The Belgica & Beyond


amateur translations, scans, & assorted research by m.w.
actively under construction.

WRITTEN FROM THE BELGICA 1897-1899

  1. Racovitza’s cartoons 
  2. Racovitza’s shipboard diary
  3. Racovitza’s letters home
  4. Lecointe’s meeting notes

CORRESPONDENCE

  1. before
  2. after

    NEWS OF THE BELGICA 1896-1900

    1. coverage in the Belgian press, translated
    2. coverage in the British press
    3. coverage in the American press
    4. scientific lectures, translated
    5. list of Expedition publications
      6.        a) Lecointe on Danco’s contributions

    QUELQUES EXPÉDITIONS SUIVANTES

    1. de Gerlache & Charcot (the Français)
    2. de Gerlache & the Duke of Orléans (the Belgica in the Arctic)
    3. the failed Second Belgian Antarctic Expedition (Arctowski & Lecointe)
    4. the successful Second Belgian Antarctic Expedition (Gaston de Gerlache)
    5.  the Royal Belgian Observatory
    6. Georges Lecointe’s 20th Century

      MARRIAGES & OTHER LIFE EVENTS

      1. Lecointe Family
      2. Arctowski
      3. de Gerlache
      4. Racovitza
      5. van Mirlo
      6. van Rysselberghe

      ASSORTED BELGICA RESOURCES

      1. bibliography
      2. associated persons
      3. contemporary photographs


      the sailors of the Belgica performing a “starlight concert” on Sept. 26, 1897, from Johan Koren’s diary

      contact: packloafertranslations@gmail.com

      The Belgica in the Arctic


      In 1906, the Royal Belgian Geographic Society invited Adrien de Gerlache to speak about his Antarctic voyage and the more recent journey he had piloted for the Duc d’Orléans. The original French of this lecture is available here.

      Below is a compilation of translated passages and screenshotted images from Philippe, the Duc d’Orléans’ account of his 1905 expedition in the Belgica. He hired Adrien de Gerlache as his captain and they sailed around the coast of Greenland through summer pack ice. Though the Duke and his family had long been exiled from France for being pretenders to the throne (and, in Philippe’s case, for attempting to skirt exile), he claimed various islands and parts of Greenland for France, raising the tricolor flag in a handful of places. Louis Michotte, who traveled with the Belgica in the Antarctic, was also on board as a storekeeper (and, according to some accounts, as Adrien de Gerlache’s steward). 

      Read the full text, in French, here.

      In the end, d’Orléans was quite pleased with de Gerlache. He decided to hire him for yet another Arctic adventure the following year. This respect was very much mutual: Adrien de Gerlache’s first-born son was christened Philippe in his honor.




      The 1905 crew of the Belgica. Duke Philippe d’Orléans is seated at center; to his immediate left, Adrien de Gerlache stands with his arms folded across his chest.

       

      Left: Adrien de Gerlache on skis during a bear hunt. Right: view of Adrien de Gerlache in the crow’s nest.

      LOUIS MICHOTTE IN THE ARCTIC

      The Expedition of the Duke of Orléans

          “Yesterday, Saturday, at 3 o’clock, our fellow citizen, M. Louis Michotte, embarked on the steamer Anvers on his way to Sandefjord, where he will join the Arctic expedition organized by the Duke of Orléans.
          We know that the Duke has charted the Belgica, which will be commanded once again by Lieutenant de Gerlache. The latter departed last Sunday. This is the second time that M. Michotte has journeyed to the polar regions. In fact, he took part in the de Gerlache Expedition, and its stay in the ice; in a curious contrast, he lived in the Congo for five years.
          M. Michotte has been specially hired to ensure the proper supplying of the Expedition.”
      Louis Michotte, best known for his enthusiastic if deeply questionable Antarctic cooking adventures, joined Adrien de Gerlache in participating in the Belgica’s Arctic voyages. He was hired by Duke Philippe as a storekeeper, presumably due to his Antarctic experience and (probably) a recommendation from de Gerlache. 





      “…the deck was still crammed with boxes full of glass bottles meant to hold water samples; between them appeared the alternating heads of Koeford, the biologist charged with oceanographic research, and Michotte, the storekeeper, who ducked through the hatch of his little domain over and over, each time as burdened as a squirrel preparing for winter.”
      Orléans, p. 5
          “After lunch, as we were smoking in the wardroom, watching as the falling snow got a bit thinner, a burnt smell suddenly arose through the floorboards and filled the room around us. After a bit of reflection and looking around, we realized that the odor and the smoke were coming from the storeroom just below our feet. We called the storekeeper, ran to the hatch, flung it open! Thick smoke came pouring out! Michotte (the storekeep) rushed inside, the Commander [de Gerlache] on his heels, we passed them buckets of water while Récamier, sticking his head through the hatch, called to them every few moments to make sure they hadn’t asphyxiated. The two little hand pumps were switched on but they were useless, the hearth was out. Despite the calm and orderly appearance, we were in a moment of peril! Fire on board!! A conflagration! and in the storeroom! If this scourge were to grow, even without attacking the ship, our provisions would be lost, if not to the fire, then to the water we’d use to drown the flames. And that would be our expedition lost, the return following abject failure! Furthermore, did we know how long the fire might last, or when we might make ourselves its masters? And then, our powderroom was just below the stores…

          And in this land of death, amidst all these memories which surrounded us, beneath this blinding squall of snow, the feeling was truly harrowing. Thank God, all ended well, and after a quarter of an hour we were left with nothing but the memory of that hot alarm. But it was a harsh lesson.

