She Went a-whaling: the Journal of Martha Smith Brewer Brown.

Brown, Martha Smith Brewer. (Orient, NY: Oysterponds Historical Society, 1993).
  • 1847-48 Whaling Voyage to South Pacific (aboard Lucy Ann).
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

An example of a whaling captain’s wife going to sea with him. Whaling wives were usually known for their New England piety amidst the rough-hewn crews of 19th-century whaling ships. This is the diary of one of them, Martha Brown, who sailed from Orient NY aboard the Lucy Ann on August 31, 1847, on an eastward voyage round the world that eventually passed Cape Horn:

A Tenderfoot with Peary.

Borup, George. with a Preface by G. W. Melville. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1911.
  • 1891-1920 Robert Peary and the Search for the North Pole; 1908-09 US North Pole Expeditions under Robert E. Peary (aboard Roosevelt).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

p. 6: …as we were leaving Hawkes’ Harbor, the Commander put the Doctor and us [Borup and Macmillan], the tenderfeet of the expedition, to work sorting the hundreds of magazines which were down in the lazarette and were filling every available space. There were fairly complete files of all the principle ones back to January, 1907 [as of June 1908], and as some one has said, ‘If the serial stories weren’t good, the cereal advertisements were,’ and so for that matter were the open-work yarns in the ladies’ journals.

Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas, and Round the World: being personal narratives of attempts to reach the North and South Poles; and of an open-boat expedition up the Wellington Channel in search of Sir John Franklin and Her Majesty’s ships “Erebus” and “Terror,” in Her Majesty’s boat “Forlorn Hope,” under the command of the author. To which are added an Autobiography….

M’Cormick, Robert. In Two Volumes. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1884.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions

Scarcity of Seamen.

Sullivan, Thomas V. Second Edition.[Boston: Press of J. Howe, 1854.].
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

This 32-page pamphlet joins the interests of the needs of American commerce with the concerns of US seamen’s missionary activities in behalf of their moral probity.

Herman Melville’s Charles and Henry Book List, 1849

  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

“Hardly the carefully ordered reading program of a university, but since Melville declared in Moby-Dick (Chapter 24) that ‘a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard,’ this little library should be taken into account among his early formative influences.”

Jack in the Forecastle; or, Incidents in the Early Life of Hawser Martingale.

Sleeper, John Sherburne. Boston: Crosby, Nicholas, Lee, 1860.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Sleeper was an American sailor, journalist, and politician who was Mayor of Roxbury, Mass., and a member of the Mass. Senate. As a novelist he used the pseudonym of Mawser Martingale, and I suspect this book is autobiographical fiction. He went to sea as a cabin boy in 1809, age 15, and the book is about his first command in the merchant marine in 1821.

Americans in Antarctica, 1715-1948

Bertrand, Kenneth J. . New York: American Geographical Society, 1971. (AGS Special Publication No. 39.).
  • Antarctic Reading: General
 Preview 

A thorough account of American operations in Antarctica, from the Falklands in the 1770s to the 1947-48 US Navy “Operation Windmill.” See individual chapters for each expedition covered.

Pilgrims on the Ice: Robert Falcon Scott’s First Antarctic Expedition.

Baughman, T. H. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 27: for the Discovery expedition, the Executive Committee of the RGS commissioned an Antarctic Manual, “an idea that hearkened back to the British Arctic expedition of 1875. Edited by George Murray, it dealt with fields of science to be investigated, and was well received.”