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
Hell on Ice: The Saga of the “Jeannette“
- 1879-81 US North Pole Expedition (commanded by George De Long aboard Jeannette).
- Arctic Reading: United States
p. viii-ix, Preface: Reading what I could get my hands on concerning it [the Jeannette expedition], I soon enough saw that De Long's early failure was a more brilliant chapter in human struggle and achievement than the later successes of Peary and of Amundsen.
Among the Magi
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
This memoir by Society member Martin Sponholz recounts his experiences at Plateau Station and the Japanese Showa Station in the 1960's. It has never been published, but has appeared on other websites in the past. We thought it deserved a home with the Antarctican Society, with Marty's permission.
Eighteen Months on a Greenland Whaler
- Whalemen's Reading
Rather charming and humorous writer who was a compositor, Civil War soldier, printer, etc., and nearly blind, before shipping to Greenland in May 1865-66.
Tales of the Ocean, and Essays for the Forecastle: Containing Matters and Incidents Humorous, Pathetic Romantic and Sentimental.
- Whalemen's Reading
An interesting combination of swashbuckling adventure and some appeal to puritan values.
Ice and Esquimaux
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
A series of articles on his 1864 voyage to Labrador on the Benjamin S. Wright with artist William Bradford. Passengers included a Colonel: A Greenland voyager, and better read than any man I have met in the literature of Northern travel.
Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains under Sail
- Maritime Reading
Whalemen's Reading
This is a rather delightful book, based on the diaries and journals of women “sailors” accompanying their husbands on sea voyages. The women and the locations of their manuscripts (largely in maritime and historical museums) are listed in an Appendix. One assumes that most of these women were both educate and of a fairly independent streak for their times.
In Search of the Magnetic North: A Soldier-Surveyor’s Letters from the North-West, 1843-1844.
- 1843-44 British Surveying Expedition for Magnetic North.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. xi, re an English soldier-scientist and surveyer assigned to Toronto: …with an English gentlemen’s sincere belief in the inevitable superiority of things English….. He loved his Church; and his interest in missionary work never diminished throughout a career which lasted seventy-eight years.
Sailors’ Life and Sailors’ Yarns
- Whalemen's Reading
A journalistic kind of composite by a somewhat pious and rather strict naval disciplinarian. The following extracts some may read as the comments of a urbane writer of sound but severe morals; I see them as those of a pompous ass.
A Voyage Round the World; but More Particularly to the North-West Coast of America: Performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, in The King George and Queen Charlotte, Captains Portlock and Dixon.
- 1785-88 British Exploring Circumnavigation to Northwest Pacific (Captain Portlock aboard the King George and George Dixon aboard Queen Charlotte).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
Not clear who is writing these letters, signed as W.B., since they refer to Dixon. Dixon’s Introduction describes the author as “a person aboard the Queen Charlotte, who has been totally unused to literary pursuits, and equally so to a sea-faring life” (p. xxii). Some editions show Portlock as the author.
Journal of a Voyage Around the World: A Year on the Ship Helena(1841-1842).
- Arctic Reading: General
Although not strictly Antarctic bound or a circumnavigation, this voyage did round Cape Horn and reached almost 59 degrees south. 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. What follows is taken verbatim from the journal of his voyage.
Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search.
- 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
p. 11: McClintock found one of these [Franklin whale]boats abandoned on the western shore of the island; in it were two skeletons along with an astonishing array of materials—silver forms and spoons, tea, chocolate, lead sheeting, carpet slippers, dozens of books (including bibles, prayer books, and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield), and much other such bric-a-brac, which McClintock regarded as “a mere accumulation of dead weight” that would have made hauling the oak-and-iron sledge even more exhausting.
The Voyage of the Discovery.
- 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
[A new edition with introduction by E.C. Coleman was published in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 2005.]
Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition Made by Charles F. Hall: His Voyage to Repulse Bay, Sledge Journeys to the Straits of Fury and Hecla and to King William’s Land, and Residence among the Eskimos During the Years 1864-’69.
- 1864-69 Second Grinnell Expedition (Commanded by Charles F. Hall (aboard Porteus).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Sometimes called Hall’s Second Grinnell Expedition which left Hall dead of arsenic poisoning, probably at the hands of the expedition doctor, Dr Bemmels.
The Silent Landscape: The Scientific Voyage of HMS Challenger.
- 1872-76 Challenger Expedition of Natural History (George Nares and Frank Thompson).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
Corfield concentrates on the science of the expedition without neglecting the human relations of the scientifics. One notable chapter is called “The Library of Time,” in which the biological remains dredged from the ocean body, tiny creations which would eventually yield the details of earth’s climatic and oceanographic history: For the geologist and oceanographer there is simply nothing to match the detailed information trapped in the sediment of the deep sea; it is the library of time. [p. 135].