The Whaling Industry; Exhibition of Objects Illustrating the Whaling Industry and the Natural History of Whales … List of Essex County Whaling Vessels. List of Pictures of Whaling Vessels in the Marine Room. List of Log-books of Whaling Vessels in the Library of the Essex Institute. List of Books on Whales and Whaling in the Salem Public Library …
- Whalemen's Reading
Under Sail to Greenland, Being an Account of the Voyage of the Cutter “Direction”. 1929.
- 1929 Private US Voyage to Greenland (aboard Direction with Arthur Allen and Rockwell Kent).
- Arctic Reading: United States
An easygoing and relaxed account of the Greenland trip by three twenty-year olds including Rockwell Kent (who took the trip for painting purposes primarily) in a small vessel which was wrecked near Godthaab in the summer of 1929. Tragic in that the author was killed in a car crash the month after returning to the US. A few reading and library references are included in this adventure:
Life on the Ocean, Or Twenty Years at Sea: Being the Personal Adventures of the Author.
- Maritime Reading
A Baltimore Captain in the Merchant Service who gives an autobiographical travel diary while intending to give a true picture of life at sea “blending with it those wholesome moral and religious truths, which should be inculcated upon the minds of seamen (p. 4).
Back to Hampton Roads: Cruise of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet from San Francisco to Hampton Roads July 7, 1908—February22, 1909.
- 1907-09 US Circumnavigation by the Great White Fleet.
- Arctic Reading: United States
p. 76-77: Before the Americans came here they knew little in a definite way about Australia. They got all the books they could find on
Band of Brothers: Boy Seamen in the Royal Navy.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
This is partly autobiographical, partly historical in its description of the training and service of boys in the Royal Navy, a system which did not end until 1956, amply demonstrating the RN’s vaunted conservatism. He attended the nautical school for boy seaman known as Ganges, and neatly compares its ancient traditions with those of his post-1950s education.
1908-14 Douglas Mawson book lists
- 1908-09 British Antarctic Expedition; 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition.
- Maritime Reading
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.
Moby Dick, or The Whale.
- Whalemen's Reading
Among so many other things, Moby Dick is a key text on the reading of sailors, especially the quote on p. 159, and this edition with Kent’s wood engravings is especially desirable.
Igloo for the Night.
- 1938 Hudson Bay Voyage of Nascopie.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
R.M.S. Nascopiewas the chief supply ship of the Hudson’s Bay Company with 34 annual visits to Northern Arctic outposts coming through Hudson Strait from the UK until 1933 when it was reassigned to Montreal.
The Wilkes Expedition: Tthe First United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842).
- 1838-42 U.S. Exploring Expedition (Wilkes).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
p. 41, Titian Peale quoted from letter to his daughters about his stateroom: I have a little bed over and under which is packed clothes, furs, guns, Books and boxes without number, all of which have to be tied to keep them from rolling and tumbling about, and kept off the floor as it is sometimes covered with water.
In Search of a Polar Continent 1905-1907
- 1905-07 Canadian Overland Journey of Alfred H. Harrison.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
The objects of this expedition were to penetrate as far as possible into that unknown region which lies to the north, and to meet and to get to know the natives, of whom I have always fostered an idea of making use in ice expeditions. Besides the natives, the whale-fishers who navigate those waters might, I trusted, be able to render me assistance. Furthermore, I wished to discover, if possible, whether there was land hitherto unknown in the Arctic Ocean: in ascertaining this, I would make Herschel Island my base of operations (p. viii).
Foothold on Antarctica: The First International Expedition (1949-1952) through the Eyes of its Youngest Member.
- 1949-52 Norwegian–British–Swedish Antarctic Expedition (NBSX or NBSAE) based at Maudheim.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Swithinbank was a member of this largely Norwegian expedition. He’s not a natural writer but the story has its share of adventure and danger which he reports in a rather dry style. He gives some information about reading among his colleagues but nothing on what he himself read.
The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, in Search of a Passage to Cathay and India by the North-West, A.D. 1576-78.
- 1576-78 The Baffin Island Voyages of Martin Frobisher.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
p. cii-ciii, re the first voyage: The ship’s library included two works of André Thevet, the French royal geographer, his Cosmography, in French, which had been published only the previous year, and his Singularités de l’Amérique, both in French and in the English translation of 1568, by Thomas Hackett, under the title The New found World or Antarctike. It included William Cunningham’s Cosmographical Glasse, published in 1559, which, to quote Professor Taylor, ‘contains little of purely geographical interest, but is notable for its exposition and illustration of the method of survey by triangulation….’ This volume and Dr Record’s Castle of Knowledge, 1556 (‘containing the explication of the sphere’), which they also took along, ‘were certainly adequate reference books for such astronomy and mathematical geography as was necessary to understand the principles of these various instruments’ (i.e. Cole’s instruments). As they took Medina’s Arte de Naviguar in the original it is to be presumed that the Master could read Spanish. The only English work included was Mandeville, ‘presumably for the sake of its account of the Far East, which was the ultimate goal of the expedition’. They also took ‘a Bible Englishe great volume’, possibly Richard Jugge’s Bishop’s Bible of 1572.
The Quiet Land: The Diaries of Frank Debenham, Member of the British Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913.
- 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
On Debenham’s experience of the Scott expedition and its tragic end. It was he who suggested that excess funds in the memorial Appeal be used for an institute of Polar research and he became SPRI’s first Director, an unpaid position which he held from 1920 to 1946.
Shackleton’s Argonauts: A Saga of the Antarctic Icepacks.
- 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
p. 72-73: While on the subject of salvage [from the dying Endurance], I might add that I recovered the volumes of the encyclopaedia from the chief’s cabin and a large part of my own personal library, as well as several packs of cards. Many a day we had cause to bless the fact. What tedious hours were whiled away in reading; what wonderful and purely imaginary fortunes changed hands at poker patience.
The Great Frozen Land (Bolshaia Zemelskija Tundra). Narrative of a Winter Journey across the Tundras and a Sojourn among the Samoyads.
- 1893-94 British Russian Journey between White Sea and Kara Sea.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Purpose to test newly developed equipment in severe conditions, but also to “visit and, for some months, to live with that primitive group of the human family, the Samoyads of the Great Frozen Tundra of Arctic Russia; to dwell in their tents, to eat of their food, to go and come with them in their daily life, to share their labour and their rest; to mark their ways and seek their motives, to note their relations to one another, and to learn, if possible, something of their sense of a higher influence” (p. ix).