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.

Baudin, Nicolas. Translated from the French by Christine Cornell. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1974.
  • 1801-03 French Exploring Expedition to South Seas and Terra Australis (Captain Nicolas Baudin aboard Géographe).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

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.

At the Mountains of Madness,

Lovecraft, H. P. in At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

First published in 1931, this phantasmagoric combination of science fiction and horror novel is located on the high plateau of Antarctic, reached by airplane, but discovering the world’s highest mountains and remains of an ancient ‘civilization’ come back to life and destructive of the expedition.

Under Sail to Greenland, Being an Account of the Voyage of the Cutter “Direction”. 1929.

Allen, Arthur S., Jr. Philadelphia: Goodchild, 2002.
  • 1929 Private US Voyage to Greenland (aboard Direction with Arthur Allen and Rockwell Kent).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

An easygoing and relaxed account of the Greenland trip by three twenty-year olds including Rockwell Kent (who took the trip for painting purposes primarily) in a small vessel which was wrecked near Godthaab in the summer of 1929. Tragic in that the author was killed in a car crash the month after returning to the US. A few reading and library references are included in this adventure:

Reminiscences of service aboard USS Flasher (SSN 613) as yeoman submariner in 1966-69.

Gleave, Dale.
  • 1966-68 US Deployment of USS Flasher to Kamchatka and Beyond.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

The sub adopted as its honorary submariner the novelist Louis L'Amour, author of Western thrillers. Dale was the yeoman who corresponded with him, sent him a letter when they crossed the equator, and L'Amour in turn sent signed copies of all his work to the ship.

The Resolution Journal of Johann Reinhold Forster, 1772-1775.

Forster, Johann Reinhold. Ed. by Michael E. Hoare. Four volumes. London: Hakluyt Society, 1982.
  • 1772-75 British Naval Expedition–Second Voyage (Captain James Cook aboard the Resolution).
  • “Discovery” of Antarctica.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Forster and his father George were the naturalists on Cook’s Second Voyage, aboard Resolution, replacing Sir Joseph Banks who rejected the expedition in a dispute over cabin space, and possibly a mistress. Banks took his library and instruments with him, but the library was somehow replaced by the Forster collection. Anders Sparrman was another scientist who joined the scientific team for the second voyage. The four volumes of Forster’s Journal are studded with references to many books in several languages, mostly dealing with natural history or anthropology (e.g., plant names, the copulation of sea elephants, tattoos and lip piercing, but he quotes Virgil constantly). One may assume with some degree of likelihood that most of the books cited were aboard the ship. Included here are only page numbers of these references. For all the bookish knowledge of the father there is little indication of reading in the Antarctic regions, other than looking up references. [DS]

The Snow People.

Herbert, Marie. New York: Putnam’s, 1973.
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

An account by the wife of Wally Herbert of a year living in northern Greenland and a year-old child and the Inuit.

Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt: Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years among the Savages of Nootka Sound… .

Jewett, John R. New York: Printed for the Publisher [1840].
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Jewett’s first voyage in 1803 involved some whaling and sealing in the Pacific Northwest, but it was a short time before the ship was captured by the Nootka people and most of the crew killed. Most of the book is devoted to his 28 months of captivity, and his analysis of the Nootka natives.

Dartmouth College Archives. Mss. 98

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Finding Aid 1982.
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Box 5: Diary, April 27, 1914 (Canadian Arctic Expedition); folder 2 has inventory of all equipment and supplies that includes “Stork’s books 10 lbs.”

Greenland, the Adjacent Seas, and the North-West Passage to the Pacific Ocean. Illustrated in a Voyage to Davis’s Strait during the Summer of 1817.

O’Reilly, Bernard. New-York: James Eastburn & Co., 1818.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

O'Reilly served as surgeon aboard the whale-ship Thomas, in order to gather scientific information on the northern regions. He gives much information concerning Arctic zoology, whale fishery, natural atmospheric phenomena, observations of magnetic variation, the history and habitation of Greenland, and observations concerning the possibility of a Northwest Passage." Field - "The observations of the author on the natives of Greenland, are recorded on pp. 52 and 85, of which the last two are occupied with a vocabulary of their language. Five of the plates are illustrative of the features, or habits of life of the Exquimaux." According to Abbey an article in the 'Quarterly Review' called the book 'a bare faced imposition.' Stanton & Tremaine mentions the book is said to have been plagiarized from material prepared by Sir Charles L. M. von Giescke. See Kenneth Hill: The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages. Three Volumes (San Diego: 1974-83). p. 219, and Thomas W Field: An Essay towards an Indian Bibliography. (Detroit: Gale, 1967). p. 297.

Race for the South Pole: Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen.

Huntford, Roland. London: Continuum, 2010.
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Uses a clever device of presenting chronologically the diary entries by Amundsen and Scott, together with the shorter diary entries from Amundsen’s colleague, Olav Bjaaland, from September 1, 1911, to March 5, 1912, when Amundsen and the Fram reached Tasmania. The substantial introduction and epilogue by Huntford are informative but characteristically mean-spirited and vituperative in his loathing for Scott, and by implication the British people for making him into a false hero. I found nothing related to any reading by the three diarists.

Children of the Light: The Rise and Fall of New Bedford Whaling and the Death of the Arctic Fleet

Allen, Everett S. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

A somewhat elegiac tale of the decline of whaling and New Bedford, contrasted with descriptions of the life of the Inuit, before and after the coming of the whalers to the Beaufort Sea area. Main focus at end is on the disastrous season at Pt. Barrow of the whaling fleet which abandoned over 25 ships, but managed to rescue over 1200 whalemen.

The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule.

Kavenna, Joanna. London: Viking/Penguin Books, 2005.
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Joanna Kavenna went north in search of the Atlantis of the Arctic, the mythical land of Thule. Seen once by an Ancient Greek explorer and never found again, mysterious Thule came to represent the vast and empty spaces of the north. Fascinated for many years by Arctic places, Kavenna decided to travel through the lands that have been called Thule, from Shetland to Iceland, Norway, Estonia, and Greenland. On her journey, she found traces of earlier writers and travellers, all compelled by the idea of a land called Thule: Richard Francis Burton, William Morris, Anthony Trollope, as well as the Norwegian Polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen . . . The Ice Museum is a mesmerising story of idealism and ambition, wars and destruction, survival and memories, set against the haunting backdrop of the northern landscape. Bookseller Inventory #0670913952

Hell on Ice: The Saga of the “Jeannette“

Ellsberg, Edward. .” New York: Dodd, Mead, 1938.
  • 1879-81 US North Pole Expedition (commanded by George De Long aboard Jeannette).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

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.