Madhouse at the End of the Earth
by Julian Sancton
In 1897 the young Belgian aristocrat Adrien de Gerlache sailed for Antarctica aboard the steamship Belgica with dreams of becoming the first to reach the magnetic South Pole. Instead, he steered the ship deep into the sea ice and condemned her crew to a yearlong imprisonment in a frozen landscape. In this true-life adventure story laced with gothic horror, Julian Sancton recounts the Belgica crew’s harrowing quest to survive. In the endless winter night, plagued by scurvy and a mysterious polar disease that not even the brilliant American doctor Frederick Cook could explain, the men descended into madness and turned against one another. And when the sun returned and still the ice would not relinquish the ship, the explorers hatched a dangerous escape plan that would either etch their names in history or doom them to a watery grave. Madhouse at the End of the Earth is an unforgettable classic of exploration and disaster, a survival story so remarkable that even today it is studied by NASA for its lessons on the limits of what humans can endure.
PB
Canoe Trips
Canoe Trips