A Very Gallant Gentleman.

Bernacchi, Louis Charles. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1935 [first published 1933] See supra, p. 174.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Bull, Colin. Email message to David Stam, August 31, 2005:

The White Desert.

Barber, Noel. New York: Thomas W. Crowell, 1958.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Barber was a British journalist under contract to write for the Daily Mail on the Fuchs/Hillary Trans-Antarctic Expedition. He spent the austral summer of 1957-58 in Antarctica, mainly at McMurdo but making two substantial visits to the South Pole and was there when Hillary and then Fuchs arrived in 1958. He takes a British anti-Hillary stance on the controversy over Hillary’s arrival at the SP and makes him into a quite unattractive figure. But he is not uncritical of Fuchs either, finding him stuffy, portentous, too proud to accept help offered by the Americans, but accepting it on a number of dire occasions. Nor does he note how Adm. Dufek is complicit in the feud of Fuchs and Hillary by encouraging Hillary to go to the Pole on his plane when it should have been none of Dufek’s business. He rather simply sees Dufek as an innocently generous American with little agenda of his own.

Sleeping Island: The Story of One Man’s Travels in the Great Barren Lands of the Canadian North.

Downes, Prentice Gilbert. New York: Coward-McCann, 1943.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

A delightful book of Chipawyan and Cree folklore by a regular American summer visitor in the 1930s and early 40s, a Harvard man (AB ’33) and high school teacher at Belmont Hill School. He loved exploring the Barren Lands during his summer breaks between 1937 and 1947. Shows signs of his fairly wide reading on the history of the region, but none of his own reading on this particular voyage. Since he never overwintered his opportunities for reading were limited.

Adolphus Washington Greely,

Marshall, David J. in The Story of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Edited by Max L. Marshall. (New York: Franklin Watts, 1965) p.90-111.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

p. 96, at Fort Conger Greely organized a school: More informally, he delivered lectures on a variety of subjects. And every Sunday Greely conducted church services; a typical New Englander, tall, spare, and stern, he had a tender conscience and could preach a better sermon, it was said, than the average Army chaplain. For a certainty he was a great talker—at times, it would seem, unmercifully so. But he had worthwhile things to talk about, for Greely was also a great reader of books.

The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 502, on Martin Frobisher’s first voyage: More impressive than the ships was the equipment…. The literature included two works by André Thever: his Cosmographie universelle, just out, and Singularitez de la France antarctique; and Medina’s Arte de Naviguar, one of the best available treatises on navigation. Strangely enough, Frobisher did not carry William Bourne’s more recent Regiment of the Sea (1574). Probably more for amusement than anything else, he had a copy of Sir John Mandeville’s famous book of whoppers. Also, for good measure, a ‘great’ English Bible. This was probably the ‘Bishop’s Bible’ of 1572, whose title page includes a portrait of the Queen, useful to show the natives…. [Can’t tell the source of Morison’s list but he does suggest there was a complete list somewhere—see Stefansson ed. of Best, v. 2, p. 77-78]

The Cruise of the Cachalot.

Bullen, Frank (Franklin) Thomas. Foreword by Curtis Dahl. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

This fictional description of the whaling life, written in the later 19th-century, should rank with Melville but devoid of Melville’s allegorical meanings. It is arguably a work of fiction by a fairly prolific novelist, though that is not certain. Although Cachalot was a maritime pseudonym, the work seems to be an accurate account of the trials and occasional pleasures of whaling. It was published in 1898, probably 25 years after his whaling journeys. Scattered references do show his fairly wide reading, but these likely did not stem from his youthful shipboard reading.

Reflections on a Career of Northern Travelling, Teaching, Writing, and Reading,

Hodgins, Bruce. in Northern Visions, ed. by Kerry Abel and Ken Coates. (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2001), p 177-86.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. 180, the great national conundrum according to W.H. Morton: “…the ultimate and comprehensive meaning of Canadian history is to be found where there has been no Canadian history, in the North.”

The Pacific Journal of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, 1767-1768.

Bougainville, Louis-Antoine de. Translated and edited by John Dunmore. (London: Hakluyt Society, 2002).
  • 1766-69 French Expedition (Louis-Antoine de Bougainville aboard Boudeuse).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 7, footnote 1: “Bougainville is fond of sprinkling Latin tags in his text, but he does so from memory and at times misquotes or changes the original. He draws his inspiration here and on a number of other occasions from Virgil’s Aeneid and in particular the first book in which a wild storm drives Aeneas and his men off course.” [Editor’s note]

Bob Bartlett: Master Mariner.

Green, Fitzhugh. New York: Putnam’s, 1929.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

A juvenile account of Bartlett’s life up to his late 20s. Chapters include introduction on Bartlett’s own skepticism about books in general and on him in particular; his abortive Methodist College divinity studies in St. John’s at age 15; his first command of a fishing boat; sealing; his maritime certification; Peary’s Windward in 1898; Ootark and building snow igloos; the first and nearly disastrous Roosevelt trip when they had to cannibalize the ship for fuel returning to Newfoundland; the polar sledging trip; Dr. Cook, the “faker”; Karluk; Morissey; and a final tribute to the natives: I feel that men like Ootark, Seegloo, and Inughitag should have their pictures and stories go into permanent form…. If he [Ootark] can’t go into the Hall of Fame, he at least ought to have his name on the vestibule list. (p. 208-09).

Shackleton’s Argonauts: A Saga of the Antarctic Icepacks.

Hurley, Frank. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1948.
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

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 Bibliographical Miscellany.

Petheram, John, ed. 5 numbers printed. (London: John Russell Smith,1859).
  • 1812-13 British Naval Expedition in Northwest Passage Search (commanded by Thomas Button aboard Resolution).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

The first three numbers of this journal deal with the North-West Passage and the 1612-13 voyage of Sir Thomas Button.

Longitude and Empire: How Captain Cook’s Voyages Changed the World.

Richardson, Brian W. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2005.
  • 1768–79 British Naval Expeditions of Captain James Cook.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

In a daring, almost reckless shift, Richardson moves the discussion of what Cook may have read to who may have read Cook’s voyages and how the reading of Cook’s voyages changed the Western view of the world. Cites library statistics from late 18th-century Bristol to show Hawkesworth the most circulated book, with its description of Cook’s first voyage, as the most circulated book in the decade of 1773-1784. By its very organization, he sees the library as a statement about the world and the places in it. As Captain Cook had authority over his ships just as his printed voyages took on the authority of the printed word. He thus sees Cook as an important point of origin for empire as a collection of places as well as a sovereign authority over them (p. 200).

New Land: Four Years in the Arctic Regions.

Sverdrup, Otto. Two volumes. London: Longmans, Green, 1904.
  • 1898-1902 Swedish Ship and Sledging Expedition to Northern Greenland (Led by Otto Sverdrup aboard Fram).
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

Volume I: