It’s not until later in the book that Sancton reveals a twist that changes Amundsen’s role and his relationship with de Gerlache.Īnd, as with any great adventure novel, these early tensions brilliantly set up what’s to come. The inability of de Gerlache to control his crew followed him as they continued south: “Since the Belgica had no official naval commission … he could not threaten a court-martial or keep offenders in shackles … It was not easy to keep control of a fractious, multilingual, multinational crew.” The most de Gerlache could do was fire the men, which ended up leaving him with more foreigners than Belgians on board when they left Punta Arenas.Īmundsen, in fact, was better prepared than his commandant, having studied French and Flemish before the expedition, and it served him well amid what Cook would later describe as the “language of the Belgica”-a mix of Flemish, German, and Norwegian. The expedition’s problems began immediately, with seasickness and fighting among the crew, which intensified in the ports along the way, where liquor was readily available. He also took a chance on a young, inexperienced adventurer who’d sent him a letter asking to be part of the expedition: Amundsen would be named first mate. After the doctor he’d hired dropped out, de Gerlache turned to a telegram from Cook that he’d initially dismissed, deciding that giving Cook a chance was better than having no doctor onboard at all.

And, in fact, the addition of Cook and Amundsen were almost accidental. The expedition was significant in that “Belgium, little Belgium … was staking a claim to the next frontier of Antarctic exploration”-yet for many reasons, de Gerlache couldn’t sail with an all-Belgian crew. The Belgica set sail in August of 1897 with the goal of reaching the South Magnetic Pole, at the 75 th parallel. The intriguing prologue, a 1926 meeting at Leavenworth penitentiary between Cook and Amundsen, sets the tone for the unpredictable journey onboard the Belgica years earlier. And this book is almost as much about two not-yet-famous members of the crew-Frederick Cook, the American doctor and Roald Amundsen, who would later be the first reach to the South Pole-as it is about de Gerlache and the Belgica expedition.

Book madhouse at the end of the earth