#belgian antarctic expedition

[incesthemes]

belgica crew getting depressed over not being able to have sex while stuck in the pack, meanwhile cook and amundsen are fine and immune to polar night depression on account of having reinvented homosexuality

[antarcticconfessions]

"If I'd been born in the 1870s the Belgian Antarctic Expedition would never have happened because Adrien de Gerlache would have been too pregnant with my children to sail anywhere."

[jeyneofpoole]

antarctic exploration is so funny because you read about the endurance expedition and it’s a zany adventure with a lovable stowaway and trials and tribulations that show the indomitable nature of the human spirit without a single man lost and it ends in a thematically resonant and meaningful way with a fitting and beautiful conclusion and then you get to the belgica and the crew are running away constantly, they frame the cook for his own beatdown and get him fired, the beloved moral-boosting chipper ships boy literally falls off of the boat and drowns before they even GET to antarctica, the commandant and the captain are deliberately freezing the ship in ice to protect their beautiful belgian honor, they’re constantly falling into crevasses, and the ships pet penguin dies in what i cannot stress enough is the most narratively ominous and portentous circumstance on the morning of their imprisonment in the ice. the doctor was literally imprisoned for fraud.

[irenydraws]

fun fact: hergé actually designed the logo of the second belgian antarctic expedition, led by adrien de gerlache's son gaston. the more you know

[ltwilliammowett]

Today we're heading into the eternal ice of Antarctica and keeping a special lady company. The beautiful Endurance is waiting for us in door no. 7

More about her here:

The three-masted schooner barque designed by Ole Aanderud Larsen (1884-1964) was built by the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway. When she was launched on 17 December 1912, she was named Polaris. She was 43.8 m long, 7.62 m wide and weighed 350 tonnes. In addition to square sails on the foremast and gaff sails on the main and mizzen masts, she had a 260 kW steam engine, which allowed a maximum speed of 10 knots (19 km/h). The ship was designed for polar conditions and constructed to minimise the pressure of the ice masses. With a thickness of 28 cm, the frames were made of greenheart wood, a particularly stable type of tropical wood, and were twice as thick as on conventional sailing ships of this size. The hull of the Endurance was designed to be relatively straight-sided, as it was only intended to sail in loose pack ice. She was therefore calmer in the sea than ships with a spherical hull, such as the Fram; however, this came at the cost of not being lifted significantly out of the pressure line in ice pressures and was therefore unsuitable for encasements in pack ice.

The ship was commissioned by the Belgian polar explorer Adrien de Gerlache and the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen, who actually wanted to use it for polar cruises of a more touristic nature. However, due to financial problems, Christensen was happy to sell his ship to Shackleton for 11,600 pounds sterling (approx. 934,000 euros, as of 2010) - an amount that was less than the original construction costs. Shackleton renamed her Endurance after his family's motto ‘Fortitudine vincimus’ (‘Through endurance we shall conquer’).

The Endurance left the port of Plymouth on 8 August 1914, around a week after Great Britain's entry into the First World War, and completed the journey to Antarctica with a stopover in Buenos Aires without any problems.

Before the crew of the Endurance could cross to the Antarctic mainland to cross the Antarctic as planned, the ship was trapped by the pack ice of the Weddell Sea in January 1915 like ‘an almond in a piece of chocolate’ - as the much-used comparison goes. After resisting the force of the pack ice for 281 days, the Endurance was crushed by the ice on 21 November 1915. The expedition team had previously saved themselves on a safe ice floe. Thanks to a masterly feat of seamanship and navigation, Shackleton and his crew managed to get out of this desolate situation without any losses with the help of three lifeboats that were salvaged from the Endurance.

Initially continuing with the pack ice and later on ice floes, the castaways drifted northwards in their camps along the Antarctic Peninsula until the floes broke into small pieces. They finally reached Elephant Island in their lifeboats. There, one of the boats was converted and set off for South Georgia with 6 men to fetch help, which was successful. Months later, the remaining men who were still stuck on Elephant Island were rescued by a Chilean navy guard boat.

In 2019, a private expedition attempted to locate the wreck of the Endurance, but was unsuccessful.

In January 2022, the Endurance 22 expedition began the search. The S. A. Agulhas II brought the expedition, in which marine physicist Stefanie Arndt from the Alfred Wegener Institute took part,[3] to the last coordinates of the Endurance mentioned. From the historical records, the expedition members knew that the ship must have sunk at ♁68° 39′ 30″ S, 52° 26′ 30″ W. According to the rules of the Antarctic Treaty, the wreck is a protected historical site that may not be touched.

