Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica.

Griffiths, Tom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
  • 2002-03 Australian Base Resupply (Griffiths).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Recounts a summer 2002-03 resupply trip, combining diary entries, with reflections, historical discursions, and thoughtful reporting on the trip. Some reading tidbits:

Americans in Antarctica, 1715-1948

Bertrand, Kenneth J. . New York: American Geographical Society, 1971. (AGS Special Publication No. 39.).
  • Antarctic Reading: General
 Preview 

A thorough account of American operations in Antarctica, from the Falklands in the 1770s to the 1947-48 US Navy “Operation Windmill.” See individual chapters for each expedition covered.

Eskimo Doctor.

Gilberg, Aage. Translated by Karin Elliott. New York: W.W. Norton, 1948.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
 Preview 

A simple and charming book about a doctor’s year in Thule and environs [1938-39], providing medical services to the Inuit. There with his wife, he found the Inuit “The truly good people.”

Journal of a Voyage in Baffin’s Bay and Barrow Straits, in the Years 1850-1851, Performed in H.M. Ships “Lady Franklin” and “Sophia,” under the Command of Mr. William Penny….

Sutherland, Peter C. Two volumes. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852.
  • 1848-51 British Expedition in Franklin Search (commanded by Capt. T.E.L. Moore aboard H.M.S. Plover).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

These volumes recount one of the early Franklin search expeditions, originally organized by Lady Franklin but adopted and furnished by the Admiralty, and which wintered near the Resolute and Assistance, and were also close to John Ross’s Felix and Mary expedition (HBC). Sutherland was surgeon on the Sophia, and appears from these volumes to have been a most panglossian optimist, as can be seen from some of the quotations below.

The Frozen Zone and Its Explorers: A Comprehensive History of Voyages, Travels, Adventures, Disasters, and Discoveries in the Arctic Regions….

Hyde, Alexander. Hartford, CT: Columbia Book CO., 1874.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 793-94, concerning the Dutch expedition at Nova Zembla in 1596, describes the Ice House of Berentz found in 1871, a house unvisited for 278 years until 1871, the house included: the books that had beguiled the weary hours of that long night, two hundred and seventy-eight years ago. The ‘History of China’ points to the goal which Barentz sought, while the ‘Manual of Navigation’ indicates the knowledge which guided his efforts. Stranger evidence never told a more deeply interesting story.

Untitled remarks at the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association convention on May 22, 1952

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley. Published in The Clique June 7, 1952.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley George Benet (1886-1959), British Explorer on Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, was an unlikely hero for the Heroic Age, a near-sighted, inexperienced ingénue who paid Scott £1000 to participate in and suffer through the Terra Nova expedition. As such he was an always helpful addition to the expedition staff, but his fame rests on his account of The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctica 1910-1913. Two vols. (London: Constable and Co., 1922), listed under the Terra Nova journey.

[Journal]

Roggeveen, Jacob. [needs citation].
  • 1721-22 Dutch South Seas Expedition to Australia (Jacob Roggeveen).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

This voyage was intended to confirm earlier knowledge of the Falklands in its path to Australia. It was too hurried to stop at the Falklands but it did find Easter Island before it reached New Ireland (Papua New Guinea) where Roggeveen’s journal ends, 18 July 1722.

Race for the Pole.

Weems, John Edward. Preface by Vilhjalmur Stefansson. New York: Henry Holt, 1960.
  • 1891-1920 Robert Peary and the Search for the North Pole.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Generally a whitewash of the Peary legend and legacy (mainly about the 1908-09 expedition) written as a homely narrative based according to Weems on thorough documentation. Although there is a decent bibliography one can’t find documentation for any given passage.

Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition.

Murdoch, John. Introduction by William W. Fitzhugh. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988. [First published 1892.].
  • 1881-83 International Physical Year US Expedition to Point Barrow Alaska (Ray).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

p. xvii, re IPY cruise on Golden Fleece to Point Barrow, Aug 8, 1881, Murdoch to Richard Rathbun at Smithsonian: The hold and the deck are filled with our stuff, while we are so crowded in the cabin that we are only able to keep out the simple necessary articles and a few books. … I had hoped to have things so that I might do some work on the voyage up, but the vessel is so small and we have so much material that it is entirely out of the question…. They feed us well and by reading, writing, eating and sleeping we manage to fill up the time.

Island of the Lost.

Cooper, Paul Fenimore. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s sons, 1961).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

This is an elegant little book posing as a biography of King William Island and a vehicle for telling its indigenous history, the story of the Franklin debacle (prior to discovery of the sunken Erebus), and a fairly brief account of the Franklin Search.

Little America: Town at the End of the World

Carter, Paul Allen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
  • 1928-56 Expeditions of Rear Admiral Richard Byrd.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Carter’s is a fairly well-written although wholly derivative account of the various bases known as Little America, including a solid chapter on the first winterover experience.