“Congering” the Past: The Books of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881-84), Before and After.

Stam, David H. In North by Degree. Edited by Susan Kaplan and Robert Peck. (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2014). p. 240-56,.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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An account of the library at Lady Franklin Bay, its planning under Henry Howgate, its active use under Adolphus Greely, and its disposition under Robert Peary.

Minutes of Council Northern Department of Rupert Land, 1821-31….

Rupert’s Land. Northern Department. Edited by R. Harvey Fleming. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1940.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 60, minutes of July 5, 1823, minutes of Council: 153. That for the more effectual civilization and moral improvement of the families attached to the different establishments and the Indians—Every Sunday when circumstances permit, divine Service be publickly read with becoming solemnity…., at which ever man woman and child resident must attend, together with such of the Indians who may be at hand… 154. That for this purpose, the requisite supply of Religious Books be imported by and at the expense of the Company, to consist of Books of Common Prayer of Sermons & Bibles”—also sermons in French for Canadians. [An item in 1824 added the urging of Parents to teach A.B.C. Catechism. Similar entries appeared in the next four years. See also pages 121, 135, 174, 201, and 230-31.]

Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic A dventure.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. Edited by Jon Lellenberg & Daniel Stashower. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
  • 1880 British Whaling Voyage to Iceland (Conan Doyle, Surgeon).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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A facsimile and transcript of a diary Conan Doyle kept on an Arctic whaling trip in 1880 as ship’s surgeon aboard the S.S. Hope. It includes a good bit about his reading during this six-month summer trip to Greenland. All quotations here are from the transcript.

The Zoology of Captain Beechey’s Voyage, Compiled from the Collections and Notes made by Captain Beechey….1825-28.

Beechey, William Frederick. (London: H. G. Bohn, 1839).
  • 1825-28 British Voyage to Pacific Northwest to Meet Captain Franklin at the Bering Straits.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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After three voyages as a subordinate officer Frederick Beechey was appointed commander of HMS Blossom in 1825 and assigned to the Bering Straits to await the arrival of John Franklin on his second overland expedition to the Mackenzie River Delta and on to the Alaska coast. Although Franklin never arrived (they missed each other by only 200 miles), Beechey and his men employed the time in scientific observation, especially of specimens of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, some from the South Seas but many from the Arctic waters of Kamchatka and Alaska.

International Polar Expedition. Report on the Proceedings of the United States Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land.

Greely, Adolphus Washington. Two volumes.Washington: Government Printing Office, 1888. [U.S. House of Representatives. 49 Congress, 1 Session. Misc. Doc. No. 393].
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Greely’s official report is only 93 pages and records, mostly in monthly segments, the chief events of the expedition. It does not amplify what he already had published more expansively in his Three Years of Arctic Service (1886), but continues the defensiveness over some disputed actions. He is always concerned about the safety of the scientific records and other journals prepared by the expedition.

Saga of the “Discovery.

Bernacchi, Louis Charles. London: Blackie, 1938.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Bernacchi was an Australian/Belgian explorer, another veteran of the heroic age of polar exploration, having participated in Borchgrevink’s Southern Cross expedition, Scott’s Discovery expedition, as well as journeys to Africa and Peru. He was also the biographer of Lawrence Oates, who died on Scott’s last expedition.

The Tactless Philosopher: Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798).

Hoare, Michael E. Melbourne, Aus.: Hawthorn Press, 1976.
  • 1772-75 British Naval Expedition–Second Voyage (Captain James Cook aboard the Resolution).
  • “Discovery” of Antarctica.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A straightforward biography of Forster, the Anglo-German naturalist who replaced Sir Joseph Banks on Cook’s Second Voyage (1772-75), along with his son George.

Fourteen Men: The Story of the Antarctic Expedition to Heard Island

Scholes, Arthur. New York: Dutton, 1952.
  • 1947-49 Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (Heard Island and Macquarie Island).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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An expedition of scientific research, chiefly meteorological and magnetic, but with an interest in Australian claims in Antarctica. Stokes was a radioman but also one of the “mets.” The Captain of the ship was Lt. Cmd. George Dixon; the leader of the shore party for Heard Island was Stuart Campbell. The ship was Ellsworth’s Wyatt Earp, where the officers and men were separated even for the alternate night movies. The trip to Heard Island (4000 kilometers southwest of Australia) was so full of weather-related dangers that references to reading do not occur until one third of the way into the book, and then not very many. Most winterover books have a central winter chapter (July/August) that discusses what the men did to pass the time. This lacks such a chapter, never talks about what the author himself read, and mainly recounts weather-related adventures during that period. Most of the last 150 pages deals with the fauna of Heard Island.

The Cruise of her Majesty’s Ship “Challenger.” Voyages over Many Seas, Scenes in Many Lands.

Spry, W. J. J. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877.
  • 1872-76 Challenger Expedition of Natural History (George Nares and Frank Thompson).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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This round the world voyage was epochal including a visit to the Kerguelen Islands in Jan. 1874. It experienced some polar conditions but not many. It never wintered over, the best time for library use.

Bible, owned by Dr. G. Murray Levick, Surgeon for Northern Party

  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Richard Kossow has a copy of the New Testament which Levick had on this expedition. It is the Oxford Bible-paper edition, a small edition for which I didn’t get full details. Here is the description I have:

H.M.S. Resolute: A Study in International Relations,

Dunbar, Moira. Beaver Outfit 292 (Winter 1961) 11-17.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A crisp account of the abandonment, drift, recovery, refurbishment, and return of HMS Resolute to the Royal Navy, and its subsequent breakup, with its oak timbers used for a desk given to the United States. Of the refurbishment it states (p. 16) that “She was refitted with the greatest care and in the minutest detail (even the officers’ libraries, musical boxes, and pictures were preserved and restored to their original position).”

Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

Abel, Kerry and Ken S. Coates, eds. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2001.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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Canadian nationalists in the nineteenth century argued that the North, with its extremes of winter, distance, and isolation, defined the country's essential character and gave its population the resolve and determination necessary to create a prosperous nation. Promoters lauded its enormous economic potential while cursing its vast expanses and dangerous winters. Novelists, poets, and painters were awestruck by its boundless reaches and environmental diversity. Today, the North retains its complex place within the Canadian psyche, at once celebrated as the very essence of the nation, while being largely ignored by a population that clings to the Canada-USA border. Many have debated its significance in Canada's history, and have attempted to bring the region to the attention of the rest of the country by carving out a niche for northern history within the academic curriculum. The current generation of historians has a more ambitious and complex agenda. While they are interested in the North for its own sake, they also firmly believe that the study and teaching of Canadian history as a whole does not currently recognize the North's importance to the development of the nation.

Cold Comfort: My Love Affair with the Arctic.

Rowley, Graham W. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

This is a rather dry account of a mid-1930s expedition to map the coastline of Baffin Island and the Foxe Basin and also some archaeological work on Thule and Dorset cultures. There are scattered reading references:

The Autobiography of a Seaman.

Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald. (London: Richard Bentley, 1872).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

This author is one very aristocratic sailor who had his troubles with the Royal Navy and the British government in the early nineteenth century. Suffice it to say that this is not a voice from the forecastle, but of petulant complaints concerning the “injustice and folly” of the government court (p. 493). There is nothing I could find in this book about polar reading, or any reading at all.