          The storekeep, to descend beneath the deck where the provisions were stored, had used a candle instead of taking his lantern. He set it down still lit on a wooden case while he was searching for a tool in the front! A rolling wave knocked it over and it caught on the straw wrapped around the bottles; from there the fire grew. How lucky that we’d lingered longer than usual in the wardroom, kept there by the snow; without that, we might have discovered it too late!”

      — philippe d’orléans, à travers la banquise, smeerenburg, 15 june


      On the same day as the fire described above, the Duke led his crew to the hut used by the doomed 1897 Andrée Expedition, which had attempted to reach the North Pole via hot air balloon. Coincidentally, some of Racovitza’s letters to de Gerlache reveal that the 1897 Belgica Expedition seriously considered purchasing a balloon from the same manufacturers, deciding against it due to a lack of funds. At the time of the Belgica’s departure for Antarctica, Andrée’s fate was still unknown. The details of that fate would remain unknown until the Bratvaag expedition discovered their remains in 1930 — but first, in 1905, Adrien de Gerlache hacked his way through the wall of ice enclosing Andrée’s abandoned hut, carving a path whereby the next generation of polar explorers could be exposed to the tragic fates of his former peers.


      THE LAST STOP FOR ANDRÉE


          “We got back into the whaleboat and advanced towards Virgo Bay; the current and wind were against us and we advanced with great difficulty. Little by little, however, the bay emerged. An admirable spot for anchorage, but rather sinister and fierce, it is “closed” to the east by the islet of “the Dead Man” and mostly dominated by the high, brown, snow-covered cliffs of the Isle of Danes. 

          At the foot of one of these cliffs was the little wood-and-paper house constructed by the English sportsman Pike, where the Swede Andrée established himself in preparation for his balloon ascent meant to conquer the Pole. He left with his companions on July 11, 1897. 

          We disembarked just in front of the house, where the double doors faced us. This door had been left ajar and snow was inside the vestibule, blocking it halfway. [de Gerlache] slipped between the doorframe and the door and, armed with an ice axe, freed it. All around us, instruments were scattered. Wheelbarrows, spades, sleds, pickaxes; all had been left in their places, as if during an interrupted workday. Finally, the door could be cracked open, and so with aches in our hearts and deep waves of emotion we entered, bareheaded, into that sad cabin where three senseless but heroic explorers, Andrée, Fraenkel, and Strindberg, spent the last four months of their lives before running towards certain death, pushed, alas! to this suicide by the fear of ridicule and of public opinion. 

          This cabin was overall quite large and well-appointed. At the entrance, after passing through a vestibule, we found a square antechamber onto which three doors opened. To the right, Andrée’s room. It was spacious, everything still precisely where the unfortunate aeronaut left it. To the right of the door, his camping bed; to the left, a Swedish flag, and a white wood table, atop which there was a calendar annotated by his hand, some assorted papers, and various logarithmic tables. Behind the table, a large crate of medicine and a bench. Off of that room was a second room, narrower but still quite large, where the beds of Fraenkel and Strindberg were stacked atop one another, as if in a shipboard cabin. The furniture was still in place.

          The door in the middle of the antechamber opened onto the kitchen; this still had its large stove and its stores of canned foods. The door on the left gave access to a laboratory space with a table, chairs, and different tools. Pinned to the walls were some cartes des visites from tourists who had spent a few hours in this cabin and a few documents left by the expeditions that sojourned here. 

          It was on this table that I set down my packet of letters. Every summer, steamers full of tourists pass through here; let’s hope that one of these will take it upon themselves to bring news of our expedition to those we hold dear.

          I could not free myself from the poignant impression all of this had produced in our party, from me down to our most rugged sailors; the tragic memories evoked by visiting this last stage of an explorer who disappeared there in the northwest, in that same icy chaos where we were going ourselves.

          We looked around without exchanging a single word and, caps in hand, tried to imagine the lives of those unfortunates, the impressions of them in this space that, as if fixed in the immobility of death, still held traces of the last hours of their lives. I was so deeply moved that in a dark corner of that room I fell to my knees and I prayed. I prayed ardently for those who disappeared and for us, for all who accompanied me, asking God to watch over us and return us all in good health to those we love. 

          We left this tomblike house, all of us far more troubled than we’d have liked to appear. By the front door was a staircase to the attic, where there were still piles of crates of tinned foods. Sadly, seal hunters had been visiting too frequently. We shut the door carefully and went around.

          Against the west face of the building, a lean-to had been erected, inside of which was a large provision of coke and carbon which had been used to make the gas for the balloon l’Örn (The Eagle.) There were also a hundred long sled-shaped crates, made like the British army’s food boxes; pickaxes, barrels of petrol, oil, grease and bitumen were there as well. Behind the house was the gas factory, where the stoves, horns, and all of the apparatuses still remained, recognizable though they’d been very deteriorated by the harsh climate.

          Finally, to the east, an enormous pile of lumber in a marvelous state of conservation marked the place of the circular hangar wherein the balloon was inflated. The walls had fallen beneath the strength of the tempestuous storms which raged through this narrow gorge, but the parquet floor was still intact and fully padded with a thick red felt. A cairn topped with a metal Swedish flag bore this laconic inscription in Swedish: “From here, on the 11th of July 1897, we ascended in the Swedish balloon The Eagle, for research at the North Pole, A. Andrée, N. Strindberg and K. Fraenkel.”

          With one final look back at this somber residence, we re-embarked and quickly fled this vision which had so obsessed us. No man dared to speak and interrupt the silence within which we were all immersed, solemnly reflecting on our impressions and the lessons we learned.”






      Duke Philippe and his officers. Adrien de Gerlache is second from left, standing with slightly hunched shoulders.



      Two unidentified men and Adrien de Gerlache (right).