Antarctica, 1958,

Stone, Robert. New Yorker (June 12, 2006), p. 52-54 [Talk of the Town].
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

In 1958, I was a duty helmsman on the bridge of the U.S.S. Arneb, an ungainly naval transport ship with the lines of a tramp steamer…. When I went below to crash, taking to my rack, which was at the top of a four-high tier. I lay down to read with my pocket flashlight. I had “Ulysses” checked out from the Norfolk, Virginia, public library, and plenty of time to be patient with it. When we started sliding to port, I’d stay with Leopold Bloom for as long as I could tough it out, waiting for the big lumbering ship to arrest its roll and come back to starboard…. Then I’d set my book aside and ponder my fortune….

Of Whales and Men.

Robertson, R. B. (New York: Knopf, 1954).
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

A delightful account of a ship’s doctor on an 8-month cruise of a whaling factory ship, with something of a psychological emphasis on the men he was with.

Dawn in Arctic Alaska.

Jenness, Diamond. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1957.
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

A most engaging book based on Jenness’s journals of his years on Stefansson’s 1913 Canadian/Alaskan Expedition. He luckily avoided the Karluk Disaster by being invited by Stefansson to go ashore to get sledging experience. Although he retains the colonial vocabulary of the civilized and the savages, his anthropological observations are fascinating and his essential respect for the indigenous people compelling.

Ned Myers; or, A Life before the Mast.

Cooper, James Fenimore. In Two Volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1843.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

An 1840 Cooper work in which he served as amanuensis in telling the narrative of Ned Evans attempting to “lay before the world the experience of a common seaman,” such as Cooper himself knew, and which follows that pattern of degradation and conversion. I confess to an early impression that the work was more novel than narrative, and it certainly is an hybrid genre of edited narrative, or a semi-imaginary reconstruction, in which the narrator [Cooper?] is telling the story of Ned Myers. The repeated cycle of debauchment does become tiresome.

My Life with the Eskimo.

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. New York: Macmillan, 1913.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Stefansson’s account of his first trip to the North in which he begins to develope themes best shown in The Friendly Arctic.

Journal of a Voyage Around the World: A Year on the Ship

King, Thomas Worthington. Helena (1841-1842). (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003).
  • 1841-42 American Circumnavigation (aboard Helena).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

Although not Antarctic bound, this ship did round Cape Horn and reached almost 59 degrees. King was a recent Harvard graduate when he took this voyage from New York to Canton, and after brief work there he continued on another ship back to New York. He was a fast reader and regular in his comments about reading.

Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen: Ambition and Tragedy in the Antarctic.

Thomson, David. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002 [1977].
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A revision of a pre-Huntford critical work on Scott, though he says he didn’t know he was writing a “debunking” biography in 1977. Doesn’t have the acerbic bite of Huntford, but has something critical to say about all three of his subjects.

“Samuel Hearne’s Accounts of the Massacre at Bloody Fall, 17 July 1771”

Maclaren, I. S. Ariel No. 1 (1991) 25-51.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

By comparing Hearne’s field notes to the posthumous published vision of Hearne’s Journey, Maclaren calls into question the later Hearne account of the young woman at Bloody Fall. George Back was the first to call it into question. The horrid elaboration comes in the published version, not before, and indicates a good deal of editorial meddling. In his notes Hearne is only a neutral onlooker; in publication he is a reluctant participant.

Ship’s Libraries; Their Need and Usefulness.

Pierson, John S. New York: American Seamen’s Friend Society, 1878. 33 p.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

p. no page: After you’ve done everything to assure the physical and spiritual welfare of the sailor, “the only way left to reach him is by the printed truth—The Bible, the tract, the good book. Just here then comes in the ship’s library with its indispensable offices,--the last important advance made in the line of religious work among seamen,--the ‘missing link,’ I think we may call it, in the chain of evangelical agencies for their benefit.”

South Polar Times.

London: Smith, Elder, 1907-14. Dartmouth. STEF G850 1901 q. D7. 6 vols.
  • 1907-09 British Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Nimrod).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Vol. III. P. 37:

The Big Sea: An Autobiography….

Hughes, Langston. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1963). [First published in 1940.].
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 3: Melodramatic maybe, it seems to me now. But then it was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart when I threw the book into the water. I leaned over the rail of the S.S. Malone and threw the books as far as I could out into the sea—all the books I had had at Columbia, and all the books I had lately bought to read.

Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition.

Beattie, Owen, and John Geiger. Vancouver, B.C., GreyStone Books, 1987.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A rather lacklustre book about the exhumation of three Franklin sailors in 1984. Spectacular for its pictures of the corpses; less so for a few things about books.

Nansen

Hall, Anna Gertrude. Illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff. New York: Viking Press, 1940.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

p. 67, on equipping the Fram for Nansen’s North Pole voyage: There were a library of a thousand books and a supply of games and musical instruments to help pass the time.