Adrien de Gerlache was a young Belgian naval officer who led the first expedition to spend a winter in the Antarctic. His ship, the Belgica, anchored at Punta Arenas on 1 December 1897 to take on coal, water and food. Aboard were two men who would become famous: the Norwegian first mate Roald Amundsen and the American doctor Frederick Cook.
For two weeks the town treated them as celebrities. The officers stayed at the Hotel de France on calle Roca; the governor received Gerlache at the Gobernación on the square, and the volunteer fire brigade lent them its hall. A French resident gave them two carrier pigeons. A few days out, one escaped its box and flew home alone to its loft in town, with no message.
The Belgica sailed on 14 December. In March 1898 she was caught in the pack ice of the Bellingshausen Sea and stayed trapped for a year, through the polar night, with scurvy aboard; two men died on the voyage. She broke free in March 1899 and came into Punta Arenas on the 28th, leaking, after the foreign press had reported her lost.
It was the first Antarctic expedition to sail from Punta Arenas and come back to it. The hotel is gone: a 1981 apartment building stands on its corner.