A Man’s Woman.

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Norris’s turn-of-the-century novel is loosely based on George Washington De Long’s U.S. North Polar expedition aboard the Jeannette (1879-81). It borrows freely from the locale (Wrangell Island and environs), the beset and crushed ship, the forced march on ice and pressure ridges, the heroic commander, the few survivors finally rescued. He adds the love interest, a strong-minded woman who resists the commander, succumbs, marries, and subtly convinces the hero that he is the one who must achieve the North Pole for the United States, knowing his safe return to be doubtful. He sails from New York in a new ship clearly modeled on Nansen’s Fram. Sources in Greely’s expedition and parallels with Robert E. Peary, who had already begun his North Pole quest and was in Northern Ellesmere land at the time of publication, are easily drawn.

Greenland, the Adjacent Seas, and the North-West Passage to the Pacific Ocean.

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O'Reilly served as surgeon aboard a whale-ship, in order to gather scientific information on the northern regions. He gives much information concerning Arctic zoology, whale fishery, natural atmospheric phenomena, observations of magnetic variation, the history and habitation of Greenland, and observations concerning the possibility of a Northwest Passage." Field - "The observations of the author on the natives of Greenland, are recorded on pp. 52 and 85, of which the last two are occupied with a vocabulary of their language. Five of the plates are illustrative of the features, or habits of life of the Exquimaux." According to Abbey an article in the 'Quarterly Review' called the book 'a bare faced imposition.' Stanton & Tremaine mentions the book is said to have been plagiarized from material prepared by Sir Charles L. M. von Giescke. Hill: Pacific Voyages, p. 219. Field: Indian Bibliography, p. 297

Herman Melville: A Biography.

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Volume I: p. 231: The Charles and Henry also offered stimulus for his mind from books. On the real Lucy Ann the real John Troy, Melville says in the partly fictional Omoo, possessed books, but “a damp, musty volume, entitled ‘A History of the most atrocious and Bloody Piracies’ ” may be an imaginary composite of real titles such as The History of the Lives and Bloody Exploits of the Most Noted Pirates (Hartford, 1835). After being taken off the Lucy Ann Melville had spent weeks in Tahiti and Eimeo outdoors all the time, “an utter savage” (in the phrasing he used of himself in 1852, after spending weeks out of doors), reading nothing so far as we know. Once he got aboard the Charles and Henry and settled into the routine of sailing without sighting whales or at least without capturing whales, he had time to catch up on his reading. The wealthy Nantucket owners of the ship had supplied their craft remarkably well in every regard, not omitting the ship’s library. Thanks to the surviving bill for $16.24 that the Nantucket Coffins paid on 5 April 1841, we have a good idea of what Melville could have laid his hands on—the first books we have much reason to think he read since, by his own account, he read Owen Chase’s Narrative in his early months in the Pacific. The surviving list of the books purchased (all new, apparently) often gives only short titles and no authors; from the list Wilson Heflin identified likely editions of the books named. Following Heflin’s identifications, here I sort the ship’s library into rough categories. Like Heflin, I assume that most of the books shipped at the end of 1840 were still aboard after less than two years; vandalism or even careless handling would not likely be tolerated in a well-run ship, despite the perhaps fictional bibliographical mutilation Melville describes (Omoo, ch. 20) as taking place on a poorly captained Australian whaler. In addition, individual sailors brought some books aboard, which in due course might have found their way into the community book-chest.

Report of the Executive Committee in Charge of Kane Lodge Reception to Bro. Robert Edwin Peary, U.S.N., and Other Arctic Explorers. At Sherry’s, New York, April 8.

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Includes a short address by Peary and his presentation of a Masonic flag that he carried twelve hundred miles through the Arctic; the book is a presentation copy from Joseph L. Little, the committee's chairman, to Joseph Morris Ward, the Treasurer reading in part "... I believe the issuing of this little souvenir volume finishes up the Peary incident as connected with the Lodge...".

Secrets of Polar Travel.

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A chapter on winter quarters describes lodges he built for wintering in Greenland.

A Report on the Resources of Iceland and Greenland.

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This is a report commissioned by William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, on the desirability of acquiring Iceland and Greenland for the US, just as the U.S. had acquired a few Caribbean islands and Alaska.

Polar Extremes: The World of Lincoln Ellsworth.

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A sympathetic but not uncritical account of Ellsworth, his problems with his father, his relationships to Amundsen and Nobile on Svalberg to Alaska flight, etc.

Cannibal Nights: Adventures of a Free-Lance Trader.

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Nothing to do with whaling or reading but a good swash-buckling story worthy of Flashman: A peerless hero of U. S. mariners is Captain Ahab, the vindictive old salt who sailed the southern oceans screaming for more canvas, cursing tired crews, laughing wildly into the gale as he hunted the Great White Whale, Moby Dick, who had cost him a leg. Last week U. S. mariners heard a voice reminiscent of the great mad Ahab—almost.

Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

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p. 58, on Howgate’s embezzlements from the Signal Corps and his various periods as a fugitive: This time [1881] Howgate eluded capture for thirteen years. He was finally seized in New York City in 1894, where he had been posing as a rare book dealer….

The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture.

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p. 61-62, re Hayes expedition of 1860, amidst other calamities: …two local Danish naturalists accused William Longshaw, the expedition’s surgeon, of stealing their books and natural history specimens. A search of Longshaw’s trunk turned up some of the missing items. With the Danish community in an uproar, Hayes quietly sent Longshaw home, where the surgeon told surprised reporters that he had returned because of snow blindness. But this did not silence talk about Longshaw’s actions in Greenland. “This surgeon’s rascality,” Grinnell fumed, “had spread the whole length of the Greenland coast." And it would soon spread further. By the spring of 1861, Grinnell would learn the full story of the scandal from his son, who reported from England that the matter had become a topic of conversation among British explorers.