Explorers Club Archives II

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

Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, EC2007-07 [Not all of these files have been carefully reviewed and some await further inspection.]

When God Came to the Belchers.

Sullivan, Alan. Queen’s Quarterly 51 no 2 (1944) p. 14-28.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
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On the Belcher murders connected to a religious frenzy by hunters who thought they were God and Jesus:

Travel and Exploration sale. 27 September 1996.

Christie’s, London. London: Christie’s, 1996.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Item 169: copy of New Testament owned by Oates, given to him in Dunedin by H. R. Falconer, a Seamen’s Missionary, Nov. 1910, and present on the Terra Nova expedition. Items 171-75 are George Marston paintings.

Keep the Mind Alive: Literary Leanings in the Fur Trade.

Cole, Jean Murray. Journal of Canadian Studies16 no. 2 (1981) p. 87-93.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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Fur traders in the 1830s showed strong need for newspaper and periodical literature, which the Company refused to ship inland with other supplies because of their weight. Though starved for news, books would sometimes help. Scotsmen favored Ossian, Burns, and Scott, but there was also demand for classic English literature, Shakespeare and Dickens.

To the Sixth Continent: The Second German South Polar Expedition.

Filchner, Wilhelm. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 1994.
  • 1911-13 Second German Antarctic Expedition (Filchner).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Filchner’s original plans mirrored Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition a few years later, with two ships and men starting from both the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea then meeting mid-way. Shackleton and Nordenskjöld helped him get a ship, the Deutschland, but he could get only one and went only to the Weddell Sea. He named the iceshelf after Kaiser Wilhelm II, but the Kaiser renamed it after Filchner. The ship was trapped in ice but was freed in the austral summer of 1912. The expedition is noted for its animosities, hostility not indicated in the passages here.

The Blizzard. Newspaper of the Discovery

May 1902. SPRI MS 859. Illus.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Title page: Never mind The Blizzard I’m all right.

The Big Sea: An Autobiography….

Hughes, Langston. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1963). [First published in 1940.].
  • Whalemen's Reading
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p. 3: Melodramatic maybe, it seems to me now. But then it was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart when I threw the book into the water. I leaned over the rail of the S.S. Malone and threw the books as far as I could out into the sea—all the books I had had at Columbia, and all the books I had lately bought to read.

Two Men in the Antarctic: An Expedition to Graham Land 1920-1922.

Bagshawe, Thomas Wyatt. With a Foreword by Frank Debenham. Cambridge: University Press, 1939.
  • 1920-22 British Graham Land Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Elaborate plans made by John Cope, including a flight to the South Pole with George Hubert Wilkins, diminished for lack of funds to a winter spent by Bagshawe and Lt. Maxime Lester in an abandoned whaleboat, turned over to provide some shelter. Remarkably, the two men did perform some scientific work and observations. William Mills called it “the smallest party ever to winter on the Antarctic continent.”

Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean… in the United States Frigate Essex, in the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814.

Porter, David. Two volumes. Second edition. New York: Wiley & Halsted, 1822. [A modern edition was published in Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986, with an Introduction by R. D. Madison, Edited and with Notes by R. D. Madison and Karen Hamon.].
  • 1812-1814 American Naval Cruise to the Pacific commanded by David Porter (aboard frigate Essex).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

The second edition is the only complete edition and generally regarded as the best one. The 1986 introduction added much information of importance and interest. – Hill. Samuel Eliot Morison called it the best bit of sea literature of the period. (See also Smith II, 1632. Howes P-484 (aa). Hill 1373.)

Mark Well the Whale! Long Island Ships to Distant Seas.

Schmitt, Frederick P. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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A rather light bit of local history re Cold Spring Harbor and whaling out of Long Island, incl. Sag Harbor, and descriptions of voyages and disasters.

The Voyage of the Chelyuskin.

Chelyuskin. By Members of the Expedition. New York: Macmillan, 1935.
  • 1934 Russian Voyage of the Cheluyskin (commanded by Captain Schmidt).
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

The Chelyuskin was beset and sank near the Bering Strait in 1934. The book has contributions by many of the crew, including captain Schmidt, and presents a most idealistic view of Bolshevik sacrifice.

The Arctic in the Middle Ages,

Vaughan, Richard. Journal of Medieval History8 (1982) 313-42.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

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.