Antarctic Polar Regions | A short History of the Antarctic

Return to Antarctica (Page 2)


Mild night... | A midwinter feast | By the green of the spring | An accident that nearly turned for the worse |
Di da didi da di di... | Some leave and other arrive


Mild night...
Unlike what happened in other bases that experienced truly infernal storms (the Australian base, in particular, had all of its antennas destroyed in the space of a single hour), the long polar night was kind to the Belgians. Only 20 days of blizzard conditions in three months (June, July and August) and almost no wind when the mercury fell below minus 50°! A stroke of luck for Belgium! As a result, the King Baudouin beehive continued to buzz with activity - albeit at a slower pace, because on account of the permanent darkness, outside work such as exploration on land, was unable to take place. Instead - according to the terms of the contract signed by the expedition members - scientific work alternated with everyday tasks. These included the chore of creating the blocks of ice that had to be sawn out to provide supplies of fresh water, unblocking chimneys choked with ice, defrosting the engine of the Auster, dealing with the dogs and their food, preparing pies for Sunday lunch - the gifts of Guy della Faille became so famous that the quartermaster was voted head pastry-maker, setting up the projector and screen for the Sunday evening film show, shovelling snow away from the entrances to the quarters, turning over the engines of the vehicles regularly, keeping watch in the room housing the electricity generators (the men were always afraid that a fire would break out in this room, which would have been fatal for the expedition), digging out crates buried under two metres of snow, checking the stays on the antennas, etc.


A midwinter feast...

Midwinter's Day is celebrated. On 21st June, the sun ceases its descent below the horizon; this is a tradition in Antarctica that every expedition celebrates with verve. And the Belgians were not going to deprive themselves of a good party... A call was put in to Brussels for a few of Grandma's recipes. The people at the other end of the line were astonished to hear the guys at the South Pole get excited about a cake recipe! But the menu for the day had to be of Pantagruelesque proportions: bisque de homard, feuilleté de riz de veau aux perles du Périgord, grilled steak on a canapé of green peas, Strasbourg foie gras, Antarctic bombe, domed mokka gâteau, strawberries and cream, coffee and liqueurs; with the whole meal washed down with liberal quantities of white Bordeaux, red Burgundy and champagne. The dining-room was decorated with flags and multicoloured balloons, a huge white tablecloth was spread out on the table and the 17 members of the expedition dressed in their finest clothes. Glasses were raised, toasts proposed, the greetings telegrams sent to the base were read out and the gifts hoarded religiously until this special day were opened. Then came the speeches: Gerlache congratulated the group for everything it had accomplished thus far; the beer and wine flowed like there was no tomorrow. At six o'clock in the morning, the final partygoers returned to their quarters. For almost a week the base was in a state of effervescence. Which was good for morale...

As communications with the capital were working well - a report on the scientific activities carried out was sent back each month to Belgium - the expedition leader took advantage of this quiet period to make an appointment with Belgian journalists on 5th August at his office in rue de Namur. Thus a press conference was organised at a distance of 14,000 kilometres; a broadcast link set up in the room enabled everyone to follow the conversation in full. Certainly the scientific activities and day-to-day life of the expedition were of interest to the press and each member of the expedition answered questions with their own little anecdotes, but the majority of questions were related to the menus concocted by the head chef, Baron Guy della Faille. When as an example he told them the menu for the following day - fresh tomatoes, mushroom canapé, roast beef, ice-cream - the journalists asked questions about the freshness of the tomatoes. The chef then replied that they were frozen and that he only had to step into the ice cellars at the base to find them...


By the green of the spring...
One of the objectives set the various IGY expeditions was to make every effort to organise major excursions into the unexplored interior once spring returned. The was designed to expand geographic knowledge of the continent and to prepare the way for the teams that would take over once the International Geophysical Year was over.
So, in September, it was all systems go. In a few weeks' time, men would be venturing out, on dog-sleds, in the purest style of polar exploration. There they would do battle with the appalling winds, spending nights under canvas in temperatures that could plunge to -40° or -50°C. Not everyone went, though. For a start, the base had to continue operating and some of the scientific programmes could not accommodate absences. This was the case with meteorology, the study of the ionosphere and the geomagnetic observations. So Xavier de Maere, Henri Vandevelde and Luc Cabès were among those who stayed most frequently at the base. Antoine de Ligne, the expedition's second pilot and assistant meteorologist, absolutely had to be back by mid-December for a period of world weather days.
The objective set for the major spring sortie from the King Baudouin base was to continue the exploration of a range of mountains located 150 kilometres from the base - the Sør Rondane - that Gerlache and some of his companions had already "visited" a few weeks after the completion of the initial setting up of the base. In particular, they had to penetrate 120 kilometres to the south-east to explore some new, uncharted mountains that they had observed during their early reconnaissance flights. In a few week's time, these mountains were to become the Belgica mountains.
On 17th October, Giot and Picciotto - the dog-master and the Italian geologist - were the first to leave; their objective was to go by sledge to a point called D2 (situated at the foot of the Sör Rondane mountains and 120 km from the base), where there was a cache of supplies that were 6 months old, but still usable. Once they had got there, their instructions were to wait for the arrival of the remainder of the motorised party. The entire organisation of this excursion rested on three requirements: to ensure a maximum level of safety for the explorers, to make the greatest possible number of scientific observations in the field, and to add, if possible, any new lands to their hunting trophies.