On 5 March 2022, the expedition found the ship with a diving robot at a depth of 3008 m, 7.7 km from the recorded position. Photographs showed the wreck standing upright in excellent condition.

[coldfruitwater]

belgian antarctic expedition 1897-1899

[fullcolorfright]

Sketch collage inspired by the 1897-1899 Belgian Antarctic Expedition, after reading Madhouse at the End of the Earth (Julian Sancton, 2021) and My Life as an Explorer (Roald Amundsen, 1927)

[hareofhrair]

Edith Finch Timeline

So I'm still organizing my theories (honestly they're more like a list of unanswered questions than a coherent theory right now) but I think my timeline is pretty much complete now that I've had a chance to go back through the pet cemetery and add all those in.

I do some wild speculating about Odin here that has no canon basis, just spinning ideas.

Things to notice- Just how many deaths happen on or very near birthdays. Not always the birthday of the person who dies and not every time, but suspiciously often.

The pets almost seem to fill in the years when no one human died? Like everything in this game it's nothing definitive enough to base a solid theory on, but it is odd.

TIMELINE

1439 - Earliest possible beginning of the Finch Family Curse based on the Odin viewmaster reel, as this is 500 years prior to the invention of the first viewmaster.

1445 - If the Odin viewmaster is the Model E made in 1955 (which I think it is), this is the start of the curse instead. Not much is happening in Norway during this period, but Vlad the Impaler was at the top of his game this year?

~About 7 generations of Finches dying horribly happens here.~

1880 - Odin is born. At some point between now and his death he writes "The Mysteries of Death and the Thereafter" and "Joining the Great Majority" which both appear to be books about the afterlife.

1896 - Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration begins with the Belgian Antarctic Expedition and won't end till after WWI. Expeditions are marked by depression, starvation, insanity and scurvy. Many famous expeditions are made by Norwegian teams. Odin is 16.

1911 - A Norwegian expedition is first to reach the South Pole. The British Scott expedition chasing the same goal are lost. Odin is 31.

28 July 1914 - WWI begins, Odin is 34. Norway, "The Neutral Ally", remains neutral on the war but due to economic pressure from Britain commits its merchant marine fleet (one of the largest in the world) to Britain's service. Half the fleet is sunk and 2000 seamen are killed. If Odin was a sailor, he likely served. Alternatively, he may have been one of the wealthy merchants who profited greatly during the war. He clearly has a great deal of money to burn by 1937.

June 17 1915 - Sven is born.

April 8, 1917 - Edie is born.

1935 - At some point between now and Dec 1937, Edie and Sven marry and Sven takes Edith's last name.

1936 - Ingeborg and her newborn Johann Finch die in an unknown manner. Odin is 56, Edie is 19, Sven is 17.

Jan 7 1937 - Odin sets sail for Washington.

Dec 1937 - Arrival on Orcas Island, death of Odin at 57. Molly is born, on the boat? In the Old House? Sven and Edie build the cemetery, and then the house.

1938 - Churpy the budgie joins the family.

1939 - Invention of the viewmaster, earliest point the Odin story could have been recorded.

Sep 1939 - Sep 1945 - WWII. Sven was 24, and may have served or been drafted.

1940 - Burpy the house finch joins the family.

1941 - Churpy dies.

1947 - Christopher the goldfish joins the family.

Oct 31 1947 - Halloween Baby Barbara

Sometime between 1937 and 1947 - Molly's unnamed gerbil joins the family.

Dec 13 1947 - Molly dies of apparent poisoning after eating mistletoe berries, on or very near her 10th bday. She relates hallucinating having become several animals, most notably a cat. Christopher the fish dies shortly after. The fate of her unnamed gerbil is unrecorded, as none of the unattributed headstones are of the right age, but presumably it dies eventually.

1948 - Burpy dies at 8.

April 25 1950 - Sam and Calvin are born.

Aug 26 1952 - Walter is born.

1952 - Lurpy the Cockatiel joins the family.

1955 - Viewmaster Model E released- If this is the one used for Odin's story, that puts the beginning of the curse at 1455.

1956 - Lucy the dog joins the family.

1959 - Bailey the (???) joins the family.

Oct 31 1960 - Barbara dies, allegedly murdered, on her 16th bday. Her boyfriend Rick disappears the same night. The version of her death shared in the game is notably extremely unreliable and raises numerous questions. Rick is seen in a leg cast using crutches. Walter is 8, Sam and Calvin are 10 and notably absent from reported events.

Sept 23 1961 - Calvin dies at 11 falling from a cliff. He is seen wearing a weathered and heavily autographed leg cast. His model shows him with a black eye and several cuts.

1962 - Zoe the (???) joins the family.

