Through the First Antarctic Night 1898-1899

Author:  Dr Frederick A. Cook

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, a little known expedition sailed from Belgium with the first truly multi-national group of officers, scientists and crew. The Belgica was to spend an unintended Polar night deep below the Antarctic Circle. Locked in the ice of the Bellingshausen Sea for over a year, the ship would become a virtual laboratory of human endurance for its 19-member crew. The dramatic emergence of two explorers on this expedition would lead both to internationally acclaimed expeditions a few years later – Frederick A. Cook as the first to claim discovery of the North Pole in 1908, and Roald Amundsen a discoverer of the South Pole in 1911.

In the centennial edition of this classic book of the expedition, the story is brought to a wider audience. Exceptional photography – pioneered by Cook who served as expedition surgeon – provided an insight into this experience, and this edition combines these original Antarctic images with contemporary color photographs of the same regions explored by the Belgica. Two highly regarded Polar historians – Prof. Susan Barr of Norway and Prof. T.H. Baughman of the U.S.A. – have new contributions to give this historic event its rightful place in our modern era of understanding the Antarctic.