Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery

Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery

Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery (born August 2, 1866 in Hasselt , † December 4, 1934 in Brussels ) was a Belgian naval officer and polar explorer .

Youth and military service

Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery was born the eldest son of a noble officer. Although the military career was a tradition in the family, he joined the Belgian Navy in 1886 against his father's wishes . At the age of twenty-two, de Gerlache de Gomery was promoted to the rank of "second lieutenant on a long journey" and in October 1890 to lieutenant . He served on ships belonging to the Belgian Fisheries Inspectorate, the Coast Guard and the Oostende - Dover ferry line , but secretly wished for a more adventurous life.

In 1895 de Gerlache de Gomery took part in a trip to Jan Mayen and East Greenland , which encouraged him to devote his life to polar exploration . He also got word of the planned project of the famous Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld to explore the as yet unexplored Grahamland and to take the risk of wintering. When Nordenskiöld gave up his plans due to lack of financial viability, de Gerlache de Gomery developed his own expedition project based on it. He informed the Swede in advance so as not to expose himself to suspicion of intellectual theft, but Nordenskiöld did not consider him worthy of an answer.

The Belgian expedition threatened to fail due to lack of funds. Only when King Leopold II intervened and instructed the local Geographical Society to support de Gerlache de Gomery did the first funds flow. One of the company's collections generated proceeds of 200,000 Belgian francs , and a further 25,000 came from a donation from soda producer Ernest Solvay . Although the scientific goals of the expedition were emphasized to the public (supposedly the location of the magnetic south pole should be precisely determined), it was also about tangible economic interests. By geologic and cartographic studies new raw material should lagerstätten opened and the Belgian colonial possessions by the usual at this time land acquisition be increased by the discoverers.

The Belgica expedition 1897–1899

The Belgica on Mount William

→ Main article : Belgica expedition

For half of the money collected, a former seal-catching ship named Patria was purchased in Norway , repainted and christened Belgica . The ship was to sail and a 150 PS strong steam engine equipped, 30 meters long, 7 meters wide and had a depth of 5 meters. A conversion to make the ship suitable for the ice sea was not carried out for financial reasons. Before the start of the trip, the famous polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen visited the ship and wished the crew, which consisted of Belgians, Romanians , Poles and Norwegians, all the best. None of them, except the Captain de Gerlache de Gomery, had experience in the Arctic Ocean. The still completely unknown Roald Amundsen acted as second officer , who in 1911 was the first person to reach the geographic South Pole .

On August 16, 1897, the Belgica left the port of Antwerp . Since the ship's doctor had left the ship at the last minute, the German-born American Frederick Cook joined the team in Rio de Janeiro as the new medic who later claimed to have been the first to reach the geographic North Pole .

The Belgica expedition did not seem to have a good star from the start, storms and reefs damaged the ship, parts of the crew were canceled and had to be left behind in Chile . At the beginning of 1898 the Belgica reached Antarctic waters, but the series of disasters continued. On January 22nd, the Norwegian seaman Carl-August Wiencke went overboard and drowned despite attempts to rescue the ship. In his honor, one of the numerous islands newly discovered in the Palmer Archipelago was given his name.

In March 1898, the Belgica passed the southernmost latitude ever reached up to that point in time ; in the exuberance of the achievement and the discoveries made, Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery failed to find a wintering place for the selected men in time and to send the ship back into ice-free waters. Thus the Belgica was trapped in the pack ice a few days later , and on May 17th the polar night began for 66 days . During this time Frederick Cook noted the gradual onset of symptoms of anemia , in his opinion due to the prolonged lack of light and inadequate nutrition. On June 5, the physicist Emile Danco (1869–1898) died of what the doctor called "polar anemia", while the sailor Adam Tollefsen suffered from delusions . With the designation "Danco-Land" for a stretch of coast of the Antarctic Peninsula , a worthy memorial was also placed on the deceased Belgian.

Meanwhile, the ship drifted with the surrounding pack ice in different directions, even after the end of the polar night the Belgica was not free for months. Time was of the essence, since after the dawn of 1899 the next sunless months and with it certain death threatened. The crew tried to use saws and explosives to create a channel to the open fairway visible on the horizon , but only after more than a year, on March 14, 1899, the remaining 17 people on board the unexpectedly very robust ship were rescued. On November 5, 1899, the Belgica reached the port of Antwerp again.

The years 1899–1934

In the following years Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery undertook further research trips. 1901 should him a ride to the to France belonging Kerguelen lead, but since the French colonial authority withdrew its approval for the company even during the trip, the ride ended in the Persian Gulf , where the crew of the restraint of pearl oysters devoted.

In 1902, de Gerlache de Gomery joined a French Antarctic expedition under Jean-Baptiste Charcot , but left the ship in Pernambuco, Brazil, because of differences of opinion. In 1904 Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery married the French Suzanne Poulet. The marriage produced a son and a daughter.

In 1905, de Gerlache de Gomery accepted an invitation from Prince Philip of Orléans and accompanied him to northeast Greenland on his old ship, the Belgica . Trips to the Kara Sea (1907) and to Spitzbergen and Franz-Joseph-Land (1909) were made with the Duke, who had meanwhile bought the Belgica .

In 1913 de Gerlache de Gomery and his wife divorced. When the First World War broke out a year later , de Gerlache de Gomery was involved in planning evacuations , defending Ostend and other coastal cities and inspecting defensive structures. In 1915 his book Le pays qui ne veut pas mourir (“A country that doesn't want to die”) was published, which became a bestseller , especially in Scandinavia . De Gerlache de Gomery traveled to Norway to draw attention to the situation of the Belgian civilian population suffering from the acts of war . He repeated this campaign in Sweden in 1916.

On December 28, Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery married Elisabeth Höger for the second time, and their son Gaston was born on November 17, 1919 , named after de Gerlache de Gomery's brother, who died in 1915. Gaston became leader of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition in 1957/58 and discovered the Belgica Mountains .

After the war, Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery worked as an advisor to the government . In 1926 he was appointed General Inspector of the Belgian Navy and in 1928 promoted to General Director. In 1929 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery died of paratyphus on December 4, 1934 in Brussels .

A number of geographic objects in Antarctica bear his name in his honor. These include Gerlache Inlet and Mount Gerlache in Viktorialand , Gerlache Island and Gerlache Strait in the Palmer Archipelago , Cape Gerlache on the coast of Queen Marie Land and the De-Gerlache-Seamounts deep-sea mountains in the Southern Ocean. The de Gerlache lunar crater has also been named after him since 2000 .

literature

• Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery: Le Voyage de la Belgica . Brussels 1902.
• Frederick A. Cook: The first south polar night, 1898-1899 . Publishing house d. Jos. Kösel'schen Buchhandlung, Kempten 1903.
• Georges Lecointe: In Penguin Country . Société Belges de Librarie, Oscar Schepens & Cie, Editeurs, Brussels 1904.
• Hugo Decleir (red.): Roald Amundsens Belgica-dagboek. The first Belgian zuidpoolexpeditie . Hadewijch, Antwerpen / Baarn 1998.

Web links

Commons : Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Detailed description of the Belgica expedition ( Memento from January 13, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
• Newspaper article about Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery: The Belgian Arctic Expedition. Summary Report of the Voyage of the "Belgica" in 1897-1898-1899 . Hayez, Brussels 1904, p. 30 (English).
2. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter G. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 18, 2019 (French). 
3. ↑ de Gerlache (moon crater) in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 16, 2005 .