Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898-1899: A Narrative of the Voyage of the "Belgica" Among Newly Discovered Lands and Over an Unknown sea About th

Frederick Albert Cook (1865 – 1940) was an American explorer, physician, and ethnographer, noted for his disputed claims of having been the first to reach the North Pole in 1908. Cook is also noted for his disputed claim of being the first to ascend Mt. McKinley. Before all this controversy, in 1898 Cook participated in a ground-breaking Belgian expedition to the Antarctica, which Cook narrates in this book.

In 1897, it had been known for over a hundred years that there was a great body of land in the Antarctic region. Belgium was the first country to send an expedition to it, with trained men and proper equipment. The expedition was organised by Lieutenant Adrien de Gerlache, and left Antwerp at the end of August, 1897, in the Belgica, a Norwegian sealer of about 250 tons burden, which had been secured for the purpose. The members of the expedition included seven officers and twelve seamen.

The Belgica, in which the nineteen men belonging to the expedition sailed, was a strong vessel of about two hundred and fifty tons. The sole American belonging to the party, Cook was already known as an Arctic explorer. He shipped as surgeon, anthropologist, and photographer. To these titles he added that of historian, upon publishing this book,Through the First Antarctic Night."

With various researches and various accidents to delay them, the party did not cross the south polar circle until late in the season, when all the signs of approaching winter suggested a retreat to the North unless the explorers were to exceed their programme and winter in the ice. The Commandant, against the wishes of all his comrades, thrust the ship into the freezing pack, but naturally failed to make a high latitude. From the last week of February 1898 to the middle of March 1899 the “ Belgica” drifted helplessly, fast in the frozen ice-floes during a whole year of misery, in the course of which there was much illness and one death.

These men were the first of all mankind to face a South polar winter, which is a far more serious matter than a winter in the Arctic regions, where fresh animal food is comparatively abundant, and whence escape is possible even if the ship be lost. In the South, separated by a vast breadth of stormy ocean from the nearest inhabited land, an accident to the ship or the failure of the stores means certain death; and moreover no one could tell to what degree the rigours of an unknown climate might extend. They found the Antarctic climate much severer than the same latitude in the north. It was so intensely cold that if they were exposed for a short time ice caps formed over the metal pegs on the inner side of the soles of their shoes.

Fog and storm made up most of weather during the Belgicas fourteen months imprisonment. The only sport to be had was hunting for penguins and seals. The absence of light began to tell upon their health as well as upon their spirits. Danco, who had a weak heart, after a lingering illness, died, and one of the sailors became insane.

The Belgica sounded the seas, between the southern end of South America and the Antarctic land. Another result of the expedition was the finding of a sea where there was thought to be land, and a submarine bank like the bank off the coast of Newfoundland. The explorers brought back hundreds of specimens of odd looking animals preserved in alcohol. At Terra del Fuego Dr. Cook studied the Onas, a race of giants, and other American races that were fast disappearing before the march of civilization.

The story of the “Belgica” as told by her American surgeon fascinates the reader, and may serve the wholesome purpose of disabusing the mind of any enthusiast for Antarctic exploration of the notion that an expedition south of sixty degrees will be a long picnic.



This book originally published in 1900 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.