The Rescue of Greely.

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The author sums up the expedition on p. 142 as follows:

The Life and Adventure in the South Pacific. By A Roving Printer.

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The attribution comes from the Nautical Magazine 23 (1864) p. 66, but who it is I haven’t learned. A bit more literate than the average whaleman but not a riveting book—a good overview of whaling but not with the art of a Melville or Bullen.

The Wilkes Expedition: Tthe First United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842).

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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.

Reminiscences of a Voyage Around the World.

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Written by an Assistant Librarian of the University of Michigan and son of the captain, who says he wrote it to increase an “insufficient salary.” First published in a weekly newspaper, readers he claims called for book publication. The author was early on a cabin boy, a job from which he was “ignominiously dismissed” for his greater interest in the world, than the world around him.

Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands.

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To coin a phrase, this could be called a French semi-circumnavigation, from France and back via the Cape of Good Hope. Originally commanded by Nicolas Baudin who died during the expedition, he was replaced by Louis de Freycinet. Curiously Baudin is never mentioned by name in the book (illustrating Péron’s contempt) and his role was widely regarded by the men as a negative one. These volumes are less an official record of the voyage than Péron’s personal account of his naturalist studies framed by the places which they visited.

Seasons with the Seahorses; Or, Sporting Adventures in the Northern Seas.

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p. 80, in a description of the cabin: As for reading, it is next to impossible, for I defy any body to read long sitting on a locker nine inches broad; also, the bunks are too dark, and if we try to read in them we generally go to sleep.

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.

Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains under Sail

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This is a rather delightful book, based on the diaries and journals of women “sailors” accompanying their husbands on sea voyages. The women and the locations of their manuscripts (largely in maritime and historical museums) are listed in an Appendix. One assumes that most of these women were both educate and of a fairly independent streak for their times.

To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of H.M.S. ‘Blossom’

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George Peard, the first lieutenant of the Blossom, gives detailed descriptions of the places visited and the inhabitants, among them Pitcairn Island and the Gambier, Tahitian and Hawaiian groups. No less valuable are his accounts of Kamchatka, California, the Northwestern extremity of North America, and various parts of South America. Peard had an inquisitive, scientific mind, and he wrote a clear discursive narrative which shows that British exploration in the early Pax Britannica bore many fruits - scientific, commercial and strategic. It also showed that the Northwest passage had again eluded the British, in spite of the careful planning of the Admiralty, the Colonial office and the Hudson's Bay Company and the painstaking execution of orders by such naval officers as Parry, Franklin, Beechey and Peard himself. Two of the plates are now printed at the end of the book. [Description from Google Books, 10/7/17.]

Polar Pioneers. John Ross and James Clark Ross.

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A joint biography of uncle and nephew with much on other explorers of the time, e.g. Parry. There is an impressive body of contemporary literature surrounding the Rosses and Parry which is well-described here, including the acrimony between uncle and nephew, John and James.

Arctic Experiences: Containing Capt. George E. Tyson’s Wonderful Drift on the Ice-floe, A History of the Polaris Expedition, the Cruise of the Tigress, and Rescue of the Polar Survivors. To which is Added a General Arctic Chronology.

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A fascinating account of an extraordinary drift on an ice-floe, preceded by “A General Arctic Chronology” by the Editor, E. Vale Blake, (p. 19-74).

Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet, 1923.

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Fascinating book on the introduction of European-based law into a culture that had no reason to understand it, given its communitarian consensual approach to justice. Well-written and badly proofed, but worth the read.