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From the Introduction
Oddly enough, the first two men to lose their minds in the Antarctic were Norwegian sailors. Their names were Adam Tollefsen and Engelbret Knudsen. Likely looking for adventure, they had volunteered to go south on board the whaling ship Belgica in the summer of 1897. Not much is known about them. They are most remembered for the terrible thing that happened to them on that ill-fated, icebound vessel.
While the Belgica was trapped in Antarctic ice for thirteen months, cut off completely from the rest of the world, they both had nervous breakdowns. They eventually regained their senses, but they were never quite the same again. Knudsen had to be institutionalized after the Belgica returned to Europe, and he died not long afterward. Tollefsen, who had been found mumbling incoherently, wandering aimlessly on the ice, recovered and was able to return home with the rest of the crew and resume a seemingly normal life. But the Antarctic left its stamp on his mind, too.
Perhaps one should not make too much of the fact that Knudsen and Tollefsen were Norwegians. But it is strange that, coming from a Scandinavian country, they would be the most severely affected by the deprivations of Antarctic imprisonment — isolation, extremely low temperatures, months of total darkness, confinement in cramped quarters, shortages of food, immobility, boredom, lack of privacy, and fear of dying at any moment. That they suffered despite their background only indicates how inescapably stressful this ordeal on the Belgica was. Sailors from other countries on board also developed signs of mental illness. Even the Belgian head of the expedition — Adrien Victor Joseph de Gerlache de Gomery—fell victim to depression. Indeed, a superstitious observer might have blamed him for all that subsequently went wrong. After all, it was de Gerlache who had changed the name of this steam-powered barque when he had bought it, from Patria to Belgica — an act believed by seafarers to invariably bring bad luck....
Ostensibly, the 250-ton barque was supposed to be on a scientific mission. During the recent Sixth International Geographical Congress, in London, in 1895, participating European nations had agreed that it was high time to learn more about Antarctica. This was now going to be a top priority. Expeditions would be dispatched there to study its oceans, land features, and life forms. It so happened that de Gerlache was already planning an ocean expedition, purportedly with the goal of collecting this kind of information. The ninety-eight-foot-long Belgica would thus be the first vessel to enter Antarctic waters solely for the purpose of increasing knowledge about this land of mystery and wonder. Its primary objectives were to reach the South Magnetic Pole and to study ocean currents and the weather....
But the truth was that the thirty-one-year-old de Gerlache was not steering the Belgica so far south in the name of science. He had a secret ambition. Instead of avoiding the ice and seeking a safe haven, he intended to plow through floes until his ship could go no farther, and then remain there through the winter, encased as in a tomb, until the ice finally cracked apart in the spring. From there he would be in an excellent position to navigate through open water and accomplish what he really wanted to do — set a new “Farthest South” record. This historic feat would make him overnight a national hero: a vessel proudly flying Belgium’s tricolor flag and captained by one of its own naval officers would have eclipsed those of larger nations in approaching the bottom of the world. To make this mark, spending a winter icebound off Antarctica’s coast was a small price to pay, and de Gerlache had no second thoughts about doing so. He was enthralled by the prospect of the glory that awaited him, of being the first to go where no other ever had. As he would later write, “Everything was wild, sterile and bare, and yet it was also all ours, because we had discovered it.” ...
As was amply illustrated by the fate of the Belgica, hopes that expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic would demonstrate human mastery over the entire planet were all too often dashed. In fact, the history of this exploration is largely one of unmitigated frustration, disappointment, failure, and defeat, only occasionally interspersed with remarkable milestones such as navigating the Northwest Passage and “discovering” the two poles. One problem was the polar environment itself. Its climate, barrenness, remoteness, and unpredictable nature defied attempts to inhabit it. But the clash between explorers and this strange world was but part of a larger conflict between expectations and reality, between ambitions and accomplishments, between actions and outcomes, that confounded the Western world in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In fact, the setbacks and disasters that explorers experienced in the polar ice foreshadowed the disillusionment with civilization’s inevitable progress that would occur decades later, as a result of naïve ideological experiments and devastating world wars.
As was the case on board the Belgica, some of these debilitating clashes arose from conflicting reasons for going so far north or south in the first place. Others resulted from trying to view this alien kingdom through ill-fitting and inadequate lenses and thus failing to engage it on its own terms. And still others came about because the explorers could not bring themselves to discard the values and practices that they considered superior and invincible and adapt to the new demands of the Arctic and Antarctic. Altering this deeply ingrained outlook was particularly difficult for nineteenth-century Americans and Europeans because they adhered to a moral outlook and code of conduct that were not easily modified. The explorers were predisposed to view the world in binary terms. Everything was defined in opposition to something else: man versus Nature; “civilized” versus “barbaric”; Christians versus “heathens”; gentlemen versus “lower classes”; men versus women. But at the top and bottom of the world, these distinctions lost relevance or became counterproductive.
At the poles, explorers found themselves caught between what they felt they ought to do and what they had to do. Conflicts between personal ambition and group well-being, between moral rectitude and self-preservation, forced them to make painful choices and then live with the consequences of their decisions. Many returned home with permanent psychological and emotional scars. The various ways in which polar explorers reacted to the extraordinary challenges posed by conditions in the Arctic and Antarctic — how they wrestled with competing imperatives to survive and remain true to their convictions, and how this struggle changed them and, indirectly, the countries that had sent them there — is the subject of this book. In it, I have attempted to understand the explorers’ responses within their historical and cultural contexts, looking at a number of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century expeditions to show how their experiences affected Western notions of courage, morality, conquest, progress, and human capability. Like the knights of medieval legend, polar explorers went forth into unknown territory, faced great obstacles, displayed great courage, and returned home to be greeted as heroes. But, unlike these mythical avatars, the men who went toward the poles did not come back with the same confidence and inner strength. Something precious had been left there. These explorers brought back a different outlook about what humans could achieve, and what they could not.
