p. 3-4: My friend Harvie-Brown had been collecting information about the river Petchora for some time, and it was finally arranged that we should spend the summer of 1875 there together. We were under the impression that, ornithologically speaking, it was virgin ground, but in this we afterwards discovered that we were mistaken. So far as we were able to ascertain, no Englishman had travelled from Archangel to the Petchora for 250 years. In that curious old book called ‘Purchas his Pilgrimes,’ published in 1625, may be found the narrative of divers merchants and mariners who visited this river between the years 1611 and 1615 for the purpose of establishing a trade there in furs and skins, especially beaver, for which Ust-Zylma on the Petchora was at that time celebrated.
Siberia in Europe: A Visit to the Valley of the Petchora in North-East Europe.
- Arctic Reading: Russia
Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex
- Whalemen's Reading
Owen Chase's memoir of the sinking of the Essex by a whale, which inspired Herman Melville's epic Moby-Dick and the film In the Heart of the Sea. Owen Chase was the first mate on the ill-fated American whaling ship Essex, which was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean in 1820. The crew spent months at sea in leaking boats and endured the blazing sun, attacks by killer whales, and lack of food. The men were forced to resort to cannibalism before the final eight survivors were rescued. Chase recorded the tale of the ship's sinking and the following events with harrowing clarity in the Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex: "I turned around and saw him about one hundred rods [500 m or 550 yards] directly ahead of us, coming down with twice his ordinary speed of around 24 knots.
A Voyage Around the World with the Romanzov Exploring Expedition in the years 1815-1818 in the Brig Rurik, Captain Otto von Kotzebue.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
p. 27, a paeon to the son of Kotzebue, the German-born, Russian sea captain on his circumnavigation: How often in the far ends of the earth, namely on O-Wahu [O’ahu], Guaján [Guam], etc., have I been praised for my small share in the enterprise of his son, in order to cast a hem of the mantle of his fame over me. Everywhere we heard his name mentioned. American newspapers reported that The Stranger had been performed to extraordinary applause. All the libraries in the Aleutian Islands, as far as I have investigated them, consisted of a single volume of the Russian translation of Kotzebue.
The Journal of Post Captain Nicolas Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the Corvettes, Géographe and Naturaliste. Assigned by the Order of the Government to a Voyage of Discovery.
- 1801-03 French Exploring Expedition to South Seas and Terra Australis (Captain Nicolas Baudin aboard Géographe).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
This is a magnificent edition of Baudin’s expeditionary journal in English translation, including listings of the exploration books on each of the two vessels. There is nothing that I could easily find in this journal about any reading of those books, though there seem to have been no natural occasions for such reading, e.g. a winterover.
Arctic Journeys: The Story of the Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition 1934-5.
- 1934-35 Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition (Led by Gordon Noel Humphreys).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
The Oxford Ellesmere Expedition was organized by Oxford University Exploration Club as a student run operation which covered one winterover concluding in May of 1935.
Ship’s Libraries; Their Need and Usefulness.
- Whalemen's Reading
p. no page: After you’ve done everything to assure the physical and spiritual welfare of the sailor, “the only way left to reach him is by the printed truth—The Bible, the tract, the good book. Just here then comes in the ship’s library with its indispensable offices,--the last important advance made in the line of religious work among seamen,--the ‘missing link,’ I think we may call it, in the chain of evangelical agencies for their benefit.”
The First Scientific Exploration of Russian America and the Purchase of Alaska
- Arctic Reading: Russia
This volume chiefly contains the journals of Robert Kennicott and Henry Martyn Bannister, Smithsonian naturalists, concerning Alaska immediately before statehood, and relates to their advice to Seward and Sumner.
In Search of a Siberian Klondike as Narrated by Washington B. Vanderlip the Chief Actor and Herein Set Forth by Homer B. Hulbert.
- 1896 Russian-Sponsored Overland Expedition by American W. V. Vanderlip in Search of Gold.
- Arctic Reading: Russia
Hard to know whether the charm of this book is to the narrator or amanensis, but it is a delight to read both for its human interactions and its elements of natural history and hunting. These exxcerpts give some flavor of the book, and there are a few comments on language and literature.
Nantucket Whalemen in the Deep-Sea Fishery: The Changing Anatomy of an Early American Labor Force,
- Maritime Reading
Whalemen's Reading
On the whaling journey of the brig Polley to West Africa in 1774, and in particular one of its crew, Samuel Atkins, who wrote some poetry about the journey: Steadily the nerves of unlucky whalemen were worn down by loneliness, boredom, and the knowledge that the vessel would have to remain at sea until a reasonable haul of oil had been taken in (p. 278).
Five Years Before the Mast, Or Life in the Forecastle, Aboard of a Whaler and Man of War.
- Whalemen's Reading
An actual 1837 Atlantic trip aboard a Sag Harbor whaler told in fictional form, illustrated with woodcuts. Well-disguised fictional account of sailors’ life, near-mutiny and desertion, etc. The hero is a novel reader (see p. 61-2, 92, 139), and the author an accomplished writer.
General Greely; The Story of a Great American.
- Arctic Reading: United States
A shamelessly hagiographic account, the year after Greely’s death, by a fellow General.
Étoffe du pays: Lower St. Lawrence Sketches.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
This alleged children’s book is undated but probably describes events and publication of the mid-1920s. A couple of jems are worth recording from this delightful book:
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.
High Latitude.
- Heroic Age 1901-1921.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
John King Davis participated in three epochal Antarctic expeditions as 1) Chief Officer of Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition in 1907, 2) as Mawson’s Second in Command and Master of the Aurora in 1911, and 3) he commanded the Ross Sea Relief Expedition in search of Shackleton’s transcontinental party stranded on Ross Island in 1916. Covering his many other assignments before and after, Davis gives a comprehensive autobiography of his career. He is a fine but not dramatic story teller who handles the crises of his expeditions with a certain detachment. He speaks of loneliness but not with how it was relieved, and therefore little about reading. His descriptions of preliminary planning for voyages is particularly good.
The North Pole and Bradley Land.
- Arctic Reading: United States
An exploration of the Cook-Peary controversy, with excerpts below based on his reading experience and that of others.