Arctic Regions, Voyage to Davis’ Strait.

Duncan, David. By David Duncan, Master of the Ship Dundee…July 1826-27. (London: E. Billing, 1827).
  • 1826-27 British Whaling Expedition (aboard Dundee, commanded by David Duncan).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
    Whalemen's Reading
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Claimed to be the only fishing ship to winter over with crew on board, in company with another ship which was wrecked. Nothing found on reading but an unusual early adventure.

Among Unknown Eskimo: An Account of Twelve Years Intimate Relations with the Primitive Eskimo of Ice-bound Baffin Land: with a Description of Their Way of Living, Hunting Customs & Beliefs.

Bilby, Julian W. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1923.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
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A detailed description of Baffin Island and the Inuit way of life, with an appendix of Eskimo deities, including the vampiric Aipalookvik who 'Has a large head and face, human in appearance but ugly like a cod's. Is a destroyer by desire and tries to bite and eat the kyakers.' (p.266). His account is also notable for descriptions of euthanasia: a blind man is willingly led to an ice hole where 'He went right under, then and there under the ice and was immediately drowned and frozen. A handy piece of ice served to seal the death trap, and all was over. Nandla had died on the hunt, and had entered the Eskimo heaven like the other valiant men of his tribe, and taken his place with the doughtiest of them, where there would be joy and plenty for evermore.' (p. 153) [From John Bockstoce collection catalogue, item 10, from McGahern Books, 2019.]

Opposite Poles

McKenzie, Douglas. London: Robert Hale, 1963.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A light and half-hearted defense of Hillary’s determination to get to the Pole ahead of Fuchs, despite his dissembling on his motives. The title emphasizes the conflict. McKenzie, a NZ journalist drove one of the Ferguson tractors enroute to the S.P. between depot 450 and 700.

Company of Adventurers: The Story of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Newman, Peter. London: Penguin Books, 1987.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. xxviii-ix: Returned to English possession by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, York Factory was sacked nearly seventy years later by a valiant raiding party of French marines who had dashed north from the West Indies during the American Revolution. Joseph Colen, the HBC Chief Factor in charge of rebuilding it (and York Factory’s first resident intellectual; he moved in with a library of fourteen hundred books), decided to shift operations to their present site….

Report of the Cruise of the U. S. Revenue Cutter Bear and the Overland Expedition for the Relief of the Whalers in the Arctic Ocean, from November 27, 1897 to September 13, 1898.

Tuttle, Francis, Capt. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899.
  • 1897-98 US Revenue Service Cruise and Overland Rescue Expedition in Relief of Whalers (Tuttle aboard Bear).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 22, on the murder of a native by other natives: About 11 o'clock in the forenoon on the 17th of November, 1807, Mr. Rustan Nelson was sitting in his house reading, and Messrs. Charles Sandbourne and George F. Tilton were working in one of the other rooms, when they all heard two rifle shots fired in quick succession, followed shortly after by four others. Nelson thrust his revolver in his pocket, rushed out of the house, and there saw, close to the house, two natives, Avulik and Shukurana, each with a smoking rifle in his hand, standing over the body of Washok, which was lying on the snow close to his sled, pierced with six bullet holes. Washok's wife was close by, and several other natives were running to the scene of the firing. Sandbourne and Tilton ran out soon after Nelson, and after ascertaining that Washok was dead and beyond all help, they all returned to the house. Soon after the body was carried out into the country and put up on sticks, after the native fashion, the murderers aiding in the ceremony.

William Henry Seward.

Van Deusen, Glyndon. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 531: He [Seward] had that insatiable expansionist Robert J. Walker draw up a report in 1867 on the resources and geopolitical importance of Greenland and Iceland. [Walker wanted to purchase them for resources but also to encourage annexation of Canada by the US. Seward had it printed.]

Illustrated Arctic News: Facsimile of the Illustrated Arctic News, Published on Board H.M.S. Resolute: Capt. Horatio T. Austin. C.B. In Search of the Expedition under Sir John Franklin.

(London: Ackermann, 1852).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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HMS Resolute , commanded by Captain Horatio Austin, together with Assistance (Captain Ommanney), was dispatched in February 1850 to search for the missing Franklin Expedition. The Illustrated Arctic News was published on-board the ships during the winter to help maintain morale. This facsimile contains 5 of the newspapers [issues] published on board, in imitation of the Illustrated London News. The facsimile is of the hand written text of the shipboard original. The text is in an italic hand, and the subsequent facsimile printed by lithograph with some hand-coloring.

Vodka on Ice: a Year with the Russians in Antarctica.

Swithinbank, Charles. Sussex, UK: Book Guild Ltd, 2002.
  • 1963-64 Russian Antarctic Wintering Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Recounts his experience as the only UK citizen on a Russian Soviet wintering expedition in 1963-64. The base was Novolazarevska (on the Antarctic coast of the Indian Ocean) and the personnel 12 Russians, 1 Czech, and Charles.

Lady Spy, Gentleman Explorer: The Life of Herbert Dyce Murphy.

Rossiter, Heather. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001.
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A thoroughly fascinating account of a participant in Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911 which thoroughly debunks Mawson, only slightly more gently than Huntford did Scott.

Correspondence

Reynolds, Jeremiah. [with Hon. Mahlon Dickerson, Secretary of the Navy.] New York, 1838.
  • 1838-42 U.S. Exploring Expedition (Wilkes).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A vicious attack on Dickerson for impeding the preparation and dispatch of the US Exploring Expedition [Wilkes], even though it had been approved by Congress, partly through Reynolds’ efforts.

The Cruise of the Marchesa to Kamschatka & New Guinea with Notices of Formosa, Liu-Kiu, and Various Islands of the Malay Archipelago.

Guillemard, F. H. H. Second Edition. London: John Murray, 1889.
  • 1882-84 British South Seas Expedition aboard Marchesa.
  • Maritime Reading
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p. x: In these latter regions there is indeed but one thing that mars the traveller’s enjoyment. The book of Nature lies freely open to him, but without years of study he cannot read it. It is written in an unknown language. He is confused with the unfamiliarity of the character and the apparently insuperable obstacles it presents. Such at least were my own feelings, although travel in tropic lands was no new thing to me. The few sentences I have deciphered have for the most part, I fear, been already translated by others, and in giving them to my readers I can only express my regret that Nature's volume has not met with a better exponent.

Griffith Taylor: Visionary Environmentalist Explorer.

Strange, Carolyn and Alison Bashford. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2008.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Taylor was born in England but went to Australia at age 12, where he was a student of Edgeworth David, before studying in Cambridge 1907-09 (Emmanuel College). This biography presents him as a brilliant scientist but irascible, vain glorious, and sometimes mean-spirited. A geologist turned geographer he became an ardent geographic determinist, seeing both nature and man determined by their natural environment. He went on the Terra Nova expedition with Scott, and wrote about it in his With Scott: the Silver Lining, the silver lining being the scientific accomplishments of the expedition.