p. 117, an attempt to recreate a reading experience of a letter with liberating news: My feelings, during the reading of this letter, may perhaps be conceived, but I cannot attempt to describe them; to form an idea of my emotions at that time, it is necessary for the reader to transport himself in imagination to the country where I then was, a wretched slave, and to fancy himself as having passed through all the dangers and distresses that I had experienced: reduced to the lowest pitch of human wretchedness, degradation, and despair, a skinless skeleton, expecting death at every instant: then let him fancy himself receiving such a letter from a perfect stranger, whose name he had never before heard, and from a place where there was not an individual creature that had ever before heard of his existence, and in one of the most barbarous regions of the habitable globe : let him receive at the same time clothes to cover and defend his naked, emaciated, and trembling frame, shoes for his mangled feet, and such provisions as he had been accustomed to in his happier days — let him find a soothing and sympathising friend in a barbarian, and one who spoke perfectly well the language of a Christian nation ; and with all this, let him behold a prospect of a speedy liberation and restoration to his beloved family:
An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815, with an Account of the Sufferings of the Surviving Officers and Crew, Who were Enslaved by the Wandering Arabs, on the African Desart, or Zahahrah….
- 1815 US Naval Expedition to African West Coast (aboard Commerce commanded by James Riley).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
Narrative of an Expedition in HMS Terror: Undertaken with a View to Geographical Discovery on the Arctic Shores, in the Years 1836-7.
- 1836-37 British Voyage of Discovery in HMS Terror (commanded by George Back).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
[From WorldCat] Having served on expeditions under John Franklin, the British naval officer Sir George Back (17961878) had already gained first-hand experience of Arctic peril and survival by the time he was appointed in 1836 to command HMS Terror. His mission was to survey uncharted coastline in the Canadian Arctic, yet Back's ship became trapped in ice near Frozen Strait and was unable to escape for ten months. In this account, first published in 1838, Back lucidly documents the developing crisis, noting the numerous preparations to abandon ship, the deaths of three of his men from scurvy, and the further damage caused by an iceberg after the Terror was freed. Against the odds, the ship managed to reach Ireland in 1837. Naturally, Back gives much credit to the durability of the Terror, originally a bomb vessel from the War of 1812, it had been further strengthened for Arctic service.
North Pole Legacy: Black, White & Eskimo.
- 1891-1920 Robert Peary and the Search for the North Pole.
- Arctic Reading: United States
Introduction by Deirdre C. Stam: By the 1980’s, when S. Allen Counter began to take an interest in the contact of Arctic explorer Robert Peary and his assistant Matthew Henson with the Greenland Inuit, it may have seemed to most readers that the story of the North Pole conquest was largely played out. The old debate of who got to the magic spot first seemed to have stalled with supporters of Peary and Frederick Cook at loggerheads. New insights into the exploration of the polar region were slow in coming, despite the partisan and non-partisan efforts of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, historians, latter-day explorers, and nautical experts to find the definitive answer to the Peary-Cook debates over who got there first, or indeed whether either made it at all. There were outposts of research such as The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center at Bowdoin College, of course, where curators diligently combed through hard evidence of all kinds to piece together a detailed and objective narrative of Peary’s years in the Arctic. By and large, however, by then public attention to exploration was focused elsewhere, such as continental Antarctica, outer space, and more mundane but promising regions of scientific research. The human element was certainly considered by researchers in Peary/Henson studies, but more through the lens of the hard rather than soft sciences. There were some exceptions. There had been published anthropological observations of the Inuit culture – most notably by explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson and even Peary himself. And interest in Henson largely invoked contemporary racial issues by the 1980’s. But in general public interest in exploration seemed to have turned elsewhere. Neurophysiologist and social historian Counter introduced a unique blend of methodologies to the understanding of the Peary/Henson experience in the far North with his book North Pole Legacy; Black, White and Eskimo (1991). Acting as participant observer and ultimately as actor in the lives of the explorers’ Inuit progeny, Counter overcame many physical and administrative barriers to develop personal relationships with the indigenous descendants of Peary and Henson, to elicit community memories of their forebears, and ultimately to bring about meetings in the U.S. of the explorers’ U.S. and Inuit descendants. Sharing the fact of African-American ancestry with Henson, Counter was particularly interested in the life experiences of Henson and his Inuit descendents and the possible role of racial prejudice in their lives.
