In the absence of easily accessible natural resources to exploit, stories were what polar explorers extracted from these barren icescapes. And the best stories weren’t the ones in which everything went well. [loc. 2192]
An enimently readable account (I stayed up past midnight to finish it!) of a Belgian expedition towards Antarctica from 1897 to 1899. The leader of the expedition was aristocrat Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery (not a born leader): Roald Amundsen (later the first person to reach the South Pole) was the first mate, and Frederick Cook (later to claim that he'd been the first person to reach the North Pole) was surgeon and photographer, with a side order of anthropology. Georges Lecointe, the captain, was temperamental and threw a live cat (named Sverdrup) overboard. Various members of the crew shot albatrosses. Is it any wonder the expedition suffered from scurvy, mental illness and mutiny? I think not.
Madhouse at the End of the Earth opens with Amundsen visiting Cook in Leavenworth, where he'd been imprisoned for fraud since 1923. Sancton's account of the expedition is also, in part, a vindication and celebration of Cook: without him, and his knowledge of Inuit diet and the symptoms and treatment of scurvy, it seems probable that the expedition would have vanished in the icy waters of the Weddell Sea, where Gerlache had deliberately sailed the ship into pack ice, so as to overwinter there. 'Despite its dangers—rather, because of its dangers—an imprisonment in the ice would solve each of those problems. It wouldn’t cost any more money, de Gerlache wouldn’t lose any men—at least not to desertion—and it would make for a dramatic story.' [loc. 2185]. Gerlache was very much aware of how the story would be reported, and the importance of good press. Cook -- a natural problem-solver who devised gruesome fenders made of penguin corpses to protect the hull from the ice -- was fascinated by the Antarctic: his work as zoologist and botanist identified many new species. And Amundsen, still in his twenties, was determined to prepare for polar expeditions of his own.
Sancton brings the Belgica's crew to life: the hard cases, the anti-scorbutic diet (rat meat would be fine, human meat wouldn't, because humans can't synthesise their own vitamin C), the moments of levity (Lecointe trying to insert the roll for the Belgian national anthem in the coelophone (barrel organ) while drunk, and putting it in backwards), the increasingly fragile mental and physical health of the crew members. The Belgica didn't make it to the Pole, but it did overwinter with only two four deaths (one man overboard, one man with pre-existing heart condition: one cat monstrously thrown overboard, the other cat -- named Nansen, though female -- dying of kidney disease) and considerable gains to Antarctic science.
I bought this in September 2021, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.
Though Cook is remembered today -- if he is remembered at all -- as the charlatan who lied about reaching the North Pole, he may yet find redemption in the next phase of human exploration: manned missions to Mars... Cook’s observations, his warnings, his ad hoc remedies and recommendations, have directly influenced NASA operating procedures. [loc. 5245]
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