In terms of logistics, Gerlache and his party advanced using a method that consisted of attacking the advance positions in three phases. In the approach phase, he sent out the Auster aircraft to make aerial reconnaissance and to drop off light equipment. In the reconnaissance phase, the men set out either by sledge or usually by plane. These were also kept light. They explored the location, climbed any summits, walked on glaciers, searched the crevasses. In the operating phase, the snocats and other motorised vehicles arrived and dropped of additional men and equipment so that the scientific programme could be continued. The same pace was set for return phases. Regular radio links via the aeroplane's facilities between the explorers and the base ensured the safety of everyone.


An accident that nearly turned for the worse
The expedition, however, was not to pass off as harmoniously as planned. On 5th December, when Gerlache had finally reached the Belgica mountains, Antoine de Ligne hit a sheer sastruggi on taking off from the most forward point, tearing the landing gear from the plane, which flipped over. Disaster! It wasn't so much the five or six hours on foot that separated him from the camp (D5, see map) where his companions, Gerlache and Loodts, were sleeping that worried them, but the 250 kilometres they would have to cover to return to the KBB. Although they had plenty of supplies and and camping equipment that was suited to the terrain, they were not prepared for such an eventuality. The following day, however, after de Ligne had reached his companions' tent in the middle of the night, the team set out. "I suggested to my companions that we rope ourselves together," wrote Gerlache, "for the sake of safety first, but especially to enable us to march steadily. This meant that Charlie now carried the tent on his shoulders, while Antoine and I took the rucksacks and took turns to pull a pack containing the sleeping bags and crockery..."
They returned first to the forward most point to leave a message in the wreck of the plane and to wait for their comrades, the aircraft mechanic Henri Vanderheyden, who according to the schedule was to arrive from D3 with the motor vehicle. Three days later and seeing no snocat arrive (in fact, Vanderheyden had been halted by an area of deep crevasses), Gerlache and his companions set out on the trip back. The terrain was so full of crevasses that when all was well, they were still only able to advance about twenty kilometres a day.
Back at the base, concern had turned to anguish. Vanderheyden, who had remained at D3, had warned his companions that he had had no news from the expedition to the Belgica mountains for a number of days; he did not know that the radio had broken down and had been left behind. On 10th December, putting into operation the emergency plan established between the IGY bases - the Mutual Antarctic Support Organisation - Xavier de Maere, Gerlache's second-in-command, sent out an SOS radio message, knowing that if help were ever to arrive, it would have to come from far off: the nearest base - Norwegian - was 900 kilometres away, the Russian base was 2,800 kilometres distant and the Americans were over 5,000 kilometres away! In any event, which base would have a plane with enough range to rescue their companions?


Di da di di da didi...

"... To expedition leader Mawson, from King Baudouin base. Confidential. Stop. A party of four men is at the moment isolated result of a breakdown or accident of an aircraft in the region of mountains, position approximately 72° lat S and 29° long E (unknown mountains not reported on charts) at 220 km from the coast and 250 km from Belgian base. Stop. Our rescue party is stopped by zones of crevasses. Stop ... etc..."
"From Mirny to Belgian Base. Stop. Ready to render assistance. Stop. Request possibilities of landing at your base for refuelling airplane type Douglas C47 on skis. Stop. Should like to know octane rating of your fuel. Stop. Desirable rating about 100. Stop. Do you need surgeon. Stop. Now at Mirny, stormy weather. Stop. Our plane will take off first opportunity. Stop. Best regards = Kibolin, deputy leader..."