Alexander Mackenzie and the North West.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. 97, concerning his first Arctic trip in 1789: In this voyage I was not only without the necessary books and instruments, but also felt myself deficient in the science of astronomy and navigation. I did not hesitate therefore to undertake a winter’s voyage [to England] in order to procure the one and acquire the other.
A Black Explorer at the North Pole
- 1891-1920 Robert Peary and the Search for the North Pole; 1908-09 US North Pole Expeditions under Robert E. Peary (aboard Roosevelt).
- Arctic Reading: United States
Mostly from Hensen’s diary with connecting narrative of Peary’s North Pole expedition of 1908-9.
Behind the Palisades: An Autobiography.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
McTavish (1834-93) was appointed Chief Trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1859, serving in several posts including Fort William, Albany, Rupert’s House, Moose Factory, and other locations. He retired in 1880; this posthumously published autobiography shows him very supportive and loyal to the Company.
[personal journal on the Henry B Hyde]
- Maritime Reading
The personal journal of William Bennett Russell during his travels on the Henry B Hyde in 1894 includes an account of his discovery of an American Seamen’s Friend Society loan library aboard the ship:
Letters Written During the Late Voyage of Discovery in the Western Arctic Sea.
- 1819-20 British Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic Regions (Edward Parry aboard Hecla and Griper).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Letters from the Parry Expedition, 1819-1820, describing the voyage and the wintering at Winter Harbour, Melville Island, the Canadian Arctic waters and their ice, the Arctic night, the activities of the crews. Although anonymous, internal evidence shows the officer to have been one of the midshipmen on the Griper; either A.M. Skene or William Nelson Griffth.
The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule.
- Greenland.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
Joanna Kavenna went north in search of the Atlantis of the Arctic, the mythical land of Thule. Seen once by an Ancient Greek explorer and never found again, mysterious Thule came to represent the vast and empty spaces of the north. Fascinated for many years by Arctic places, Kavenna decided to travel through the lands that have been called Thule, from Shetland to Iceland, Norway, Estonia, and Greenland. On her journey, she found traces of earlier writers and travellers, all compelled by the idea of a land called Thule: Richard Francis Burton, William Morris, Anthony Trollope, as well as the Norwegian Polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen . . . The Ice Museum is a mesmerising story of idealism and ambition, wars and destruction, survival and memories, set against the haunting backdrop of the northern landscape. Bookseller Inventory #0670913952
A Voyage to Spitzbergen. [The Gateway to the Polynia].
- Whalemen's Reading
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.
A History of Antarctic Science.
- Antarctic Reading: General
A humanistic study of the development of Antarctic science (not much different from science elsewhere apart from the extreme conditions); as such it constitutes a quite comprehensive history of most Antarctic exploration as well. Antarctic science grows out of mainstream science but has a different relation to politics. Contrasts the “heroic” explorers with the scientists for whom deprivation was no virtue. Fogg defines Antarctic as within the Antarctic Convergence (aka Polar Front), below 50 degrees south, not the 60 degrees of the Antarctic Treaty.
The Arctic Whalers.
- Whalemen's Reading
An engaging history of Arctic whaling.
Writing the New World: Imaginary Voyages….
- Whalemen's Reading
p. 3: the exotic literature of Europe “was most clearly manifested in fiction about the regions that remained unknown the longest….their works, too, would finally be overtaken by history and supplanted by scientific descriptions of the material and social worlds.” (his examples are Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Poe, Lovecraft)
- 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Lansing was an American journalist who interviewed all of the survivors of the Expedition from the 1950s and used all of the extant journals (mostly at SPRI) to write this amazing book.
The Southwest Pacific since 1900: A Modern History.
- Heroic Age 1901-1921.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
This survey of the history of Australia, New Zealand, The Islands, and Antarctica includes a substantial chapter on “The Heroic Age” (p. 561-91), a derivative but very serviceable summary. Unlike some others he ends the Heroic Age with the completion of Shackleton’s Endurance debacle in 1916 rather than with Shackleton’s death on South Georgia in 1922 during the Quest expedition. His summary of the age rings true: “Thus ended the Heroic Age in a wild burst of blazing ambition, disaster, valor, fortitude, squalor, squabbles, and tragedy” (p. 591).