The Seaman’s Friend; Containing A Treatise on Practical Seamanship; A Dictionary of Sea Terms; Customs and Usages of the Merchant Service; Laws Relating to the Practical Duties of Master and Mariners.

Dana, Richard Henry. Fifth Edition.Boston, MA: Thomas Groom, 1847.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

A comprehensive manual of most aspects of seamanship at the height of sail, and near the beginning of steam. There are a few rudimentary references to books and reading, rather surprisingly few for a man of Dana’s literary tastes.

Cruises in the Bering Sea: Being Records of Further Sport and Travel

Niedieck, Paul. Camden, SC: John Culler, 1995. [First published in 1909.].
  • 1906 British Hunting Trip to Alaska and Siberia.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

The author hunted bear and sheep in Alaska and Siberia and his book is now especially current as he hunted on the fabled Kamchaka Peninsula where hunting had just opened. The author bagged many brown bears and snow sheep.

Beyond the Barrier: The Story of Byrd’s First Expedition to Antarctica.

Rodgers, Eugene. Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 1990.
  • 1928-30 First U.S. Antarctic Expedition (Byrd on City of New York).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A rather damning account of Byrd’s expedition and his handling of publicity in covering up anything that might reflect poorly on him, and there were many such things.

The Rescue of Greely.

Schley, Winfield Scott. By Commander W. Scott and Professor J. R. Soley. New York: Scribner’s, 1885.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

The author sums up the expedition on p. 142 as follows:

A Woman’s Trip to Alaska, Being an Account of a Voyage through the Inland Seas of the Sitkan Archipelago in 1890.

Collis, Septima M. New York: Cassell Publishing, 1890.
  • 1890 US Tourist Voyage to Alaska (Septima Collis).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

An unusual woman’s trip for the time, written to encourage other women to abandon their grand tours in favor of this northern one. Miss Collis proves to be a self-indulgent, spoiled wealthy New Yorker, with no sympathy for the natives who “should be coerced into good behavior” (p. 15). She was a Jewish southerner who married a Philadelphia soldier, a general in the Civil War. She travelled with him during the war and wrote a book about her experiences in a divided family. That may be a better book than this self-indulgent one.

Yachting in the Arctic Seas or Notes of Five Voyages of Sport and Discovery in the Neighbourhood of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya

Lamont, James. London: Chatto and Windus, 1876.
  • 1858-59 British Private Journeys of "Sport and Discovery" (James Lamont).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. 4: In an unpretending little work, descriptive of my former voyages, I had enunciated most strongly the opinion that it would for ever prove impossible to approach the Pole of the earth in ships; but, from reading the accounts of the subsequent voyages of Norwegian walrus-hunters, from an attentive study of the ever-increasing mass of Arctic literature, and from muchconversation and correspondence with those learned theorists who, without ever having left their own firesides, stoutly maintain that there is ‘no difficulty whatever in sailing to the North Pole,’ I was induced to consider whether my own opinion—however practically formed—might not have been too hastily adopted after all.

Saga of the White Horizon.

Olsen, Magnus L. Lymington, UK: Nautical Publishing Company, 1972.
  • 1901-04 Swedish Antarctic Expedition (Otto Nordenskjöld).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Olsen was a Norwegian aviator who participated in the Ellsworth/ Trans-Antarctic/Polar Star expedition between 1933 and 1936 as support on the three attempts to make the trip. On one occasion, during the later portion of these trips, the Wyatt Earp anchored at Snow Hill Island and the men visited the place where Otto Nordenskjöld wintered and built a winter house over thirty years earlier.

My Life among the Bluejackets.

Weston, Agnes. (London: James Nisbet, 1911).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Agnes Weston initiated the English Sailor’s Rest institutions in Devonport and Portsmouth, where she provided food, lodging, reading and smoking rooms, and evangelical teaching for naval enlisted personnel. Her work here is distinguished by overweening piety, celebration of the heroism and probity of most of the royal navy members, a strong message of teetotalism and salvation. She published tracts and pamphlets such as Ashore and Afloat, and her Monthly Letters.

High Latitude.

Davis, John King. Melbourne, Victoria, NZ: Melbourne University Press, 1962.
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

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.

Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century.

Busch, Briton Cooper. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.
  • Maritime Reading
    Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An artful account of nineteenth-century whaling, with fascinating chapters on the overall industry, crime and punishment, relations and legal complications with US consular officials, desertion, religion, women (prostitutes and wives), ceremonial occasions, and an Honolulu riot.

Alone to the South Pole.

Kagge, Erling. Oslo: Cappelens Forlag, 1993.
  • 1992-93 Norwegian Solo Expedition to South Pole.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An unsupported sledging and ski trip from the Ronne Ice Shelf near the Ellsworth Mountains to the South Pole, ca. 1300 km, with use of GPS and maps. He provides one of the best synopses of expedition reading, at a time when books and reading are being replaced in Antarctica by videos, albeit with a small group of titles.