The Lure of the Labrador Wild: The Story of the Exploring Expedition Conducted by Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.

Wallace, Dillon. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1905.
  • 1903 US Personal Exploring Expedition to Labrador by Leonidas Hubbard Jr. and Dillon Wallace.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

As a young lawyer Wallace met Hubbard, an editor of Outing magazine, in 1900 and in 1903 they departed New York to explore the wilder and hitherto unexplored parts of Labrador. It was a difficult journey in which Hubbard died of starvation and Wallace managed to survive and go on to further explorations and successful books. Hubbard’s wife Mina felt that Wallace had disparaged her husband by implying that Leonidas caused the failure—she went on to her own career as successful competitor of Wallace as a Labrador explorer in the “great race of 1905.” All the reading that I could find was Scriptural and from The Book of Common Prayer.

Antarctica, or Two Years Amongst the Ice of the South Pole By Dr. N. Otto G. Nordenskjöld and Dr. Joh. Gunnar Andersson.

Nordenskjöld, Otto. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905. [Another edition was published in Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1977.].
  • 1901-04 Swedish Antarctic Expedition (Otto Nordenskjöld).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Nordenskjöld was a Swedish geologist with a genetic link to polar research through his uncle Adolph. The account in this book covers one of the epic narratives of polar survival on an expedition that produced some important geological findings.

Cruising in the Antarctic.

Solyanik, A. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Recounts a whaling journey from Odessa to Antarctica in 1952-53 in a flotilla of 16 ships. Rather typical Soviet narrative with great harmony, a few problems heroically overcome, and excellent discipline:

The Zoology of Captain Beechey’s Voyage, Compiled from the Collections and Notes made by Captain Beechey….1825-28.

Beechey, William Frederick. (London: H. G. Bohn, 1839).
  • 1825-28 British Voyage to Pacific Northwest to Meet Captain Franklin at the Bering Straits.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

After three voyages as a subordinate officer Frederick Beechey was appointed commander of HMS Blossom in 1825 and assigned to the Bering Straits to await the arrival of John Franklin on his second overland expedition to the Mackenzie River Delta and on to the Alaska coast. Although Franklin never arrived (they missed each other by only 200 miles), Beechey and his men employed the time in scientific observation, especially of specimens of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, some from the South Seas but many from the Arctic waters of Kamchatka and Alaska.

Cold Comfort: My Love Affair with the Arctic.

Rowley, Graham W. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

This is a rather dry account of a mid-1930s expedition to map the coastline of Baffin Island and the Foxe Basin and also some archaeological work on Thule and Dorset cultures. There are scattered reading references:

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.

She Went a-Whaling: The Journal of Martha Smith Brewer Brown.

Brown, Martha Smith Brewer. Orient, NY: Oysterponds Historical Society, 1993.
  • Whalemen's 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, New York, aboard the Lucy Ann on August 31, 1847, on an eastward voyage round the world that eventually passed Cape Horn.

Titian Ramsay Peale 1799-1885, and His Journals of the Wilkes Expedition.

Poesch, Jessie. Philadelphia, Pa: American Philosophical Society, 1961.
  • 1838-42 U.S. Exploring Expedition (Wilkes).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This book constitutes a fairly broad biographical introduction to Titian Peale, as well as his journals of the Wilkes expedition, not a happy camper much of the time and bitterly disappointed afterwards, when his work was denigrated and to some extent perverted by other parties. But much of it is fascinating and worth reading, even in the tiny font APS has chosen for this book.

The White Desert.

Barber, Noel. New York: Thomas W. Crowell, 1958.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

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.

Little America: Aerial Exploration in the Antarctic; the Flight to the South Pole.

Byrd, Richard Evelyn. New York: Putnam’s, 1930.
  • 1928-30 First U.S. Antarctic Expedition (Byrd on City of New York).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Byrd’s account of his first Antarctic Expedition (1928-30) and the development of the first Little America. Here and elsewhere Byrd seems obsessed with the possibility of failure, though it also seems that he uses that device to heighten the tension of his narrative. Seems a transparent piece of reader manipulation.

A Black Explorer at the North Pole

Henson, Matthew A. Foreword by Robert E. Peary, Rear Admiral, U.S.N. Introduction by Booker T. Washington. Introduction to Bison Book Edition by Susan A. Kaplan. (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). [First published as A Negro Explorer at the North Pole in 1912; There are many other editions, often with variant titles.].
  • 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 

Mostly from Hensen’s diary with connecting narrative of Peary’s North Pole expedition of 1908-9.

The Bibliographical Miscellany.

Petheram, John, ed. 5 numbers, all printed. London: John Russell Smith, 1859.
  • 1612-13 British North-West Passage Expedition (led by Sir Thomas Button, aboard Resolution and Discovery).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

First three numbers deal with the North-West Passage and the 1612 voyage of Sir Thomas Button.

The Seaman’s Library Manual.

Howe, Herbert L. Prepared by Herbert L. Howe, Librarian. New York: American Merchant Marine Library Association, 1939. unpaged.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Intro. By Christopher Morley: I have seen the Green Box [American Seamen’s Friend Society library boxes] in use aboard American ships at sea, and I know what it means…to the reader off duty.