by Julian Sancton, Crown Publishing, 2021

When I started this book I thought it was going to be another book about Shackelton’s ill-fated adventure in Antarctica, but it turns out that this expedition was a totally different one. Rather than sponsored by the British, this was a Belgian expedition that occurred many years earlier. The expedition was headed by the Belgian Adrien de Gerlache who was from an apparently famous family in Belgium. I had never heard of him or his expedition.

After describing the difficulties de Gerache had in financing the expedition and recruiting a crew, the author launches into the story of the expedition and the difficulties it encountered. There was not much that could have gone wrong that didn’t go wrong.

The chapters covering the wintering over dragged a bit, making me feel a bit like I was wintering over while reading it. Despite the tedium induced, Sancton accurately depicted the story of this situation. The passages regarding the long winter’s night were extremely descriptive, but then he related the difficulties of having the sun up all the time when it finally emerged in the summer. This brought back my memories of suffering from “The Big Eye” during the months I spent in Antarctica during their summers of 1970-71 and 1971-72. I recall my biological clock being totally out of whack and being totally exhausted. I would flog down in my bunk and go immediately to sleep, only to wake up a couple of hours later with “The Big Eye”, an affliction where one’s eyes open wide and there is no chance of going back to sleep. Thank you, Sancton, for bringing back those cherished memories!

One aspect of the book that I really liked was the final chapters in which the author recounted the events in the lives of the various individuals after the voyage. This narrative seemed to complete the total story of the expedition and was something I found missing in the previous book I read. Well done!