To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of H.M.S. ‘Blossom’

Peard, George. Edited by Barry M. Gough. (Cambridge, UK: Hakluyt Society, 1973).
  • 1825-28 British Voyage to Pacific Northwest to Meet Captain Franklin at the Bering Straits.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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George Peard, the first lieutenant of the Blossom, gives detailed descriptions of the places visited and the inhabitants, among them Pitcairn Island and the Gambier, Tahitian and Hawaiian groups. No less valuable are his accounts of Kamchatka, California, the Northwestern extremity of North America, and various parts of South America. Peard had an inquisitive, scientific mind, and he wrote a clear discursive narrative which shows that British exploration in the early Pax Britannica bore many fruits - scientific, commercial and strategic. It also showed that the Northwest passage had again eluded the British, in spite of the careful planning of the Admiralty, the Colonial office and the Hudson's Bay Company and the painstaking execution of orders by such naval officers as Parry, Franklin, Beechey and Peard himself. Two of the plates are now printed at the end of the book. [Description from Google Books, 10/7/17.]

Lt. Aemilius Simpson’s Survey from York Factory to Fort Vancouver, 1826.

Simpson, Aemilius. Edited by William Barr and Larry Green. Journal of the Hakluyt Society(August 2014) 106 p., illus.
  • 1826 British Overland Survey from Hudson Bay to Fort Vancouver.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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Transcript of Simpson’s “Journal of a Voyage across the Continent of North America in 1826.”Although the journal gives no instances of specific reading there are references to Fraanklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea(London, 1823) sufficient to infer that he had a copy with him on the journey.

The Life of Charles Dickens.

Forster, John. Three Volumes. Boston, Estes and Lauriat, 1871.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 482, from Volume III: It is also to be noted as in the same spirit, that it was not the loud but the silent heroisms he most admired. Of Sir John Richardson, one of the few who have lived in our days entitled to the name of a hero, he [Dickens] wrote from Paris in 1856. ‘Lady Franklin sent me the whole of that Richardson memoir; and I think Richardson’s manly friendship, and love of Franklin, one of the noblest things I ever knew in my life. It makes one’s heart beat high, with a sort of sacred joy.’ (It is the feeling as strongly awakened by the earlier exploits of the same gallant man to be found at the end of Franklin’s first voyage, and never to be read without the most exalted emotion.)

William Henry Seward.

Van Deusen, Glyndon. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 531: He [Seward] had that insatiable expansionist Robert J. Walker draw up a report in 1867 on the resources and geopolitical importance of Greenland and Iceland. [Walker wanted to purchase them for resources but also to encourage annexation of Canada by the US. Seward had it printed.]

The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions.

Stefansson, Viljhamur. New York: Macmillan, 1921.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Stef’s most famous of many books, admired by many, reviled by some including Amundsen, who said it represented a danger in its claim that adoption of Inuit customs would assure safety in the north. The book is prefaced by testimonials from both Peary and Greely.

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
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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:

Torrey’s Narrative, Or, The Life and Adventures of William Torrey. Written by Himself.

Torrey, William. Boston, MA: Press of A.J. Wright, 1848.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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p. 152, on conflicts between missionaries and Marquesas natives: The Otaheitean and Marquisian languages are so nearly alike they could converse without an interpreter. Mr. Daylia, in one of his meetings, said much about the good land and a bad land, telling them if they would be good and pray they would go to the good land, when they died. This he explained in a manner suited to their understanding. One of the chiefs jumped up and asked if the missionary who died at Nukuhivah (an English missionary who died about two years before) had gone to that good land. Mr. Daylia assured them he had, when, unwilling to believe it, they sent four men to that island, (about fifty miles) to get some of the bones. At the expiration of five or six days they returned, bringing bones with them; and at the next meeting, when Daylia was again telling of the good land, they set up a shouting, calling him a liar and showed him the bones. They told him he had been driven from his own land and had come to live with them, and he might stop preaching about his good land and his bad land, for they would not believe him. In vain were his remonstrances with them. They told him if he would climb a lofty cocoa-nut tree, which stood near, and jump among the rocks unhurt, they would believe him.

Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, with a Sketch of Their Habits, Religion, Language and Other Peculiarities….

Rink, Henry. Translated from the Danish by the Author. Edited by Dr Robert Brown. Edinburgh: Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1875.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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Rink’s second volume of Eskimo Tales with his introductory sketch on their culture, based not on ornaments, weapons and other remains: But the time will certainly come when any relics of spiritual life brought down to us from pre- historic mankind, which may still be found in the folk lore of the more isolated and primitive nations, will be valued as highly as those material remains. In this respect the Eskimo may be considered among the most interesting, both as having been almost entirely cut off from other nations and very little influenced by foreign intercourse, and also as representing a kind of link between the aboriginals of the New and the Old World (p. vi). It is a fascinating collection of tales, with brief introductions noting the sources of the stories. Here are a few examples:

With the Battle Fleet: Cruise of the Sixteen Battleships of the United States Atlantic Fleet from Hampton Roads to the Golden Gate, December, 1907—May, 1908.

Matthews, Franklin. Illus. by Henry Reuterdahl. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1909.
  • 1907-09 US Circumnavigation by the Great White Fleet.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 103, on the bluejackets in Rio: The first thing that greeted the eye of every man who landed at the beautiful park that used to be an eyesore in the central part of the waterfront was a big sign reading : "Information Bureau for American Seamen." It was an information bureau, a real one. It was the most useful kind of a welcome ever provided in a foreign port for the sailors of any people. The American and English residents, aided by those of other countries, had been busy preparing for weeks for the visit of Jack ashore. Every safeguard, every assistance that was possible to make his liberty comfortable, profitable, enjoyable was looked after. It took hard cash to do it, but the money was raised and it amounted to thousands of dollars. In the first place, the ferry company to Nictheroy set apart a large room in its commodious new building. Counters were put up for information booths, postal card booths, exchange of money, sale of various kinds of tickets for things with guides by the score and attendants anxious to answer all kinds of questions. Men and women worked there from twelve to fourteen hours a day for ten days in the stifling heat, all eager to be of assistance to Jack ashore. A pamphlet was provided giving a map of the city and displaying all the chief places of interest. Full information was printed about everything that a man bent on rational enjoyment could desire. The pamphlets told all about transportation, about the places to see, about postage and the many general and special excursions that had been planned.

Matthew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography: A Biography, 1806-1873.

Grady, John. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015).
  • Maritime Reading
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Summary [from ABEBooks]: In becoming "a useful man" on the maritime stage, Matthew Fontaine Maury focused light on the ills of a clique-ridden Navy, charted sea lanes and bested Great Britain's admiralty in securing the fastest, safest routes to India and Australia. He helped bind the Old and New worlds with the laying of the transatlantic cable, forcefully advocated Southern rights in a troubled union, and preached Manifest Destiny from the Arctic to Cape Horn. Late in life, he revolutionized warfare in perfecting electronically detonated mines. Maury's eagerness to go to the public in person and in print on the questions of the day riled powerful men in business and politics, and the U.S., Confederate and Royal navies. They dismissed him as the "Man on the Hill." Over his career, Maury more than once ran afoul of Jefferson Davis, and Stephen R. Mallory, secretary of the Confederate States Navy. He argued against eminent members of the nation's emerging scientific community in a decades-long debate over science for its own sake versus science for the people's sake. Through the political, social and scientific struggles of his time, however, Maury had his share of powerful allies, like President John Tyler; but by the early 1870s they, too, were in eclipse or in the grave.

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.

Ghosts of Cape Sabine. The Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition

Guttridge, Leonard F. New York, Putnam’s, 2000.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 41: He was just as meticulous about ordering ‘a hand atlas, well-bound with guards, so the maps while being of half size-when closed, will open smoothly and of full size.’ Harper and Brothers in New York would supply volumes on exploration, anthropology, medicine, and miscellaneous other subjects, besides a score of novels and some sixty magazines.