Bookclub: Madhouse at the End of the Earth

[bumblebuzz21]

Day 1: Overall opinion?  What did you think?  Who was your favorite/least favorite person?

[bumblebuzz21]

I quite liked this book overall. I thought it was well written and kept my attention. I definitely skipped over the hunting sections. I really liked Dr. Cook and I thought I liked Amundsen but he seemed like kind of a dick by the end. I hated de Gerlache.

[moosishun]

I liked Dr. Cook probably the best because he was the one who kept everyone all together as a team. And this is why the introduction is so damn bizarre.

de Gerlache made a terrible overseer (I can't even call him a captain of the ship). It seemed like the author had to conjecture reasons (probably pretty accurate conjectures, although he himself would admit that no one knew for sure the motivations behind certain decisions) as to why people did the things they did and I think he was not overly fond of de Gerlache and his conflicting ways. He sure got the money for that trip, though, didn't he?

I imagine all grant-writers and heads of big endeavors have to think about the ins and outs of financial support.

My big confession is that the writing for me was a little slow, so I would drop off into wikipedia-land and found out how most everybody fared. I have another 200 pages to go (at the beginning of their stuck-in-the-ice-ness).

ETA:  Actually maybe 300 pages to go but making good steady progress!

[moosishun]

I will say that when I played for a music camp, the director would stress to the kitchen that kids will not remember much about the experience EXCEPT the food.

The more I think about it, if I was living in a sub-zero situation, I think the food would definitely make an impact me as well!

[bumblebuzz21]

I have been dropping my "raw or slightly cooked meat will prevent scurvy" knowledge on people all week. Not sure anyone actually cares

[sal]

Is this were I mention that I know not one, but TWO men (one of whom I may or may not be married to) who have freaking developed scurvy at some point during modern times? Drink some freaking juice, people! You don't have the excuse these dudes had.

Add me to the Cook was the best of this lot list. I mostly liked Amundsen and LeCointe as well.

Once we hit the trapped in the ice stage, my reading speed picked up. I think I read 100 pages this morning before I went to the gym! (and the gym was at 6:10 am, so make of my wakeup time what you will; oof).

[Deleted]

I read this book in January so I’ve forgotten so much. I LOVE ship wreck books and the stories of their survival. So, for me, this was a really good read. I didn’t skip any of it. I loved it.

I remember thinking at the beginning, “Dear Lord, this ragtag bunch of neer-do-wells will not fare well.”

IIRC, I mostly like Dr. Cook. He seemed brave, knowledgeable, great with his calculations and with surmising what “might just work”. I asked myself several times “if I had to trust one of these sailors with my life who would it be?” I think I decided on Armundson. He seemed moody, but strong, brave and trustworthy. DeGerlache drove me insane with his arrogant beginning and then his midway whimpering. He did seem to rally when they were getting unstuck, which was good.

I hated whoever threw the cat overboard. Asshat! Why ya gotta do that?

[moosishun]

I think it was terribly sad that Weinke and Danco died - if they had stayed alive, I think we would have really liked them.

The more I read about de Gerlache, the more I really don't like him.

[moosishun]

I did like sal, got through the intro in a flash because it was crazy how Cook's life turned. Had many sittings and fewer pages read up until the freeze-in. Never thought I would finish, and then today, got through it all in record time.

Explorers!!! What a bunch of nuts.

[suby]

I've been reading a lot of fluffy books lately, so I had to have patience with a book I couldn't fly through. I felt so bad for Dr. Cook's rocky start. He was kind of a hottie going by the pics in my copy of the book.

I also had no idea the original name of the baseball team was the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers.

[moosishun]

I did my best to fight the scurvy - lots of strawberries over here.

I have to say that the more that Dr. Cook and Amundsen got out and about, there was a little less shine on their stars. However, de Gerlache pulled it out of his rear in the end and was the right man at the right time for the great escape.

I am really glad those troublemakers were kicked off the ship before they got into real trouble. I can guarantee it that they would have been my MOST HATED.

[sal]

And yeah, there were a lot of dang flawed people in this book. Even the ones I mostly liked got a lot of "really?!" from me.

[bumblebuzz21]

Day 2- The author opens part one of Madhouse at the End of the Earth with an epigraph: “Sometimes science is the excuse for exploration. I think it is very rarely the reason,” a quote from George Leigh Mallory. Do you agree? Why or why not? Do you believe it applies to the voyage of the Belgica?

[bumblebuzz21]

I think this obviously was the case for the Belgica. They used science in order to get money, plus I imagine it is hard to raise funds to let you just go tool around and see what's happening. And the one scientist didn't even know what he was doing! I was pretty amazed to read how much they were able to bring back and have studied. I figured everything would basically be ruined by the time they got back.

[moosishun]

There are people that want to climb every mountain and scope out the entire universe, one space station at a time. It would certainly be advantageous to be a scientist if you had those inclinations.

I am not made of that fabric.

There are obviously people like Amundsen who were so focused on their goal that extreme cold, terrible food, awful smells and a boat full of rats were nothin', perhaps even something to look forward to. And death? *spit*

I like to read about those sorts.

[Deleted]

I agree with bumblebuzz21 that the Belgica, like other expeditions, needed to appeal to the realm of science for funding. In essence, I think the leaders were, often, people struck with wanderlust.

