Adrien de Gerlache

Adrien de Gerlache, full name Adrien-Victor-Joseph, Baron de Gerlache de Gomery (1866-1934), Belgian naval officer who led the first expedition to Antarctica with the purpose of scientific observation.

In 1897, Gerlache set out in the Belgica, a 250-ton Norwegian sealer bound for Antarctica. Sailing with him (as first mate) was Roald Amundsen, later to be the first to reach the South Pole, and Frederick Cook, who later claimed to have reached the North Pole before Robert Peary. After making discoveries and landings in the Palmer Archipelago and reaching Alexander Island (along the eastern Pacific coast of the continent), Gerlache navigated into the pack ice. There, at 71°30’ south, the Belgica was beset by ice, drifting to the south of Peter I Island. They remained trapped for 13 months, becoming the first vessel to winter in the Antarctic. Like their counterparts in Arctic exploration the previous century, the crew was afflicted with scurvy and depression during a period of 70 days of darkness.

In 1901 Gerlache sailed to the Persian Gulf to collect zoological specimens. Gerlache conducted oceanographic studies in the seas around Greenland, Scandinavia, and Russia (1901-1909), and in 1909 led an overland crossing of Greenland, from west to east and at its widest point. He advised Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton in the planning of the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1916.