MADHOUSE AT THE END OF THE EARTH

THE BELGICA’S JOURNEY INTO THE DARK ANTARCTIC NIGHT

JULIAN SANCTON

WH Allen, 368pp, £20

What a story! In 1897, a Belgian expedition led by Baron Adrien de Gerlache, in the ship Belgica, was the first to winter in the Antarctic, where trapped in ice, the crew, ill-equipped and short of food, were forced to survive the coldest months. Julian Sancton’s book was hailed by critics as a huge success, telling the story of snow madness and heroism with panache and with a novelist’s eye for gripping detail.

In the Guardian, Geoff Dyer filled in the background. Belgium’s ‘lack of any tradition of polar exploration lent an allure to De Gerlache’s undertaking, however it also made it difficult for him to raise funds or find personnel. He ended up recruiting a ramshackle, multinational team of scientists and sailors: essentially anyone who was ambitious, up for adventure or lacked more tempting offers.’ Among the group, however, two leaders emerged: a young Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, who went on to be the first man at the South Pole, and a ‘dodgy yankee’ doctor called Frederick Cook.

In the Times, Sue Prideaux described the horror. ‘Realising that their lives depended entirely on the whim of the Antarctic ice pack, the men’s minds became unmoored. They became prisoners of perpetual dark, with mirages so common they learnt not to trust their eyes. Suspended in torturous insomnia, tormented by the squeaking of the ever-multiplying rats, the groaning of the ship, the roar and crack of moving ice, and unexplained screams …’ They were saved by Cook who spotted the symptoms of scurvy and prescribed a diet of raw seal blood which saved them. Sancton’s account is ‘captivating’, according to Michael Thomas Barry in the New

York Journal of Books: ‘One can almost feel the sting of the Antarctic coldness and imagine the endless darkness and despair as it wraps its brutal shroud upon the crew.’