I found a list I made when I started reading this book so I could keep track of the characters. Of the eleven that I recorded, four went w/o pay suggesting something else drove them, Danco - best friend of de Gerlach/Racouitza- zoologist (maybe for science )/Amundsen (skier)/Dobrowski (student scientist who admitted grave doubts the expedition,leaders and the actual ship - sounds good but Dobrowski had escaped from prison and didn’t have much going for him.

Arctowski went as the chemist & geologist but had no formal training.

Duvivier incompetent navy mechanic

Michotte - my notes say thumb bitten off and that he was skilled in fencing. I guess they thought they needed him in case they ran into pirates.

LACOINTE - EXPERT AT CELESTIAL NAVIGATION - finally a qualified person

Van Mirlo (? Cant read my writing) dodging military service, lied and said he had sailing experience.

Somers-my notes say “drunk in public”, fired and then rehired.

And de Gerlache. I thought de Gerlache went for glory (for himself and Belgium and for recognition and notoriety for being brave)


You didn’t ask this question but I’ll share…. I did not know this wanderlust until after a divorce following 18 years of marriage. Then I got bit with just a it of it. In my late 40’s I decided to buy and learn to ride a motorcycle. In my 50’s I set out to run a 5K, something I had never done before. Now I’m retired and DH and I bought an old Jeep Wrangle for off-roading. When he retires we are contemplating buying a small ranch. Not that this is anything like sailing the Belgica but I ‘
“get” trying to accomplish something you don”t think you can.

[sal]

There really were a lot of these dudes not qualified for their jobs. Wanderlust and glory (for themselves and/or the crown) for sure, with the science part just being there to get the funding.

[peacemama]

Might finish up in time to join this week's discussion. I'm at the point when scurvy is starting to afflict the crew. The book started slow for me, but I'm now engrossed in discovering how their outcome unfolds.

[bumblebuzz21]

Day 3: De Gerlache fears meeting his death in the Antarctic ice pack, but more acutely, he fears unfavorable treatment in the Belgian press—whether for hiring a crew with non-Belgian members, not achieving the voyage’s stated mission, or falling short of his goals, among other reasons. Why might he feel this way about the press? Do you believe his fears negatively impacted his decision-making?

[bumblebuzz21]

OMG...his fear of what the press would think drove me batty! Get over it dude!!! And duh, yes it negatively impacted his decision-making.

[Deleted]

IIRC, de Gerlache was born into an affluent family who disapproved of his desires to sail on expeditions. Also, he had met and was ingratiated to King Leopold. So, to fail would have been utter disgrace for him. Sadly, he let his concern for failure impact his state of mind and he really let his crew down with his indecision and depression. He was already on trial in the public eye for recruiting non-Belgian crew members. He severely lacked a “militaristic” approach to leadership that might have proved helpful in their dire circumstances. I think his male family were mostly military.

He was fraught with short comings that set him up for such a disaster.

[moosishun]

The biggest f-up on his part, which you KNOW was influenced by his fears of the press, public and politicians, was making the calculated decision to stay through the inevitable icing when absolutely NO ONE else wanted to do that. He knew what he was doing at that point and almost made the same mistake to do nothing when he made the biggest hero-move of all, which was to be instrumental in getting them out of there.

I don't think he could be held responsible for Weincke's death and if what Dr. Cook said was true about Danco, that poor man had only a limited amount of time left in him. But, there were the others that had their lives considerably altered for the absolute worst, among them, Knudsen, who died a bare year after getting out of there, and Tollefsen who had a mental break and who never came out of it.

There was probably one man, Amundsen, who saw this horrific breach of trust as the greatest preparation for his life's work. Everybody else, even Cook - nope.

This sort of ties into the fact that Dr. Cook used that poisonous toxin to make his prints come out because he ran out of the regular stuff. You wonder how that permeated the boat and could have been the direct cause of the mental break and the eventual death of Knudsen and who knows what residual effects for any of the others (shades of Agent Orange and the Gulf War disease).

But right now, I am okay with hating on de Gerlache.

[bumblebuzz21]

Day 4- In order to plan and execute his own polar excursions before joining the Belgica, Frederick Cook relies heavily on the knowledge and skills of indigenous people, including two young Inuit siblings who he brought to live with him in New York and ultimately used in a “traveling Arctic showcase” in the city. Discuss the way that Cook and his contemporaries depended on the labor and knowledge of indigenous people in explorations of this nature.

[Deleted]

At the beginning of that story, I was thinking that he must have had tremendous respect for the Inuit people, considering they accepted him and considered him a trustworthy friend. But, when he built a traveling sideshow around them, it really angered me.

He did learn and use a lot of good information from them that was helpful on the expedition.

I couldn’t believe he took those two teenagers, renamed them with Americanized names, made them live in a tent in his mom’s back yard, and charged people to “see” them. Good Grief.

(Cook ultimately went to jail for monetary crimes in Fort Worth. I’m in Dallas and have plans to see if I can find any museum that has anything about him.)

[peacemama]

I'm in the final pages of Beyond the Belgica and just narrowed my eyes at the killing off of the slowest sled dogs to feed to the other canines.

The mention of Mt McKinley reminded me of the ongoing challenge to rectify the erasure of indigenous place names.