Comments by "Dave Sisson" (@Dave_Sisson) on "The Drydock - Episode 285" video.

By the time of the Belgica Antarctic expedition in 1898, scurvy was so rare that the ships doctor did not not recognise it when half the crew were suffering from the disease. After a few months when he realised that it was scurvy, the only thing they had with vitamin C in it was raw penguin meat. His prescribed scurvy cure was not popular.
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@micnorton9487 The Belgica was the first expedition to try and reach the magnetic pole, so no one knew when the sea would ice over. By the time they gave up and tried to turn north, they were a week too late and ran into impenetrable ice flows. They did not know any better, but subsequent expeditions were based on what was learnt from the Belgica's experience.
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My father was a medical student who was "strongly encouraged", (so not technically conscripted,) to join the Royal Australian Air Force. As he had two years of a medical degree, he ended up being designated a medic and was transferred to an island base in the Pacific. When the RAAF were transferred elsewhere, the American Navy was short of medics, so he stayed behind. At one stage he was both the only air force person and the only Australian on a base that was entirely US Navy.
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That is a couple of years older than the monitor HMVS Cerberus. I wonder if it's in better condition than the Cerberus which has spent a century as a breakwater in Melbourne?
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@MakeMeThinkAgain Because the Belgica was the first ship to winter in the Antarctic ice and many of the crew wrote reports and books, subsequent expeditions took very close notice of their experience. Two things that were especially different were scurvy and psychology, several otherwise sane people went mad when confined in such a small place for such a long time in extreme conditions. So people like Shackleton, Scott, Mawson and Amundsen took precautions, although as you noted, they didn't always work.
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