Agent: Todd Shuster, Aevitas Creative Management. Though the prose occasionally tips over into the melodramatic, this is a well-researched and enthralling portrait of endurance and escape. Vividly recreating the crew’s boredom, disorientation, fatigue, depression, and hysteria during their 13-month ordeal, Sancton focuses on the expedition’s American doctor, Frederick Cook, whose prescription of daily seal or penguin meat helped the crew stave off scurvy, and Norwegian first mate Roald Amundsen, who became a legendary polar explorer thanks, in part, to the lessons he learned on the Belgica. Madhouse at the End of the Earth The Belgicas Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night By: Julian Sancton Narrated by: Vikas Adam Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins 4.6 (642 ratings) Try for 0. Running far behind schedule, the ship’s commandant, Adrien de Gerlache, decided to push farther south as winter approached, entrapping the Belgica in ice with the intention of resuming the journey once temperatures warmed. During the Antarctic summer, the expedition’s scientists collected more than 100 previously unknown specimens and discovered unmapped features of the Antarctic coast line. The book follows the author, a Puerto Rican-born freelancer, as he embarks on a five-month trip to the outer reaches of mankind the bottom of the world. Setting out from Antwerp in August 1897 with plans to reach the magnetic south pole, the Belgian steam whaler Belgica ran aground and nearly sank in the Beagle Channel, lost a sailor overboard, and narrowly avoided a mutiny-all before reaching Antarctica. Madhouse At The End Of The Earth is a captivating book, written by Julian Sancton, that takes readers on an incredible journey to Antarctica aboard a Russian research ship.
Anyone who appreciates historical narrative in which the boundaries of human endurance are examined will wholeheartedly appreciate this book.Journalist Sancton debuts with a riveting account of the first polar expedition to spend the winter south of the Antarctic Circle. The endless monotony of not knowing whether they would survive and the toll it took upon their psyche is profound and gut-wrenching.
One can almost feel the sting of the Antarctic coldness and imagine the endless darkness and despair as it wraps its brutal shroud upon the crew.
The use of primary sources and Sancton’s unique, almost novel-like writing style is captivating. In its most basic structure, this work is a study of human nature under horrific conditions and how leadership, professionalism, and compassion ultimately prevailed over madness and disease. Sancton does a brilliant job of transporting the reader to a far-off place and time.
filled with historical facts, astonishing detail, and firsthand narratives of the Belgica’s crew. Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgicas Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night Paperback Februby Julian Sancton (Author) 4. In graphic and meticulously researched detail Sancton describes the countless impediments that pushed these men to the brink of insanity.
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