In the darkness, plagued by a mysterious illness and besieged by monotony, they descended into madness. When the sun set on the magnificent polar landscape one last time, the ship’s occupants were condemned to months of endless night.

De Gerlache sailed on, and soon the Belgica was stuck fast in the icy hold of the Bellingshausen Sea. After a series of costly setbacks, the commandant faced two bad options: turn back in defeat and spare his men the devastating Antarctic winter, or recklessly chase fame by sailing deeper into the freezing waters. But de Gerlache’s plans to be first to the magnetic South Pole would swiftly go awry.

His destination was the uncharted end of the earth: the icy continent of Antarctica. Sancton has produced a thriller.”- The Wall Street Journal In August 1897, the young Belgian commandant Adrien de Gerlache set sail for a three-year expedition aboard the good ship Belgica with dreams of glory.

The “exquisitely researched and deeply engrossing” ( The New York Times ) true survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly awry-with the ship frozen in ice and the crew trapped inside for the entire sunless, Antarctic winter “The energy of the narrative never flags.

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Book madhouse at the end of the earth