Through the First Antarctic Night - Centennial Edition [Paperback]

Frederick A. Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1998

Narrative of the first expedition to spent the long Antarctic night below the Antarctic Circle. The "Belgica" was icebound in the Bellinghausen Sea for over a year, becoming a virtual laboratory of human endurance for its 19-member multinational crew. The cereers of both of the future discoverers of the Poles--Roald Amundson (South Pole 1911) and Frederick A. Cook (North Pole 1908)were joined in this expedition. This account by Cook, the ship's surgeon, was first published in 1900. New color photos and essays by two Polar historians comprise the Centennial reprint edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A remarkable account of survival and courage below the Antarctic Circle, and a study of exceptional explorers from half a dozen nations. Cook's account is thorough and fair to all in this pioneer multi-national expedition to the South Pole." -- "Aftenpoften," Oslo, 1999

About the Author

Frederick A. Cook (1865-1940)was a physician, anthropologist, author and explorer. The first American to explore both Polar regions, he was part of Robert E. Peary's North Greenland Expedition in 1891-92, was credited with saving the Belgian Antarctic Expedition in 1897-99, led a relief expedition for Peary and two others in Greenland and mounted his North Polar Expedition in 1907-09. He is credited by many as the fierst to reach and describe the conditions at the North Pole in 1908. He was founder of the Arctic Club and the American Alpine Club and third president of the Explorers Club.

Product Details

• Paperback: 520 pages
• Publisher: Polar Publishing Company; Centennial edition (September 15, 1998)
• ISBN-10: 0966561317
• ISBN-13: 978-0966561319
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,564,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rediscovering a classic, October 29, 2000

By 

Michael Romeling "delirious penguin" (East Nassau, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Through the First Antarctic Night - Centennial Edition (Paperback)

It is a treat to see this work available again to the general reading public for a number of reasons. First, the book remains as fresh, exciting, and stylistically pleasing as it did when first appearing many years ago. Also, the book helps clarify and confirm the skills of the remarkable Frederick Cook as a writer of great merit, a photographer of immense talent, an intrepid and resourceful explorer, and perhaps above all as a kind and helpful human being both toward his fellow travellers and toward the indigenous peoples through whose lands he travelled over his long exploring career.

These talents of Cook's have been too often obscured by the intense and often acrimonious debates that have raged for nearly a century over whether he really achieved his claims of having been the first man to climb Alaska's Mount Mckinley and the first man to reach the North Pole. Whether he achieved those claims or not, his achievements on the expedition to Antartica recounted in this book cannot be denied as he played a vital role in keeping the crew as physically and psychologically sound as was possible during the long Antarctic night while their ship, THE BELGICA, lay trapped in the grinding ice. Cook was ahead of his time in realizing that raw penguin meat would protect the crew from scurvy and that sitting in front of a hot bright fire would help counteract symptoms of what we now call "seasonal affective disorders" that include depression, withdrawal, and other emotional problems. Cook was also instrumental in devising a system of digging and blasting out canals through the ice that allowed the ship to eventually escape into open water many months earlier than would otherwise have been possible. During their many months of confinement, Cook and his companions were pioneers in being the first to travel out onto the continent and experiment with Cook's novel ideas of sleds (they used a sail when the wind was favorable) and tents (Cook's design became a lightweight and sturdy standard for many future espeditions.)

But Cook is generous with praise for the other members of this international crew that included the Captain, Adrian de Gerlache who, though first forbidding Cook to serve raw penguin, was in general an enlightened leader who was instrumental in helping Cook in the planning and execution of their strategy for digging out of their predicament. We meet, too, the young Roald Amundsen who would become a lifelong friend of Cook's and who would later become famous for being the first man to reach the South Pole in his famous race against the ill-fated Scott expedition.

Cook's extraordinary photographic gift is amply shown in his famous moonlight picture of THE BELGICA as it sits trapped, its deck and rigging glittering in a sheath of ice. This picture, and others, astound when we consider the primitive equipment in use at the end of the Nineteenth century.

Cook brings home the excitement, the beauty, and the tragedy of this remarkable tale with a wonderfully descriptive writing style that will win over those readers with a yen for adventures of exploration, not only of a place but of the human heart and mind.

1.0 out of 5 stars Deadly dull, December 21, 2007

By 

P. Carney (Hastings, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Through the First Antarctic Night - Centennial Edition (Paperback)

A rambling long-winded travelogue. Very short on information on Cook's professional capacity as surgeon on the ship. Almost useless as a source of information but may be enjoyed by those who value verbosity for its own sake. To be fair, I have just read a reprint of this old out-of-copyright book from a different publisher so maybe this edition is enlivened by the new photos?