1963 - Lurpy dies at 11. (Cockatiels have a life expectancy of 20-25 years)

Aug 26 1964 - Sven dies on Walter's 12th bday, while making a dragon shaped slide. He's 49.

1968 - Walter enters the bunker. He's 16. Durpy the Dove joins the family.

May 7 1968 - Dawn is born.

1969 - Lucy the dog dies.

June 20 1969 - Gus is born.

1970 - Zoe dies

1971 - Purply the Budgie joins the family.

1974 - Coco the (???) joins the family.

Jan 12 1976 - Gregory is born

Dec 7 1977 - Kay files for divorce after arguing with Sam about the curse.

Dec 19 1977 - Gregory drowns in the bath a month before his 2nd bday

1978 - Shadow the cat joins the family.

1979 - Purply dies at 8.

1980 - Rob the Bearded Dragon joins the family. Bob the Snake joins the family.

1981 - Durpy dies at 13.

1982 - Oliver the rabbit joins the family.

Nov 8 1982 - Gus dies, crushed by debris from a storm during Sam's wedding to an unnamed woman.

July 16 1983 - Sam dies, kicked off a cliff by a deer. Dawn is 15.

1984 - Bob dies at 4.

1985 - Daisy the (???) joins the family.

1986-87 Dawn goes to India, meets Sanjay.

1988 - Shadow the cat dies.

Dec 27 1988 - Lewis is born. Furpy joins the family. Tucker the (???) joins the family

1989 - Oliver the rabbit dies.

1991 - Rob dies at 10. Furpy dies.

1992 - Zurpy the Owl joins the family.

May 19 1992 - Milton is born.

1993 - Charlie the cat joins the family. Daisy dies.

1994 - Durpy Jr the Dove joins the family.

1995 - Zurpy dies at 3. Schatzi the (???) joins the family.

Feb 14 1999 - Valentine's Baby Edith. Lowest tide in a thousand years allegedly allows Edie to access the Old House. At some point between now and Nov 2010, three unnamed gerbils join the family, and then die.

Feb 22 2002 - Sanjay dies in an earthquake, eight days after Edith's 3rd bday, Dawn and children return to Finch House. Dawn writes "To Teach and To Learn" at some point in the next few years. At some point between now and 2010, Dawn probably finds a stray cat and names it Molly.

Oct 23 2003 - Milton disappears.

Late 2003 to Early 2004 - Dawn searches for Milton, eventually gives up and seals the rooms for unknown reasons.

March 31 2005 - Walter leaves the bunker and dies, allegedly hit by a train. There are several strange inconsistencies surrounding the circumstances of his death.

2006 - Durpy Jr dies at 12.

2009 - Schatzi dies

Nov 21 2010 - Lewis dies of apparent suicide one month before his 22nd bday.

Nov 28 2010 - A week after Lewis's death, Dawn informs Edie they are leaving the house. After Edie attempts to give Edith a book containing a story about their family which Dawn violently rips away, Dawn flees the house with Edith immediately, leaving Edie and all her belongings behind.

(Molly the cat is not mentioned in regards to the move, so she may have died by this point, but she is not listed in the graveyard, so it's possible she was simply left behind. There is a taxidermy calico in Sam's room, but Sam was dead before Molly could reasonably have joined the family, so this is unlikely to be her. A cat is seen outside human Molly's room in 2016, which may prove she's still alive- but she'd be around 14 years old. An unlikely age for a cat abandoned outdoors for 7 years.)

Nov 29 2010 - Edie is found dead by nursing care workers, and may have killed herself by combining alcohol with her medication, intentionally or otherwise. She's 93, the only member of her family to live longer than her father, who died at 57.

Dec 5 2010 - The date on Edie's tombstone, a week after when she supposedly died.

May (around the 12-18th?) 2016 - Edith becomes pregnant.

Oct 12 2016 - Dawn dies of a chronic illness at 48. Edith is 16 and about 6 months pregnant.

Oct 13 - 19 2016 - Edith returns to the Finch House at 22 weeks pregnant.

Jan 18 2017 - Edith dies in childbirth a month before her 18th bday. Christopher is born (possibly named for Molly's goldfish?).

2027? - At some point in the future, a young Christopher returns to the house, which has changed since the last time it was seen. He is wearing a cast.

A note on unrecorded pets- There are additionally 5 (possibly 6?) unmarked pet graves in the cemetery. One of the blank stones presumably belongs to Rob the bearded dragon, who has a memorial in Edie's room but no gravestone. One is marked as a fish and another is a rabbit, with no names or dates. One is a knocked over and unreadable sign of the same kind used for the birds, indicating it may be an otherwise unrecorded bird. There is also a statue of a frog- the knocked over sign may instead refer to an unrecorded pet frog, or the frog statue might be a separate gravestone, or simply a decoration. This leaves one blank headstone with no indication of what might lie beneath it. Let's assume it's a mass grave for gerbils.

