The Open Polar Sea: A Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery towards the North Pole, in the Schooner “United States.”

Hayes, Isaac I. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867.
  • 1860-61 US North Pole Expedition (aboard United States, commanded by Isaac Hayes).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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The Open Polar Sea was a prominent but false theory of the nineteenth century that as one approached the highest latitudes the ice would give way to an open sea fed by warm currents which would reach as far as the poles.

The Whale and the Supercomputer: on the Northern Front of Climate Change.

Wohlforth, Charles P. New York: North Point Press, 2004.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska, while their trapped comrades drift out to sea on ice that should still be solid. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, measuring the thinning snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo the heat-deflecting property of snow that helps regulate the planet's temperature. Journalist and lifelong Alaskan Charles Wohlforth here crystallizes how climate change isn't an abstraction in the far North; it's a reality that has already dramatically altered daily life. He describes how Alaskan Natives and scientists attempt to reconcile their radically different ways of observing changes in the environment, and the implications for us all. (Daedalus Books Description)

With Peary Near the Pole…

Astrup, Eivind. Translated from the Norwegian by H. J. Bull. London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1898.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Astrup participated in two of Peary’s early Greenland expeditions.

Memoirs of Joseph René Bellot…with his Journal of a Voyage in the Polar Seas in Search of Sir John Franklin. [1851-52]

Bellot, Joseph Rene, Lt. Two volumes.(London: Hurst and Blackett, 1855).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Though much of this takes place on land, Bellot sailed on the Prince Albert as part of a British expedition searching for Franklin. Bellot died in 1853. The work consists of a memoir of Bellot by Julien Lemer (p. 1-87), an introduction by Bellot (p 88-108, reprinted from the Annales Maritimes), and Bellot’s journal, the remainder, though the running heads get confused.

Discovery: The Story of the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition.

Byrd, Richard Evelyn. New York: Putnam’s, 1935.
  • 1933-35 Byrd Second Antarctic Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Byrd’ second expedition (1933-1935), again settled at the still usable Little America, emphasizing science and technology at considerable expense for a wholly private expedition. The technology included four airplanes, various tractors, and snowmobiles. The trip included Byrd’s near-fatal solitary period at Bolling Advanced Weather Base recounted in Alone.

A Voyage Round the World; but More Particularly to the North-West Coast of America: Performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, in The King George and Queen Charlotte, Captains Portlock and Dixon.

Dixon, George. London: George Goulding, 1789.
  • 1785-88 British Exploring Circumnavigation to Northwest Pacific (Captain Portlock aboard the King George and George Dixon aboard Queen Charlotte).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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Not clear who is writing these letters, signed as W.B., since they refer to Dixon. Dixon’s Introduction describes the author as “a person aboard the Queen Charlotte, who has been totally unused to literary pursuits, and equally so to a sea-faring life” (p. xxii). Some editions show Portlock as the author.

Siberia in Asia: A Visit to the Valley of the Yenesay in East Siberia….

Seebohm, Henry. London: John Murray, 1882.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

Seebohm was a knowledgeable ornithologist who occasionally mentions books and reading on his long trips in Siberia. In his Preface he compares his earlier volume on Siberia in Europe (1876?) to these later travels in which he had no expert birder: It is possible, however, that the general reader may not regret the change, and may find the

Big Dead Place.

Johnson, Nicholas. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2005.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An antidote to any romanticizing of Antarctic work, esp. with NSF, who Johnson derides as unknowing and stupid bureaucrats. Johnson for all his humor suffered from depression and committed suicide in 2014. There is a bit of reading, and quite a bit about videos replacing books and stateside fashions dictating inappropriate programs, e.g.:

The Arctic in the Middle Ages,

Vaughan, Richard. Journal of Medieval History8 (1982) 313-42.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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An overview of knowledge of the Arctic in the middle ages. Claims that any one of the writers displays woeful ignorance, but collectively they provide a good picture of the medieval Arctic, from cold to frostbite, from skies to polar bears, to unicorn horns. The writers he cites are Saxo Grammaticus who is in “the very first rank of medieval writers about the north” and who wrote about geysers and volcanoes in Iceland, and Finnish use of skies. See his History of the Danes, 2 volumes, 1978-9.

Battle for the Soul: Métis Children Encounter evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823-1837.

Widder, Keith R. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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This deals mainly with a US phenomenon of attempted religious colonialism with relevance to Métis in Canada (Mackinaw Mission, 1823-37). It seems a good example of indoctrination requiring a degree of literacy devoid of independent thinking. An Anglo-Métis at Lake Leech in 1833 describes the house he built, with its old straw Hat, a violin with all its appendages; a small shelf upon which are the few books we possess…” etc. (p. 12). Unlike their Chippewa cousins, Métis children at times slept on beds off the ground, listened to their fathers read from books illuminated by candlelight, and danced to fiddle music. Under the same roof, they observed their fathers transact business with their Chippewa relatives and neighbors, who did not utilize amenities such as books and coffee mills…. Boys watched their fathers, some of whom were illiterate, keep records in ledgers of each transaction, often using symbols or pictures to identify each Chippewa customer’s account. Fathers recognized the advantage of written language as a tool to improve the operation of their businesses” (p. 13). Métis boys learned to speak French and/or English from their fathers and Chippewa from their mothers. Métis males could thus communicate with all members of the fur-trade society. Métis boys possessed skills that Chippewa youth did not. (p. 14).

The White Desert.

Barber, Noel. New York: Thomas W. Crowell, 1958.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Barber was a British journalist under contract to write for the Daily Mail on the Fuchs/Hillary Trans-Antarctic Expedition. He spent the austral summer of 1957-58 in Antarctica, mainly at McMurdo but making two substantial visits to the South Pole and was there when Hillary and then Fuchs arrived in 1958. He takes a British anti-Hillary stance on the controversy over Hillary’s arrival at the SP and makes him into a quite unattractive figure. But he is not uncritical of Fuchs either, finding him stuffy, portentous, too proud to accept help offered by the Americans, but accepting it on a number of dire occasions. Nor does he note how Adm. Dufek is complicit in the feud of Fuchs and Hillary by encouraging Hillary to go to the Pole on his plane when it should have been none of Dufek’s business. He rather simply sees Dufek as an innocently generous American with little agenda of his own.

Nelson.

Walder, David. (New York: Dial Press, 1978).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. xii: Meanwhile, The Times of October 10, 1843, reported the presence in Exeter of a rather unusual survival from Trafalgar. Mrs Sara Frank Pitt, the widow of a marine, had been on board Victory, and during the battle had been employed with other sailors’ wives in the customary duty of carrying powder up from the magazines to the guns. Hearing a false report of her husband’s death, she had rushed on deck to be reassured by his presence, but to see Nelson fall, mortally wounded. She subsequently buried a boy of hers at Alexandria and another near Sicily, and now in her old age, without child or husband, she I left totally destitute, without kin or associate, with no consolation but the recollection of the glorious bloody scenes in which she spent the early portion of her married life.’ Naturally enough, perhaps, Mrs Pitt was not anxious to join the procession of 200 Trafalgar veterans now being collected together for the unveiling ceremony [in Trafalgar Square], but she wished it to be known that if there should be ‘any distribution in largesse in commemoration of the victory’ she would ‘be thankful to receive a portion’.