BOLD ENDEAVORS: BEHAVIORAL LESSONS FROM POLAR AND SPACE EXPLORATION Jack W. Stuster Anacapa Sciences, Inc., Santa Barbara, CA ABSTRACT Material in this article was drawn from several chapters of the author’s book, Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Anecdotal comparisons frequently are made between Exploration. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. 1996). expeditions of the past and space missions of the future. the crew gradually became afflicted with a strange and persistent Spacecraft are far more complex than sailing ships, but melancholy. As the weeks blended one into another, the from a psychological perspective, the differences are few condition deepened into depression and then despair. between confinement in a small wooden ship locked in the Eventually, crew members lost almost all motivation and found polar ice cap and confinement in a small high-technology it difficult to concentrate or even to eat. One man weakened and ship hurtling through interplanetary space. This paper died of a heart ailment that Cook believed was caused, at least in discusses some of the behavioral lessons that can be part, by his terror of the darkness. Another crewman became learned from previous expeditions and applied to facilitate obsessed with the notion that others intended to kill him; when human adjustment and performance during future space he slept, he squeezed himself into a small recess in the ship so expeditions of long duration. that he could not easily be found. Yet another man succumbed to hysteria that rendered him temporarily deaf and unable to speak. Additional members of the crew were disturbed in other ways. It In many ways, the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1898 was to this dismal condition that Roald Amundsen referred when to 1899 was a precursor of things to come. It was the first he later wrote, “Insanity and disease stalked the decks of the expedition to camp, although briefly, on the Antarctic continent, Belgica that winter.” and the first to spend an entire year locked in its icy embrace. Dr. Cook believed the malady was caused more by lack of Most important was the international composition of its crew— light than by the scurvy they were experiencing. Whatever the eighteen men isolated together in one of the most challenging actual cause, it is clear that the problem was also psychological. environments on Earth. In an era when expeditions were The dreaded polar night is not really that dreadful¾it has been expressions of nationalistic tendencies, the cosmopolitan endured without ill effects by many explorers and countless makeup of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition was truly modern, indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic regions¾but it took a consisting of nine Belgians, six Norwegians, two Poles, a terrible toll on the crew of the Belgica. The men suffered from Romanian, and an American, the ship’s physician, Dr. Frederick poor circulation, heart troubles, and impaired digestion. Their A. Cook. diet was low in fiber and probably certain vitamins. Although Dr. Cook had responded to a newspaper advertisement vitamins had not been discovered yet, Dr. Cook believed that the that was placed when the expedition’s original physician backed diet lacked some important element. He attempted to remedy the out only a few days before the ship sailed. Commandant Adrien condition by encouraging the men to eat fresh penguin meat, but de Gerlache, organizer of the expedition, selected Cook on the many found it unpalatable. He also prescribed an exercise basis of his previous Arctic experience. In October 1897, Cook program to counter growing symptoms of insanity among the joined the expedition in the roadstead of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. crew, but walks on the ice devolved into a circular path around The Belgica, the expedition’s ship, arrived in the Antarctic the ship that came to be known as the “madhouse promenade.” during January 1898. Though late in the season, the crew was Cook’s journal entries reflect the depression into which this able to make several landings to collect geological specimens, small society had fallen. The following is an example: lichens, moss, and insects. They conducted more scientific work The darkness grows daily a little deeper, and than had any previous Antarctic expedition, but they probably the night soaks hourly a little more color spent too much time on shore. In March, the ship became from our blood. Our gait is now careless, the trapped in the frozen Bellinghausen Sea and, locked in by pack step non-elastic, the foothold uncertain . ice, drifted there for more than a year. The crew was not fully Most of us in the cabin have grown prepared for the experience. decidedly gray within two months, though The medical officers of polar expeditions, and later at few are over thirty. Our faces are drawn, and Antarctic research stations, usually experienced considerable there is an absence of jest and cheer and frustration because they found few professional duties to hope in our make-up which, in itself, is one perform. However, this was not to be the case for Dr. Cook. The of the saddest incidents in our existence. thirty-two-year-old physician was occupied during the The novelty of life has been worn out. remainder of the expedition with a problem that started when the We miss the usual poetry and adventure of ship became locked in the ice and grew increasingly acute home on winter nights. We miss the flushed throughout the long winter night: almost every member of maidens, the jingling bells, the spirited horses, the inns, the crackling blaze of the country fire. We miss much of life which makes it worth the trouble of existence. (Cook [1900] 1980, 319) Gravitational and Space Biology Bulletin 13(2), June 2000 49 BEHAVIORAL LESSONS FROM POLAR AND SPACE EXPLORATION In desperation, Cook devised a method that he called the Lieutenant George Washington De Long, that sailed onboard “baking treatment,” in which the most seriously ill sat with the Jeannette out of San Francisco Bay on 8 July 1879. their bodies exposed to the warm glow of the ship’s stove for Telegraph Hill and the Embarcadero swarmed with well- an hour each day. This therapy, combined with enforced wishers, and more were afloat on the yachts, tugs, and portions of fresh penguin meat, seemed to help, but Cook launches that filled the bay as the barque-rigged coal burner observed that “surely one of the most important things was to steamed through the Golden Gate and set a course for the raise the patients’ hopes and instill a spirit of good humor” Arctic. Two months later, the Jeannette was beset by ice (Cook [1900] 1980). This he did consciously and persistently and trapped, as the Erebus and the Terror and countless throughout the remainder of the expedition. other ships had been over the centuries. The crew stayed with The crew’s spirits began to improve in the spring, but the the ship for nearly two years until she was crushed, then ice floe that trapped the Belgica gave no indication that it made their way to shore and through the Siberian wilderness. would ever break up. It was necessary to escape the Antarctic Only thirteen men survived the ordeal. because, as each man knew, to stay another year would be Three years after De Long and his party abandoned their fatal. Laboring with large ice saws, axes, and explosives, the ship, pieces of the Jeannette’s wreckage were found on the crew eventually blasted the ship free, but the Belgica did not southwest coast of Greenland, thousands of miles from where, reach open water for another month. In November 1899, the crushed by the ice, she had sunk. This information contributed ship arrived in Europe, where crew members were greeted as if to a theory that the far north was covered with ice, and that they had been to the moon and back. this ice cap moved in a westerly direction across the Arctic. Frederick Cook described life onboard the Belgica as a Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, a young scientist, outdoorsman, and “hellish existence,” but he rose to the occasion and is credited curator at Christiania University, developed a bold plan to with saving the expedition from psychological disaster. test the hypothesis. Nansen recently had returned from The cause of the malady that affected the Belgian making the first successful crossing of the Greenland plateau, Antarctic Expedition remains a mystery. The diet and lack of a remarkable accomplishment that would prove to be only a sunlight could have caused anemia and depression, as Cook prelude to one of the world’s boldest endeavors. surmised, or perhaps the crew suffered from a shared The genius of Nansen’s plan was to build a special ship hysterical reaction or some other psychological group for the expedition instead of converting an existing vessel. phenomenon. Simple boredom and depression may have This ship would be designed to rise up out of the ice as the affected all the members of the party and driven some beyond floes pressed against her hull, rather than to resist the full the limits of their endurance. Like most complex phenomena, force of the pressure. Critics scoffed at Nansen for his theory the crew’s experience was probably caused by a combination and predicted that his expedition would end in failure. of factors. Certainly it was of considerable relevance to plans However, he persevered and obtained an initial grant from the for future long-duration expeditions. Norwegian government. There were cost overruns, just as It is increasingly difficult for people to imagine what life there are in modern programs, when the design was changed to was like in the closing years of the 19th century.