My entire review is found here.

This is a story about how one commander roped together a motley band of people, some expert, some extremely incompetent, and set off on a journey to Antarctica on the ship Belgica. Visions of fame, broken world records, money, and adventure, a crew was collated and a journey from Belgium began.

There were failed and deadly travels made before in search of the poles. The ships Terror and Erebus left for their journeys a few decades before Belgica, and both were frozen stuck in ice. This was most definitely in the minds of arctic would-be explorers.

This book managed to not only send chills down my spine more times than I remember, but its author soberly and brilliantly wove together many tales that would seem unbelievable if told in a vivacious manner.

But perhaps the most dreaded possibility was that the Belgica would be caught in the ice and either crushed by the pressure or kept captive indefinitely, leaving her men to starve to death. Several notorious expeditions to the northern polar regions had met such fates. De Gerlache presumed that a half ton of tonite would more than suffice to break the grip of the sea ice. It was the first time he underestimated the power of Antarctica, but it would not be the last.

The book paints a picture of different individuals from different cultures, some of which agreed to carry out a mission with very different motives. There's not much psychology at play other than what Sancton lets the reader puzzle together, nor is this a bone-dry recant of events. The closest comparison I can make from this book, is probably Arthur Conan Doyle's books about Sherlock Holmes. Not that this is a detective story! Most of that work is done for us by Sancton, who has pieced together a detailed picture from many different sources, not all of which are believable, which makes this story even more interesting.

Adrien de Gerlache, the commander of Belgica, was an interesting and frustrating man. He was good at raising funds for his journey but could not handle a crew.

The Belgian crew members de Gerlache was able to wrangle over the course of a year were far from the cream of the crop. They included a navy mechanic, Joseph Duvivier, whose superior officer wrote a letter of recommendation that read much more like a warning: “In summation, it is possible that Mr. Duvivier might figure out how to work a very simple engine, like the Belgica’s, but I cannot guarantee it.” De Gerlache hired him.