Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey Into the Dark Antarctic Night

Julian Sancton reconstructs the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899, the first to endure an Antarctic winter, tracing the fates of three men: the expedition's leader, Adrien de Gerlache; its American surgeon, Frederick Cook; and its Norwegian first mate, Roald Amundsen.

The book opens in January 1926 at Leavenworth penitentiary, where a 60-year-old prisoner, once a celebrated polar explorer and now convicted of fraud, received a visit from the conqueror of the South Pole. The two men had served together aboard a small ship called the Belgica on a journey to Antarctica that taught them how cold and darkness can destroy the human mind. Their fates diverged drastically, but the bond forged in the ice endured.

The narrative moves to August 16, 1897, when Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery, a 31-year-old Belgian naval officer from an aristocratic dynasty, watched more than 20,000 people line the Antwerp riverfront to salute the Belgica's departure. De Gerlache had framed the expedition as both scientific and patriotic, raising funds and purchasing a Norwegian whaling ship. Staffing proved difficult, forcing him to hire foreigners after Belgian scientists dropped out. Key recruits included Captain Georges Lecointe, a celestial navigation expert; Emile Danco, de Gerlache's childhood friend; and Roald Amundsen, a 24-year-old Norwegian appointed first mate. De Gerlache departed without a doctor but received a telegram from Dr. Cook in Brooklyn offering to join.

Born into poverty, Cook put himself through medical school, lost his first wife and infant daughter, and joined Robert Peary's 1891–92 Arctic expedition to Greenland as surgeon and ethnologist. There he learned Inuit survival skills and observed the psychological toll of the polar winter night. After failing to fund his own expedition, Cook cabled de Gerlache and was invited to meet the ship in Rio de Janeiro.

The voyage south was plagued by crew problems. Ethnic tensions divided Belgians and Norwegians, and one sailor brandished a revolver during a breakdown before Amundsen tackled him. Cook boarded the Belgica in Rio, speaking no French, but his polar credentials quickly won the men over. In Montevideo and Punta Arenas, discipline collapsed as fights erupted and sailors defied orders; de Gerlache removed several troublemakers, all Belgian, leaving more foreigners than Belgians aboard.

In Tierra del Fuego, the Belgica ran aground in the Beagle Channel for 22 hours before a desperate effort freed her. Crossing the Drake Passage, tragedy struck: During a storm on January 22, 1898, 20-year-old sailor Carl August Wiencke was swept overboard. Lecointe leaped into the freezing water and grabbed him, but Wiencke's waterlogged weight pulled free, and the crew watched helplessly as the young man sank.

On January 23, the men sighted Antarctica for the first time. De Gerlache discovered a previously unknown channel, later named the Gerlache Strait, and over three weeks the expedition made 20 landings, cataloging hundreds of species. Cook and Amundsen survived a harrowing climb through hidden crevasses on Brabant Island, cementing their friendship.

By mid-February, delays had made the expedition's primary goals unreachable. De Gerlache polled the officers about wintering in the ice; everyone opposed it. Cook considered entrapment in drifting pack ice far more dangerous than wintering on land. But de Gerlache was drawn by the potential glory of becoming the first to winter south of the antarctic circle, and an icebound winter would require no additional funds. On February 28, he confided his intentions to Lecointe, who agreed. The Belgica raced into the ice, and by March 5 the ship was stuck fast.

The crew slowly grasped what had happened. De Gerlache and Lecointe deceived the men about the ship's coordinates, reporting false positions suggesting drift toward freedom. The ship became a cramped home, its wardroom the social center. Cook began observing his shipmates anthropologically, noting the effects of confinement and monotony.

The sun set for the last time on May 16, beginning roughly 70 days of darkness. Depression, listlessness, and cognitive decline spread through the crew. Danco's pre-existing heart condition worsened, and on June 5 he died. At the funeral, the crew tipped his weighted body into a crevasse in the ice; the corpse briefly stood upright before sinking, horrifying the men.

Cook labeled the affliction "polar anaemia" and hypothesized that it stemmed from the absence of sunlight. He ordered sick men to stand before blazing fires, the first known instance of light therapy. Recognizing scurvy, a condition caused by vitamin C deficiency, he prescribed fresh penguin or seal meat eaten as rare as possible, drawing on Inuit dietary practices. De Gerlache refused to eat penguin, and his refusal emboldened other skeptics. Those who followed Cook's regimen recovered; those who refused continued to deteriorate.

Around July 22, the men caught the first glimpse of the returning sun. Cook, Amundsen, and Lecointe formed a fraternal order called the Order of the Penguin and departed on a sledging expedition, but the pack fractured beneath them, stranding the three on a shrinking floe for days before they could return.

Daylight failed to reverse the crew's decline. The sailor Jan Van Mirlo lost his hearing and speech in a hysterical crisis. The boatswain Adam Tollefsen descended into paranoia. Lecointe tested the tonite explosives, a reserve intended for blasting through ice, and discovered most had been ruined. Amundsen discovered a contract clause requiring command to pass to a Belgian rather than to him; he formally resigned, though he continued his duties.

Cook warned that a second winter would kill several men. He proposed digging trenches to weaken the ice with sunlight, but the plan failed. De Gerlache then proposed sawing a 700-meter canal to open water. Two round-the-clock shifts cut through ice more than a meter thick while Lecointe discovered the tonite worked in warmer temperatures. The labor paradoxically improved the men's health as they consumed massive quantities of fresh meat.

On January 30, with the canal nearly complete, a crevasse split the floe and crushed weeks of work. Amundsen proposed dragging whaleboats across the ice to reach the Gerlache Strait, but rats that had boarded the ship in Punta Arenas had destroyed the reserve of winter clothing. De Gerlache conceded defeat, yet the men continued sawing. On February 12, Lecointe detonated tonite against the ice gripping the stern, and the Belgica rammed through to open water. After battling through remaining pack for two weeks, the ship passed the last sea ice on March 14, 1899, and arrived in Punta Arenas on March 28.

Sancton traces the expedition's aftermath. De Gerlache returned to Belgium to a hero's welcome but never returned to Antarctica. Tollefsen was committed to a mental institution near Kristiania (now Oslo) for the rest of his life. Amundsen applied methods refined aboard the Belgica and Inuit practices Cook had first adopted in Greenland to sail the Northwest Passage (1903–1906), then raced to the South Pole, reaching it on December 14, 1911, 34 days ahead of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who perished on the return. Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908, but the claim was discredited; he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to nearly 15 years at Leavenworth. Amundsen visited him there in 1926 and disappeared on June 18, 1928, during an Arctic rescue mission. Sancton notes that the expedition's scientific legacy and Cook's observations about polar isolation continue to inform Antarctic research and preparations by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for missions to Mars.