they had been for months. They also helped themselves to tonite, which this time had the desired effect.

But just a few days before the work was finished, it threatened to be a futile exercise. The ice broke alongside the ship, creating a crack, but it was not large enough to allow escape, but threatened to crush it. At the same time, the channel began to close, and the men watched in horror as the results of weeks of hard work disappeared before their eyes.

On the twelfth of February, they felt a familiar movement, the channel suddenly reopened and the ship was able to set sail after two years. Fearful of getting caught in the ice again, she sailed with all the power she had, crashing into the ice floes with relentless force.

On the twenty-eighth of March 1898, the Belgian was back in Punta Arenas. The men sat for hours on the shore, like little children, splashing about in the shallow water and throwing pebbles into it.

Thoughts of the calvary they had endured were pushed aside, at least for a while. But no one could escape from them. For some it was just one of the polar episodes, for others a lesson in endurance, survival and self-affirmation, and for others it had such tragic consequences that they never recovered.