And then they are stuck, with no choice but to wait for the sun to return and the ice to free the Belgica from its grip.
The days shorten and soon turn into endless night. Photograph: © De Gerlache Family CollectionĪs the journey gets stranger the leader’s log for this period becomes “a chronicle of slow but inexorable constriction”. Commandant Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery, during the expedition. They head into a world of alien and constantly changing beauty in which the fantastically real is all the time shifting into the unreality of a mirage: De Gerlache is convinced that he can see “a city by the sea”, complete with lighthouse. A crew member is swept overboard in a storm. Not for the last time, the Belgica proves resilient beyond expectations and they get clear, moving on to greater, undefined dangers. Displaying the calm decision-making of a leader under pressure, De Gerlache runs through his options – and bursts into tears. A booze-fuelled mutiny is narrowly averted and the ship runs aground before they have even put the tip of South America behind them. So a team defined by a lack of national unity or shared purpose sets off in the doughty Belgica and it’s not long before things start going wrong. 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. The country’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. Belgium was then fully engaged in what Conrad would call the “vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration” in the tropics of the Congo.
The expedition had been led by Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery with the intention either of finding the magnetic south pole or, failing that, just creeping as far south as possible.
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