At Anchor: A Narrative of Experiences Afloat and Ashore during the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger from 1872 to 1876.

Wild, John James. London: Marcus Ward, 1878.
  • Maritime Reading
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This is a straightforward and rather innocuous account of the three and a half year voyage, emphasizing flora and fauna as well as buildings throughout their shore visits. Pleasant but anodyne. Wild was the official photographer of the expedition. Wikipedia states in the Wild entry: The ship was equipped with a dark room, enabling development of the photographs taken of the lands and peoples encountered. It is thought that this expedition was the first to include routine photography as well as an official artist .

A Voyage of Discovery….

Ross, John, Sir. 2nd ed. Two volumes. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819.
  • 1818 First British Northwest Passage Expedition (John Ross aboard Isabella with the Alexander).
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Ross was encouraged to attempt this early expedition searching for the Northwest Passage, but severely criticized by John Barrow for failing in that search. He had some significant accomplishments but this trip effectively ended his career with the Admiralty.

Herman Melville’s Charles and Henry Book List, 1849

  • Maritime Reading
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“Hardly the carefully ordered reading program of a university, but since Melville declared in Moby-Dick (Chapter 24) that ‘a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard,’ this little library should be taken into account among his early formative influences.”

The Charles W. Morgan Ship’s Books, 1841

Leavitt, John F. Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport, 1973.
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p. 6: The Morgan sailed on her first voyage September 6, 1841, under command of Captain Norton, with twenty-six-year-old James C. Osborn, also of Edgartown, as second mate and keeper of a journal of the voyage. Osborn must have been literarily inclined for he took a library of over seventy volumes with him, including books on history, travel and memoirs as well as twenty-two volumes of Marryatt’s works.

At Sea with the Scientifics: The Challenger Letters of Joseph Matkin.

Matkin, Joseph. Edited by Philip F. Rehbock. (Honolulu, HA: University of Hawaii Press, 1992).
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An unusual contribution to our reader’s list from below decks. Matkin was a seaman, though a fairly well-educated one, on the Challenger, and uncharacteristically for lower deck men kept a journal, the basis of these personal letters about the trip.

John Caldigate.

Trollope, Anthony. Introduction by R. C. Terry. London: The Folio Society, 1995. [First published in book form London: Chapman and Hall, 1879.].
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A romantic evening second-class deck conversation between a disinherited young gentleman and a mysterious widow (Mrs Smith) in some form of trouble. The talk turns to books, starting with John Caldigate, the deprived gentleman:

Report on Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1883.

Garlington, Ernest A. Washington: Signal Office, 1883. Signal Office Notes No. 10, re the Yantic and Porteus debacle.
  • 1883 Lady Franklin Bay Relief Expedition.
  • Maritime Reading
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p. 25-7: Scientific Outfit of the Lady Franklin Bay Relief Expedition of 1883. Memorandum B, includes the following items:

[personal journal on the Henry B Hyde]

Russell, William Bennett. Collection of Maine Maritime Museum (Bath).
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The personal journal of William Bennett Russell during his travels on the Henry B Hyde in 1894 includes an account of his discovery of an American Seamen’s Friend Society loan library aboard the ship:

1906-08 SS Roosevelt Library, 1906, 1908 (Commander Robert Peary)

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This list comprises those books known to be on Peary’s SS Roosevelt, books now surviving at Mystic Seaport. At some point these books were placed in the loan library box, but it appears to have no connection to any contents of the American Seamen’s Friend Society Loan Library that also went on these two voyages. A note with the library case, however, says that a number of books had been pilfered in Nova Scotia before the carpenter put chicken wire on it to protect the remainder.

1908-14 Douglas Mawson book lists

Mawson, Douglas.
  • 1908-09 British Antarctic Expedition; 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition.
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Included in Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic Diaries is a list of books considered part of the equipment of the British Antarctic Expedition of 1908-09, led by Shackleton aboard Nimrod, and in which Mawson served as “Physicist” of the expedition. The books are mentioned in Mawson’s Antarctic Diaires, ed. By Fred & Eleanor Jacka (Sydney 1988), on p. 6 under the entry for 12 January 1908. The original pencil mss. diary is Notebook 2 (16 December 1908 – 10 February 1909, entitled “Douglas Mawson, his diary of journey from depot on shore of Ross Sea, N of Drygalski Glacier to South Magnetic Pole” (Jacka, p. xiii). The handwritten list is in most cases quite specific about the edition and these have been relatively easy to identify.

1910-14 Books aboard Fram

As exhibited at the Fram Museum, Oslo, 2015. Contributed by Geir O. Klover, Director of the Fram Museum, Oslo, Norway.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
    Maritime Reading
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Books from the library on the Fram (1910–14).