Vihjalmur Stefansson, Robert Bartlett, and the Karluk Disaster: A Reassessment.

Cavell, Janice. Journal of the Hakluyt Society (January 2017). 22 p.
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 12: Several of the ship’s company would later recall that Stefansson had been reading about the Jeannetteexpedition just before he left [the Karlak], and they speculated that fear had driven him away.

Arctic Odyssey: The Diary of Diamond Jenness 1913-1916.

Jenness, Diamond. Hull, QU: Canada Museum of Civilization, 1991.
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. xxi: The author [Jenness] was unusually fond of Homer’s The Odyssey. In the summer of 1906, as one of only two students in a Greek class with Professor William von Zedlitz at Victoria University College, Wellington, New Zealand, he was invited to read The Odyssey each Friday evening in Greek at his professor’s home…. during the seven months he wandered about southwestern Victoria Island with his Copper Eskimo friends, in 1915, my father often found moments for reading passages in and obtaining spiritual comfort from a small copy of The Odyssey he carried with him. This book evidently had a special meaning to him, and he continued to extract both pleasure and comfort from it on later occasions, including a time two years later when he was in the muddy wartime trenches in France.

Daily Journal. Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (primarily temperature, animal, auroral, and magnetic observations). Explorer’s Club Inventory 2003-007. Each page bears stamp reading: “Recovered by Robert E. Peary, C. E., U.S.N., from Fort Conger, May, 1899, under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club, and by it restored to the United States, December, 1899.

Greely, Adolphus W. These volumes are in good condition and show none of the wear seen in other Fort Conger books.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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The official records of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881-84) at the Explorers Club include the Daily Journal, copies of Letters sent, and the Sledge Journal.

Shores of the Polar Sea: A Narrative of the Arctic Expedition of 1875-6.

Moss, Edward L. (London: Marcus Ward & Co., 1878).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 9: While our two ships steamed northward along the west shores of Greenland, the novel charm of constant daylight was felt by every one. We all had our own ideas of what Arctic summer would be like, but ideas drawn from books rarely remain unchanged when brought face to face with reality. Although the passage into perpetual day was of course gradual, yet it was quite rapid enough to upset all regular habits.

Trial by Ice: The Antarctic Journals.

Davis, John King. Edited by Louise Crossley. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 19.
  • 1929-31 BANZARE Expedition (aboard Discovery II).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This is one of three volumes based on the Davis journals, and some of the Davis journals printed here also appear in his earlier autobiographical work, High Latitude. Davis was the complete sea master, but not an explorer. For the most part his journal entries, written while in command, tend to be short simply because he is very busy, and appears to have no time for reading except as it might be work related. What stands out in this volume is the section on the MawsonDavis BANZARE expedition of 1929-30 where Davis constantly laments the problems of divided command, where Mawson constantly asks Davis to take risks which, according to Davis, Mawson would not take responsibility for if things went wrong. Mawson on the other hand found Davis far too conservative and timid in his concern for the safety of ship and men. Davis may be a somewhat dull and conservative character, but he does come across as the more sympathetic, at least in his own account.

A Yachting Cruise in the South Seas.

Wood, C. F. London: H. S. King and Co., 1875.
  • 1872- Private British Voyage to Sandwich Islands (Cunard Line).
  • Maritime Reading
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p. 6-7, Chapter I: The weather now was intensely hot and fine, and that feeling of drowsiness and languor came over me, which I have always experienced on first reaching the tropics. Reading becomes a delusion and a snare, and to take up a book means to be asleep in a few minutes. On Sunday, May 11th, we sighted Rotumah. This was the first island I intended visiting, my object here being to ship some of the natives, to strengthen my present crew. No one ought to attempt a voyage through the South Sea Islands without carrying an extra crew of this kind. For in the first place there are so many islands where there is no anchorage or perhaps a very precarious one, that it is better to keep the vessel standing off and on, worked by the white crew, while those who wish to visit the island go away in the boat manned by the South Sea Islanders. A coloured crew, too, are better able to row about all day in the hot sun; they are cheery, light-hearted companions, and are always ready, and enjoy the fun of diving into the water after any shell or piece of coral that one may fancy whilst rowing over the reefs.

Antarctica: An Encyclopedia

Stewart, John. Second revised edition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1990.
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 108, entry for “Books”: The first book published in Antarctica was Aurora Australis, a 120-page book written in 1908 by Shackleton and his 14-man crew of winterers to ward off boredom. They wrote it, printed, and bound it. Joyce and Wild typeset it, Marston illustrated, and Day created the covers. Shackleton’s printing press had been presented to him by Messrs. Joseph Causton and Sons, and they had trained Joyce and Wild in printing and typesetting. During Charcot’s Pourquoi Pas? expedition of 1908-10, Jules Rouch wrote a novel for a bet. It was called L’Amant de la dactylographe (The Typist’s Lover). Charcot brought 1,500 books with him on that trip. The Ross Sea party of 1914-17, under Mackintosh, had an Encyclopaedia Britannica available. On the other side of Antarctica Hurley salvaged some volumes of Britannica when the Endurance went down in 1915.

Bible, owned by Dr. G. Murray Levick, Surgeon for Northern Party

  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Richard Kossow has a copy of the New Testament which Levick had on this expedition. It is the Oxford Bible-paper edition, a small edition for which I didn’t get full details. Here is the description I have:

Archives at Georgetown University

Green, Fitzhugh.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Green was ghostwriter for Byrd’s Skyward, participated in MacMillan’s Crocker Land Expedition, and was responsible for killing a native.

Clement Markham: Longest Service Officer, Most Prolific Editor,

Savours, Ann. in Compassing the Vaste Globe of the Earth: Studies in the History of The Hakluyt Society, 1846-1996. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1996) p. 165-88.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 168, on Markham’s 1850-51 Greenland expedition: Confined to a tent by a storm, he ‘Read Pickwick aloud, ate, drank, slept and read Johnson’s life of Pope, alternately. Had a duck and sandpipers stewed in green pea soup, for dinner.’ See Markham’s MS. Journal in the Royal Geographical Society, Archives, CRM 3. This entry is from 7 July 1851.

Manuscripts and Archives Division, Library of Congress.

Clay Family Papers.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Henry [Harry] Clay, of the Howgate Preliminary Expedition on the Gulnare, was the grandson of the famous Henry Clay of Lexington, KY. Materials about him and by him are in Section II. Box 46, and probably elsewhere in the Library of Congress manuscript collections.

Lady Spy, Gentleman Explorer: The Life of Herbert Dyce Murphy.

Rossiter, Heather. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001.
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A thoroughly fascinating account of a participant in Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911 which thoroughly debunks Mawson, only slightly more gently than Huntford did Scott.

The Arctic Whalers.

Lubbock, Basil. Glasgow: Brown, Son and Ferguson, 1937.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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An engaging history of Arctic whaling.

Arctic Alaska and Siberia, Or, Eight Months with the Arctic Whalemen.

Aldrich, Herbert L. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1889.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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p. 75: Each native is said to keep a diary of his hunting trips by carving the important events on a piece of ivory, showing his camps, shooting deer, walruses, seals or bears, or catching and driving fish. A few of the supposed diaries were offered for sale.