The Daily Journal of an Antarctic Explorer 1956-1958.

Warren, Guyon. Edited by Karen Warren. Nelson, NZ: Copy Press Books, 2014.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Warren was a geologist on the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE) led by Vivian Fuchs (UK) and Sir Edmund Hillary (NZ). When not on surveying journeys to the Polar Plateau and the Dry Valleys, he was mainly at the Scott Base near McMurdo and he mentions the library at McMurdo a couple of times. His notes about reading occur mainly during the winter period, as outlined here:

Four Years aboard the Whaleship. Embracing Cruises in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Antarctic Oceans, in the year 1855, ‘6, ‘7, ‘8, ‘9.

Whitecar, William B. Philadelphia: Lippincott; London: Trubner, 1864.
  • 1855-59 US Whaling Voyage aboard Pacific.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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[From a bookseller’s catalogue on ABEBooks]: Whitecar, an intelligent observer, sailed from New Bedford aboard the Pacific, on a whaling voyage which took him to Antarctic waters, Australia & New Zealand. His narrative gives good details of the whaler's life on ship and ashore from 1855-59, one of the best for the time, including observations & comparisons of whaling equipment and practices. Whitecar includes much on the West Australian coast, visiting the Vasse & Cape Leeuwin a number of times. He spends time in Albany (King Georges Sound), visits Geraldton (Champion Bay), Esperence (the Recherche Archipelago) and the Houtmans Abrolhas. In observing W.A., he comments “I didn't see a glass of spirits drank. ale and beer were however swallowed without regard to quality or quantity.” The majority of the book relates to West Australian waters & anecdotes. A very readable & informative account, one of the best we've read on West Australia. Bookseller Inventory # 8363. [This annotation is partly plagiarized in a Bartfield listing for the same book. Whitecar’s account is quite a charming account of the whaling life, somewhat sanitized for the domestic reader, pointing out the foibles and peccadilloes of sailors on other ships but seeing his ship as something of a model of discipline and benign leadership.]

A Voyage to Spitzbergen. [The Gateway to the Polynia].

Wells, John Campion. From the Journal of John C. Wells. New and Cheaper Edition. London: Henry S. King & Co., 1876.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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Although the author, an “untraveled Englishman,” is motivated by sport, the main thrust of his book is that Spitsbergen is the best route to the north: for it’s whaling riches, for the benefits of geographical exploration, and for the most economical route of scientific inquiry. Wells himself is described as an old whaling captain in an introductory survey of Arctic exploration that doesn’t reveal its author. I assume the editor was a fellow traveler on a vessel captained by Wells, but I’ve not studied the matter. A most engaging volume.

Mathew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography: A Biography, 1806-1873.

Grady, John.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
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Summary [from ABEBooks]: In becoming "a useful man" on the maritime stage, Matthew Fontaine Maury focused light on the ills of a clique-ridden Navy, charted sea lanes and bested Great Britain's admiralty in securing the fastest, safest routes to India and Australia. He helped bind the Old and New worlds with the laying of the transatlantic cable, forcefully advocated Southern rights in a troubled union, and preached Manifest Destiny from the Arctic to Cape Horn. Late in life, he revolutionized warfare in perfecting electronically detonated mines. Maury's eagerness to go to the public in person and in print on the questions of the day riled powerful men in business and politics, and the U.S., Confederate and Royal navies. They dismissed him as the "Man on the Hill." Over his career, Maury more than once ran afoul of Jefferson Davis, and Stephen R. Mallory, secretary of the Confederate States Navy. He argued against eminent members of the nation's emerging scientific community in a decades-long debate over science for its own sake versus science for the people's sake. Through the political, social and scientific struggles of his time, however, Maury had his share of powerful allies, like President John Tyler; but by the early 1870s they, too, were in eclipse or in the grave.

A Voyage Around the World with the Romanzov Exploring Expedition in the Years 1815-1818 in the Brig

Chamisso, Adelbert von. Rurik, Captain Otto von Kotzebue. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986).
  • 1815-18 Russian Exploring Expedition (Captain Otto von Kotzebue aboard Rurik).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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p. 27, a paean to Kotzebue as author, the father of this Captain: How often in the far ends of the earth, namely on O-Wahu [O’ahu], Guaján [Guam], etc., have I been praised for my small share in the enterprise of his son, in order to cast a hem of the mantle of his fame over me. Everywhere we heard his name mentioned. American newspapers reported that The Stranger had been performed to extraordinary applause. All the libraries in the Aleutian Islands, as far as I have investigated them, consisted of a single volume of the Russian translation of Kotzebue.”

Manuscripts and Archives Division, Library of Congress.

Clay Family Papers.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Henry [Harry] Clay, of the Howgate Preliminary Expedition on the Gulnare, was the grandson of the famous Henry Clay of Lexington, KY. Materials about him and by him are in Section II. Box 46, and probably elsewhere in the Library of Congress manuscript collections.

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

Lamont, James. New York: Harper, 1861.
  • 1858-59 British Private Journeys of "Sport and Discovery" (James Lamont).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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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.

South with Mawson

Laseron, Charles F. in Antarctic Witness, introduced by Tim Bowden. Sydney, Australia: Angus and Robertson, 2000. (With Frank Hurley’s Shackleton’s Argonauts.).
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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First published in 1947, Laseron’s account of Mawson’s AAE is a gentle and generally optimistic account, even when describing Mawson’s perilous journey.

Nimrod of the Sea; Or, The American Whaleman.

Davis, William M. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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p. 93, on facilities for seamen in Honolulu, providing a reading-room, a good library, and help in writing home: And let me here alarm the Christian hearts of the American people by informing them that in no other Christian port on the west coast of America was there a door to welcome or a roof to shelter the sixteen thousand souls engaged in whaling, other than that of a gaming-house, a grog-shop, or a brothel.

Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, ’54,’55. Illustrated by Upwards of Three Hundred Engravings, from Sketches by the Author….

Kane, Elisha Kent. Two volumes. (Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson, 124 Arch Street, 1856).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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An extremely well-written account. Although he says his vessel, The Advance, was supplied with “a large, well-chosen library” (Vol. 1, p. 20), there is scarcely any indication in the work that it was used, apart from occasional references to reading religious services.