Two Voyages to the South Seas. Volume II: Astrolabe and Zélée 1837-1840.

D’Urville, Jules S-C. Translated from the French and edited by Helen Rosenman. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1987.
  • 1837-40 French South Seas Voyage of Astrolabe (Jules d’Urville).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

D’Urville proposed this second voyage to the South Seas but it was the French King who suggested that its first goal should be toward the South Pole as ice permitted. Through the Admiral Minister the King “approved everything I asked for.” This volume is taken from D’Urville’s journals of the second voyage with a great deal of connective commentary and paraphrases by the editor. It is her writing that appears in quotes below and his journals without quotes.

Mawson: a Life.

Ayres, Philip. Melbourne, Aus.: The Miegunyah Press, 1999.
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A balanced biography of Mawson, emphasizing his achievements but not ignoring his sometimes depressive personality and temper.

On Greenland’s Closed Shore.

Hutchison, Isobel Wylie. Edinburgh: Wm. Blackwood, 1930.
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

On this trip Hutchison took a fair number of books with her and she generously shared them with her hosts.

Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage.

McGoogan, Ken. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2017.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

McGoogan claims to bring a new integrative emphasis to the indigenous elements involved in the search for the Northwest Passage adding to the British focus on the Royal Navy. The work is a broad overview of this history but not so innovative as it seems to claim. His final chapter 32 is called “Erebus and Terror Validate Inuit Testimony,” citing the discovery of the two ships (2014, 2016) as Inuit Vindication.

The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776-1780.

Cook, James, Captain. Edited by J. C. Beaglehole. Two volumes. (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1967).
  • 1776-80 British Naval Expedition–Third Voyage (Captain James Cook aboard Discovery and Resolution).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

These volumes cover Cook’s attempt on his third voyage at finding the Northwest Passage from the west but ending in his death. Included in the volume are the surviving journals of officers of the expedition, including various descriptions of the death of Cook.

A Voyage to the North Pole, by Benjamin Bragg, Accompanied by his Friend, Captain Slapperwhack; with an Account of the Dangers and Accidents They Experienced in the Frozen Seas of the Polar Circle. Also, the Manner of their Wintering on the Island of Spitzberg, and Discovery of the Polar Continent.

Bragg, Benjamin, pseud. (London: Published by G. Walker, Great Portland-Street, 1817).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

An imaginary voyage posing as a piece of juvenile literature, though on a sophisticated level with remarkable insights into the Arctic at such an early date. Apart from land in the North Pole region, it gets many of the details right and one wonders whether Mary Shelley could have read it. I’ve not detected who the author was, though there was a bookseller of the time named Benjamin Bragg.

To the Ends of the Earth.

Pease, Francis K. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1935.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Begins with 1925 cruise to Antarctica aboard Discovery, Scott’s old ship, commanded by Stenhouse. First it brought gifts to Tristan da Cunha, including many writing implements, essentially useless to that population, and “a large quantity of Bibles, in which, however, the Tristans displayed very little interest, for the reason…that during the course of the years so many Bibles had been sent to the island that there was now an average of seven copies per inhabitant” (p. 20).

Tales of a Voyager to the Arctic Ocean, in Three Volumes.

Gillies, R. P. London: Henry Colburn, 1826.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Gillies takes a Chaucerian approach to his Tales, interspersing short chapters on the Voyage with a series of lengthy stories by his companions on this fictional whaler, Leviathan. The stories are either based right at home in England or Scotland, or have an element of the horror story to them.

The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, in Search of a Passage to Cathay and India by the North-West, A.D. 1576-78.

Best, George. Two volumes in one. Edited by Vilhjalmur Stefansson. (London: Argonaut Press, 1938).
  • 1576-78 The Baffin Island Voyages of Martin Frobisher.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. cii-ciii, re the first voyage: The ship’s library included two works of André Thevet, the French royal geographer, his Cosmography, in French, which had been published only the previous year, and his Singularités de l’Amérique, both in French and in the English translation of 1568, by Thomas Hackett, under the title The New found World or Antarctike. It included William Cunningham’s Cosmographical Glasse, published in 1559, which, to quote Professor Taylor, ‘contains little of purely geographical interest, but is notable for its exposition and illustration of the method of survey by triangulation….’ This volume and Dr Record’s Castle of Knowledge, 1556 (‘containing the explication of the sphere’), which they also took along, ‘were certainly adequate reference books for such astronomy and mathematical geography as was necessary to understand the principles of these various instruments’ (i.e. Cole’s instruments). As they took Medina’s Arte de Naviguar in the original it is to be presumed that the Master could read Spanish. The only English work included was Mandeville, ‘presumably for the sake of its account of the Far East, which was the ultimate goal of the expedition’. They also took ‘a Bible Englishe great volume’, possibly Richard Jugge’s Bishop’s Bible of 1572.

Adventurous Life.

Mountevans, Edward Racdcliffe, Admiral Lord. London: Hutchison, 1946.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Mountevans was involved in relief expeditions for both of the Scott journeys. He writes with good humor and amusing anecdotes. He tells one involving a salvage expert, Commodore Sir Frederick Young, about the Magellan Straits and a salvage ship on which the Commodore happened to see a notice from the Independent Press Association offering a £500 reward for anyone who could “discover and forward to them the Bible of the explorer Louis de Rougemont which was lost in the steamer, Ananias, wrecked in Magellan Straits. The Bible can well be identified, since the explorer’s name is written on the fly-leaf in his own blood.” The Commodore and fellow sailors decided to create one, found a Bible, soaked it in sea water, found de Rougemont’s signature in a signed article in Wide World Magazine, and used the Commodore’s blood (he was chosen by lot) to forge Rougemont’s signature on the fly-leaf. They then sent the Bible off to the Press Association and claimed the reward. After two months they received this reply: …I am also directed to state that although the sea has worked many marvels, the Directors of the Independent Press Association cannot believe that it has succeeded in translating completely a French Bible into English!” (p. 134-36)

A Voyage to Spitzbergen. [The Gateway to the Polynia].

Wells, John Campion. From the Journal of John C. Wells. New and Cheaper Edition. London: Henry S. King & Co., 1876.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Although the author, an “untraveled Englishman,” is motivated by sport, the main thrust of his book is that Spitsbergen is the best route to the north: for it’s whaling riches, for the benefits of geographical exploration, and for the most economical route of scientific inquiry. Wells himself is described as an old whaling captain in an introductory survey of Arctic exploration that doesn’t reveal its author. I assume the editor was a fellow traveler on a vessel captained by Wells, but I’ve not studied the matter. A most engaging volume.