[theyonagoda]

Hello. Belgian Antarctic Expedition as Animals. Why not.

(But I don't feel confident enough in my grasp of their personalities to truly assign them so I'm mostly going by vibes, since I haven't finished Madhouse yet)

Baron Adrien Victor Joseph de Gerlache de Gomery FRSGS: Horse. I don't know why.

Frederick Cook: spicebush swallowtail (kid version.) A bit of a trickster. Unique face shape.

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen: The Alaskan Moose. Perfectly adapted. Long.

Emil Racoviță. Eurasian brown bear. Beautifully puffy face. I can make a soviet union joke here but I don't want to.

I did not include Lecointe. he knows what he did. He won't be forgiven 🐱

I will return to this once I have finished Madhouse. And laugh perhaps at how wrong I am.

[birdiebowers]

VISITING THE GRAVES OF «BELGICA» EXPEDITION MEMBERS

— Arctowski & Dobrowolski

I met up with my bestie last weekend. Our plan for Saturday was to wander aimlessly around the city without looking where we were going. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to visit Powązki.

Old Powązki is a historical cemetery, the most important in Poland. It is the place where the most important Poles are buried: heroes, leaders, scientists, musicians and politicians...

Our two great polar explorers — Henryk Arctowski and Antoni B. Dobrowolski — are also buried there, in the military section. I would not forgive myself if I did not visit them, especially as I have never done so before. Their graves are very close to me, but my path has never crossed theirs. Besides, Powązki is a big place.

I bought each of them a blue candle as I couldn't afford more decorative ones (well, I buy too many books). We searched the graves for half an hour. But we found them!

First we went to Dobrowolski. I hadn't expected his grave to be so dirty and dusty. It was full of needles from a Christmas bouquet brought by schoolchildren. Polar explorers are not very important in Poland... most people associate the name 'Arctowski' only because it sounds similar to 'arctic'. This is a shame, because he was a great patriot and really did a lot for our country before we regained our independence.

I blew off the needles and wiped the dust off the gravestone with my hand. My lungs began to warn me that I was going to start coughing, so I gave up after a while. I took some dry leaves and lit the candle.

For Dobrowolski I feel admiration rather than warm sympathy. He came from a family overwhelmed by poverty, which in our country used to be a fate worse than death. As a twelve-year-old, Antoni worked for a living, teaching others for a pittance. After leaving school, the Tsarist authorities sentenced him to three years' imprisonment (which was ACTUALLY EVEN WORSE than poverty). He was sent to the Warsaw Citadel, notorious as a place of execution for patriotic activists. He was deported several times, but finally managed to escape from the Caucasus to Switzerland and finally to Belgium, from where he finally set off for Antarctica on board the "Belgica".

I think I'll have to reappear soon and clean his grave, because it's sad to see it in these conditions. The writing is hardly clear, so let me translate it for you:

•••

“ANTONI BOLESŁAW DOBROWOLSKI

1872-1954

PARTICIPANT IN THE BELGIAN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION 1897-1899. CREATOR AND RELENTLESS FIGHTER FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF SCIENCE AND ART.

---

ZOFIA DOBROWOLSKA (ULIŃSKA)

1873-1955”

•••

A silhouette of a glacier is engraved above his name. It's absolutely cute. 🥹

°•°•°•°•°•°

And Arctowski!

Unfortunately he's not buried next to Dobrowolski, but you could say they're in the same neighbourhood, separated by a few graves. As I suspected, this place was in much better condition! You could tell someone had looked after it because the flowers were not so faded and the paraffin in the candles was quite new. Henryk, like his dear fellow, was given a new blue candle and some critical comments about the stains on the gravestone. I plan to clean that up too, but it's not so tragic.