In the Antarctic, the word 'solidarity' still means something. The next day, they announced over the radio that they were ready to go to the aid of the Belgians, provided the latter had sufficient petrol to refuel the C47 once it arrived at the KBB and for any return trips required between the bases and the site of the accident. Naturally, Xavier de Maere, the deputy commander, accepted and 24 hours later, the Russians landed at the Belgian base. Alerted by radio, the team that had stayed at the foot of the Sør Rondane mountains (D3), breathed a sigh of relief. In Belgium, by contrast, the four men's nearest and dearest, who had been informed of the accident, no doubt went through the darkest moments of their existence. The anguish became all the more critical when the Soviet C47, which had been hunting for the missing men for two days, managed to land close to the Auster, but without being able to locate Gerlache and his three companions. On 15th December, the rescue crew spotted an apparently abandoned camp from the window of the plane. They landed with consternation. "The closer we came, the more the scene gripped us by the throat," wrote Xavier de Maere, who had boarded the plane to take part in the search. "In implacable silence, a bit of tent canvas was flapping gently in the breeze. All around, to a distance of a hundred metres or so, there was an assortment of bits and pieces, empty boxes from the expedition, a down jacket, a few supplies, saucepans and the sledge, fitted with a sail, completely overturned and smashed; a little further away was Charlie's camera, a map of the region mounted on canvas and so many other items on which we could see the initials of some men and reminders of others..."
What they did not know at the time was that Gerlache and his companions had simply decided to abandon all excess equipment so that they cold make faster progress. A few hours later, at 10.30 pm, during a final flight because there was almost no petrol left, the passengers aboard the C47 miraculously caught sight of their friends; a red dot, the tent, and there they were!


Some leave and other arrive
In 1898, Adrien de Gerlache had discovered and explored the region around the straits that bear his name. Sixty years later, his son and his companions added the Belgica mountains to the store of Antarctic's geographic knowledge. Thanks to these two periods of time, Belgium has written its name proudly alongside those of other nations called on to play a role in the future of the 6th continent. Which is why the government had no other choice but to approve the budget required to ensure the King Baudouin base had a relief team to take over. The replacements left the Cape on 14th December 1958 aboard the Polarhav, headed for the Antarctic thinking they would arrive a fortnight later at the base.
But a final fright was to chill the bones of anyone who only had thoughts of going home. The relief team, which arrived on 24th December in the immediate vicinity of King Leopold III Bay, was caught out by the ice, despite the aerial reconnaissance carried out by Gerlache to show the ship which course to take. In the space of a few weeks, the expedition leader was beginning to contemplate spending a second winter in Antarctica. Sixty years earlier, his father, who watched the icesheet tighten around the Belgica for the nth time, had experienced the same fears.
But once again, Antarctic solidarity came tothe rescue; on 11th January, the Belgian embassy in Washington made an official approach to the State Department, which agreed to send out one of its units. Three weeks later, the ice-breaker Edisto arrived on station. As misfortune would have it, within a few hours, the Edisto was also trapped. The weather conditions were unprecedented, said the meteorologists on the radio; in a month, the Polarhav had drifted 150 miles! Always willing to employ every resource open to them, the Americans then dispatched a second ice-breaker, the Glacier, to try and release everyone.
It was time for reunions, the exchange of power between the two teams, the handing over of the keys, a list of instructions, accommodation for the American visitors, thanksgiving ceremonies in Quarters, the farewell drink, saluting the flag, and so on.
On 2nd April 1959, 499 days after leaving Belgium for these cold and distant adventures, the men from the South Pole, as they were sometimes called, arrived at Ostend. The quayside was awash with people and they were greeted as heroes. In the hold of the Polarhav were 54 crates of documents, notes and scientific archives that would give Belgium the right to be considered as one of the big boys of the Antarctic.
While all this was going on, back at King Baudouin base, the scientific work carried out by the relief team was continuing; there would be a Belgian presence in the Antarctic for a further ten years before a gap until 1985 when Belgium returned to Antarctica, not under the customary instigation of the Gerlaches, but as part of a government programme set up by the department for scientific policy. The story of these different periods can be found in part V of this work.


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Following sources have been consulted to write this article :
Antarctique, la grande histoire des hommes à la découverte du continent de glace, Sélection du Reader's Digest.
Antarctica, the extraordinary history of man's conquest of the frozen continent, Reader's Digest Association Limited, Australia, 1985
The Explorations of Antarctica the last unspoilt continent, G.E. Fogg & David Smith.
Quinze mois dans l'Antarctique, Adrien de Gerlache.
Victoire sur la nuit antarctique, Adrien de Gerlache.
L'Odyssée de l'Endurance, première tentative de traversée de l'Antarctique, Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Explore Antarctica, Louise Crossley.
Au coeur de l'Antarctique, Vers le pôle sud, 1908-1909, Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Explorateurs et Explorations, Raymond Cartier.