Adrien de gerlache biography template

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In trying to free the scuppers he had lost his balance, and in falling he uttered the awful cry. By the end of January they had cut a channel to within 100 feet of the ship. He studied Engineering at the Free University of Brussels. Later, it was renamed Gerlache Strait in his honor. The three-masted whaler PATRIA had been built for the icy waters of the north.

Needless to say, the men became despondent. On New Year's Eve, 1898, a stretch of open water appeared. The research work resumed. He assisted Ernest Shackleton with the organization of Shackleton's difficult expedition of 1914-17. With two men on deck, Lecointe was lowered, but he sank at once with the counter-eddies and nearly lost his life.

They had drifted across 17 degrees of longitude.

Roald Amundsen and two of his fellow countrymen left the BELGICA and sailed home on a Norwegian mailboat. They reached another degree south and the vessel became wedged in the pack ice. Despite efforts of the crew to free the ship, they quickly realised that they would be forced to spend the winter on Antarctica.

adrien de gerlache biography template

By the month of May the crew was suffering from muscular spasms, lethargy and an intense desire to get away from one another. After finishing his third year in 1885, he quit the university and joined the Belgian Navy on 19 January 1886.

After graduating from the nautical college of Ostend he worked for some time on fishery protection vessels as second and third lieutenant.

From a young age he was deeply attracted by the sea and made three voyages in 1883 and 1884 to the United States as a cabin boy on an ocean liner. Cook new the men needed sunlight and fresh meat. In 1902, his book Quinze Mois dans l'Antarctique (published in 1901) was awarded a prize by the Académie Française.

Adrien de Gerlache participated in several other expeditions, including:

  • a commercial and scientific expedition to the Persian Gulf in 1901
  • the first Antarctic expedition of Jean-Baptiste Charcot, which he abandoned before they reached Antarctica due to the bad atmosphere on board (1903)
  • Expedition to the Greenland Sea on board the Belgica (1905)
  • Expedition to the Barents Sea and Kara Sea (1907)
  • Expedition to Greenland, Spitsbergen and the Frans-Jozef archipelago on board the Belgica (1909)
  • He had two children with his first wife, Suzanne Poulet, whom he married in 1904: Philippe (born 1906) and Marie-Louise (born 1908).

    Had they been close to land, surely the men would have deserted as they were constantly cold and damp. His request was accepted and thus Roald Amundsen was added to the ship's crew.

    The scientific crew represented many nations: the zoologist, Emile Racovitza, was Romanian; the geologist, Henryk Arctowski, was Polish; navigating officer and astronomer, George Lecointe, was Belgian; Amundsen and a number of others were Norwegian; the laboratory assistant was Russian; the ship's surgeon, Dr.

    Frederick A. Cook, was a 32-year-old native of Sullivan County, New York.

    The BELGICA left Antwerp on August 16, 1897. It was a desperate struggle, but by March 14 they cleared the pack after inching their way through seven miles of ice. With a multinational crew, which included Roald Amundsen, Frederick Cook, Antoni Bolesław Dobrowolski, Henryk Arctowski and Emil Racoviță, he set sail from Antwerp on 16 August 1897.

    During January 1898, the Belgica reached the coast of Graham Land.