On the long-ignored scientific achievements of the Belgica expedition 1897–1899

ABSTRACT

The Belgica expedition, which left Belgium in August 1897, was the first to spend 13 months continuously in Antarctic waters, before returning in late 1899. This was not only an exploratory venture, as new lands and oceans were charted, but more importantly it was an exceptional and successful scientific voyage. After the return of the expedition, a vast array of scientific data was processed and eventually 92 publications in some nine volumes funded by the Belgica Commission appeared over 40 years as a series called Résultats du voyage de la Belgica en 1897–99 sous le commandement de A. de Gerlache de Gomery – rapports scientifiques. Disappointingly, those significant results have been mostly ignored in the scientific literature and the paper here aims to inform scientists of the achievements of the Belgica expedition and where to obtain the information. Many of the climatological and oceanographic data obtained by the expeditioners ought to be examined in line with the changes that are occurring today in the Antarctic Peninsula region as a result of global warming. Some of the Belgica data form an important database to critically assess environmental changes over 120 years in the region of the Antarctic Peninsula.

KEYWORDS:

• Antarctic Peninsula
• Gerlache Strait
• climate change
• glaciology
• meteorology
• oceanography

Acknowledgements

I am particularly grateful to many of the librarians who helped find publications related to the Belgica expedition. These are Kirsty Summers at Sydney University, Anne Melgård and Guro Tangvald of the National Library of Norway, Nathalie Wagemans of the Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp, as well as Marie Depris of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, Agnieszka Pietrzak of the Muzeum Ziemi in Warsaw and Bogdan Cracium of the National Archives Library in Cluj and finally many staff members of the Australian National Library in Canberra. In addition, I am grateful to Emeritus Professor Dimitru Murariu of the Grigore Antipa Museum in Bucharest for guiding me through many of the E. Racoviță archives and to Professor Claude De Broyer of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels for facilitating my examination of all the Belgica volumes and other archives. Discussions concerning many of the Belgica archives with Olivier De Schrevel proved extremely fruitful. I am also grateful to both Emeritus Professors Claude De Broyer and Dimitru Murariu for their detailed reviews of this paper. Thank you all.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.