The North-West Passage by Land. Being the Narrative of an Expedition from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Undertaken with the View of Exploring a Route across the Continent to British Columbia through British Territory, by One of the Northern Passes in the Rocky Mountains.

Milton, Viscount, William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, and W. B. Cheadle. [By] Viscount Milton and W. B. Cheadle. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1865.
  • 1862-64? British Private Overland Expedition in Search of North-West Passage by Land.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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A very curious, almost quixotic account of a couple of aristocratic travelers seeking an overland route to the gold fields of British Columbia.

The Voyages of the ‘Morning’

Doorly, James G. S. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 1995. [First published London: Smith, Elder, 1916].
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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The Morning was a relief ship for Scott’s Discovery expedition. Notable for its piano, given by Clements Markham (the carpenter cut it in half to get it into the wardroom), for the song texts given in the book, apparently composed by Doorly, and the key role of the piano. Doorly was a close friend of Teddy Evans and it was Evans’s influence on Clements Markham that helped get him posted to the Morning and involved in freeing Discovery from the heavy ice of McMurdo sound. Doorly wrote a readable autobiography called In the Wake, which devotes a couple of chapters to his Discovery experience.

Life on a Whaler; or, Antarctic Adventures in the Isle of Desolation.

Taylor, Nathaniel William. New London, CT: New London County Historical Society, 1929.
  • 1851-53 Kerguélen Whaling Voyage (aboard Julius Caesar).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Narrative of a whaling voyage from New London, Connecticut to the South Indian Ocean aboard the ship Julius Caesar, August 18, 1851 to June 4, 1853. Taylor was a 28-year-old doctor and the medical officer of the voyage. The manuscript had been prepared for publication in long hand by the author in 1858--including a title page, table of contents, foreword, and chapter headings--but had never been published until this edition, limited to 900 copies, was printed by the New London County Historical Society in 1929. Illustrations by William T. Peters of the U. S. Japan Expedition. Bound in tan cloth over boards with dark brown cloth spine, gilt-stamped spine and upper board, illustrated endpapers. (from ABEBOOKS)

Explorers Club Archives I

  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, EC2007-07

An Account of Several Late Voyages & Discoveries to the South and North towards the Streights of Magellan, the South Seas, the Vast Tracts of Land beyond Hollandia Nova, &c.: also towards Nova Zembla, Greenland or Spitsberg, by Sir John Narborough, Captain Jasmen Tasman, Captain John Wood, and Frederick Martin of Hamburgh….

Narbrough, John, Sir. (London: Printed for Sam Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, 1694).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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The purpose of this voyage was to establish trading relations between Britain and South America and the South Seas. Narborough did claim for Britain some territory in Argentina, lost some of his men as hostages in Peru, but failed in his primary mission.

Icebound in Antarctica

Lewis, David and Mimi George. London: Secker & Warburg, 1987.
  • 1982-84 Australian Yacht Cruises (aboard Dick Smith Explorer).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 81, on meeting the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Markov: There were sixteen women on their ship, most in their thirties and forties. Some were very good-looking. I noticed. Some were sailors; some laundry workers. We tied to a rope a copy of Voyage to the Ice, the story of my 1977-8 expedition. It was hauled up and we received in return a guide to Leningrad’s Hermitage Museum.

South: A Memoir of theEndurance Voyage.

Shackleton, Ernest, Sir. New York: Carroll & Graff, 1998.
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 93, [after abandoning the Endurance]: In addition to the daily hunt for food, our time was passed in reading the few books that we had managed to save from the ship. The greatest treasure in the library was a portion of the Encyclopædia Britannica. This was being continually used to settle the inevitable arguments that would arise. The sailors were discovered one day engaged in a very heated discussion of the subject of Money and Exchange. They finally came to the conclusion that the Encyclopædia, since it did not coincide with their views, must be wrong. ‘For descriptions of every American town that ever has been, is, or ever will be, and for full and complete biographies of every American statesman since the time of George Washington and long before, the Encyclopædia would be hard to beat. Owing to our shortage of matches we have been driven to use it for purposes other than the purely literary ones, though; and one genius having discovered that the paper used for its pages had been impregnated with saltpeter, we can now thoroughly recommend it as a very efficient pipe-lighter.’ [Unclear why this paragraph is in Shackleton’s quotes; could these passages be quoted from Worsley’s diary?]

Mawson’s Antarctic Diaries.

Mawson, Douglas. Edited by Fred Jacka & Eleanor Jacka. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Introduction emphasizes Mawson’s faith in “Providence,” and notes that his very survival reduced the emotional impact that Scott’s death had on the public: World War I, followed by world depression, diverted public interest from the achievements of Douglas Mawson and other scientists and explorers in the Antarctic, and formed a break between the ‘heroic era’ and the ‘mechanical era’ in the history of Antarctic exploration. (p. xlii).

The Journal of Jens Munk 1619-1620.

Munk, Jens. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1980.
  • 1619-20 Danish Expedition to Hudson’s Bay (commanded by Jens Munk on Lamprey and Unicorn).
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
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Munk led two Danish ships, the Lamprey and Unicorn, to Hudson’s Bay and wintered over at Churchill in 1619-20. Many men including the surgeon died at Churchill, undoubtedly of scurvy.

Assault on Eternity: Richard Byrd and the Exploration of Antarctica, 1946-47.

Rose, Lisle Abbott. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980.
  • 1946-48 US Operation Highjump, Byrd’s Fourth Expedition to Little America (aboard USS Mount Olympus).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This is a true tale of daring and romance, of tedium and tragedy, of folly and heroism, of adventure enjoyed and adventure endured one-third of a century ago by some forty-seven hundred men in thirteen ships at the bottom of the earth.

The Lord’s Librarians: The American Seamen’s Friend Society and their Loan Libraries 1837-1967

Stam, David H. Coriolis: Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime History III no. 1 (2012) 59 p. Online through Mystic Seaport.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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p. 1 Abstract: "The Lord's Librarians" describes in new detail the activities of the American Seamen's Friend Society in distributing loan libraries to merchant and naval ships for over 130 years. Based on the archives of the Society in the G.W. Blunt White Library at the Mystic Seaport Museum, the study examines the history of the Society in its efforts towards moral improvement of seamen, fostering temperance, reducing licentiousness, encouraging Sabbath worship and observation, countering swearing, and promoting thrift and financial responsibility among sailors. It examines the largely evangelical collection development policies for these compact 40-45 volume library boxes, and attempts to locate the surviving boxes and surviving books from these libraries. It ends with some unanswered questions which deserve further study.

A Winter Circuit of Our Arctic Coast: A Narrative of a Journey with Dog-Sleds around the Entire Arctic Coast of Alaska.

Stuck, Hudson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.
  • 1913-18 US Private Journeys round the Coast and Interior of Alaska (Hudson Stuck, “Archbishop of the Yukon”).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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One of four travel accounts by the “Archdeacon of the Yukon and the Arctic,” with Walter Harper as companion. “My purpose was an enquiry into their present state, physical, mental, moral and religious, industrial and domestic, into their prospects, into what the government and the religious organizations have done and are doing for them, and what should yet be done” (p. viii). Among other things the archdeacon did a good deal of reading during his journey, not all of which will be captured here.