Frederick A. Cook

Polar Publishing Company, 1998. ISBN 0-9665613-1-7

Softcover, 464 pages. This is the 'centennial edition', released one hundred years after the original was published.

The Belgica expedition (1897-1899) became famous for being the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic. This is what the book's title refers to: the crew of the Belgium expedition realize they are stuck in the Antarctic winter for a couple of long months including a period of complete darkness.

The Belgica expedition, led by Adrien de Gerlache, was an international challenge in which Poles, a Romanian, Norwegians (Amundsen, to name one), and one American named Frederic Cook were taking part. The latter was the expedition's surgeon, photographer and anthropologist. The first part of this book is told as a story. The book starts when Cook boards the ship in South-America. Cook's account of the voyage to Patagonia is entertaining, but most interesting is his report on the Fuegian indians that were about to disappear from these grounds forever.

As the monotonous atmosphere of life on Antarctica sets in, his style changes to that of a diary. But a factual one, for Cook hardly writes about his own emotions. The biggest daily problems are humidity and isolation. The crew organizes a 'beautiful women contest', studying the photographs from the magazines on board. The expedition also kills seals and penguins, they are a welcome alternative for the fish and meat balls they have been eating for months. Depression reaches its deepest point when Danco (geophysist) and Nansen (the ship's cat) die.

This 'centennial edition' comes with two appendices that are quite interesting: Amundsen's 'Navigation Of The Antarctic Ice-pack' and Susan Barr's analysis of the relationship between Amundsen and Cook. The two man admired each for different reasons. For sure, Cook saved the expedition from serious diseases by having them eating fresh meat and by applying a sort of light therapy. One realizes that much knowlegde and technology was unavailable at the end of the 19th century. Cook also saved the expedition from another season in the ice by ordering to cut free a channel to the open sea, an enterprise that took weeks but finally got the ship floating again.

All in all, this is recommended reading for anyone travelling to the Antarctic peninsula. The Gerlache expedition named many straits and islands in this area. I am missing a map of the itinerary the ship sailed. The book contains a series of Cook's pictures, only interesting because of their age, and new pictures that do not add much value.