Of course, I'll drop a translation:

•••

“1871-1958

HENRYK ARCTOWSKI

GEOPHYSICIAN

ANTARCTIC EXPLORER

---

1875-1958

JANE ADDY ARCTOWSKA

HENRYK'S WIFE

DEVOTED TO POLISH YOUTH”

•••

I love the drawing of "Belgica" trapped in an ice pack! It's gorgeous and the tomb itself looks really beautiful 💙

°•°•°•°•°•°

I guess it's everything? I'll update this next time I'm there and manage to look after the temporary accommodation of our dear polar explorers. Hope you like it, take care! ❤️

[antarcticconfessions]

"i would detransition for emil racovitza"

[dollypartonswig]

The top 3 books I read in October

1. - Madhouse At The End Of The Earth - Julian Sancton ~ a non fiction book about the ill fated Belgian Antarctic expedition of 1897 - 1899 and the crews subsequent years after

2. - Morbidly Yours - Ivy Fairbanks ~ a recently widowed American woman moves to Ireland and finds out she’s moved in next door to a mortuary. romance and hijinks ensue

3. - My Roommate Is A Vampire - Jenna Levine ~ Cassie moves in with Frederick, a strange man who sleeps all day, is gone all night and talks like he’s straight out of a regency era romance novel, then she finds a bag of blood in his fridge

[agentbreedlove]

3, 4, 17 for the book ask!

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno García. A gothic horror set in México in the 50s, it follows a young woman going to the aid of her cousin. Said cousin has just married into a mysterious English family who owns a silver mine in a remote mexican town. I've always seen a lot of hype around this book so I was a bit wary (also, I think the title is a bit goofy), but it ended up being incredible. Moreno García's prose is out of this world and the story was scary and twisty.

Distancia de Rescate (Fever Dream) by Samantha Schweblin. Short novela that blew my mind. Very hard to sumarize without spoiling anything, I think the title translation does honor to how it feels to read it. Set in Argentina, it deals with themes like motherhood, environmental issues and fear.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey Into the Dark Antarctic Night by Julian Sancton. A recounting of a real Belgian antarctic expedition in the 1800s, where their ship got stuck in the ice for nearly two years. A well reserached survival story. Interesting and well written, never dull. I read this on a ship and I recommend the experience

Las Cosas que Perdimos en el Fuego (Things We Lost in the Fire) by Mariana Enríquez. A short story collection from one of Argentina's top horror writter. A good introduction to her work, it quickly shows why she's a master of the craft. Deals with issues like misogyny, poverty, argentinian politics, etc.

House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland. Three sisters went missing as children and returned changed, odd, different. Now as adults the older sister goes missing again, prompting the other two to search for her and finally unravel what actually happened to them. This is labelled as young adult but it doesn't feel like it. It was dark, slightly gory, intriguing. Stunning prose, I liked it so much I read it twice.

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

Krystal Sutherland, I'm eagerly waiting for her next book. Marian Enríquez, I already checked out herr other short story collection from the library.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

I randomly got approved for an advanced reader's copy of a book about an automaton. It's called Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend. It's an illustrated volume about a monk automaton in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The book details how it was made, how it works, and everything people have done to track down its origins. I was surprised by how interesting it was and how much I learned.

Thank you so much for asking!

[ltwilliammowett]

La Belgica, by Gaston Bogaert, end 20th century

Surrealist composition with the Belgica, the famous ship that was used during the Belgian Antarctic expedition led by Adrien de Gerlache at the end of the 19th century

[grimm-the-tiger]

I was reading about the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, which came within inches of suffering the same fate as the Lost Franklin Expedition, and for some reason, one detail in particular struck me as bizarrely funny. 

The thing that dooms most Arctic expeditions is shoddy planning and supplies. One would think that they’d have learned this by *checks notes* 1897, but nope. In particular, a malady called scurvy killed most people on these expeditions; scurvy had generally become less of a problem by this point in history when people realized that it could be treated with lemon juice, but the Belgian Antarctic Expedition had two things going against them. The first was that no one really planned for this to happen, and the second was that the expedition was a disaster anyway. 

So the crew of the expedition got scurvy. In particular, two of its leaders got scurvy, leaving two guys who would later become more famous, Frederick Cook and Roald Amundsen, in charge. Now, Cook had some prior experience in the Arctic and, while it would take another 20 years for people to realize what caused scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) and how to treat it, Cook (correctly) realized that eating raw meat, which contained trace amounts of vitamin C, could at least help. Besides, they’d reached a point in the expedition where a dude had jumped overboard and declared he was going to walk across the pack ice back to Belgium and was never seen again, so what did they have to lose? 

This isn’t funny. What is funny is that everyone else thought Cook was a lunatic, and the mental image of this guy chasing people around deck holding raw, frozen penguin and demanding they eat the penguin to treat their scurvy while they understandably question his sanity and their life choices is too good to ignore. 

So that’s the story of why this one random detail from an already disastrous Arctic expedition has been making me randomly crack up for the past few weeks. Tune in next time for, I dunno, me making fun of the British Navy’s naming choices or something. 

[the-grollican]

sorry boss cant come in today i gotta add roald amundsen to the 'Personnel resigned or let go' section of the belgian antarctic expedition wikipedia page. you know how it is