Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night

by Julian Sancton

The deckhand recovered his speech and hearing within a week, but not his reason. Among the first things he said when he found his voice was that he was going to murder his superior, chief engineer Henri Somers, as soon as he had the chance. Cook’s photographs of the twenty-one-year-old, light-haired Van Mirlo around this time suggest madness. In one portrait, the sailor’s eyes are almost entirely white. His pupils are thrust all the way to the side, fixed on something just off camera that appears to frighten him. His downy lip begins to curl into a smile. Van Mirlo’s insanity struck his shipmates at their core. It was one thing to be depressed, to suffer from despair, or even to be worn down by physical maladies like Danco. But Van Mirlo’s unraveling escalated the sense of terror that had been simmering on board for months. He was simultaneously an augury of the worst that the men feared for themselves and a vector of fear. If he said he would murder Somers, what was to stop him from changing his mind and killing someone else? Now the expeditioners had to worry not only about “the elements conjured against us,” wrote Lecointe, but also “this man who was irresponsible for his actions.” The sailor’s condition was a particularly extreme manifestation of the generalized panic that most were barely managing to keep contained.