Diary.

Bender, Jacob (George Layerzapf). Transcribed diary appearing on www.arcticwebsite.com/GreelyBenderDiary. July 7, 1881-Feb. 19, 1882.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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July 191881: …we loaded some stores left here by the U.S. Gullnare last year. [Could easily have included books from the Howgate Expedition, those so stamped in the Arctic Collection found by Peary in 1898.]

A Very Gallant Gentleman.

Bernacchi, Louis Charles. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1935 [first published 1933] See supra, p. 174.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Bull, Colin. Email message to David Stam, August 31, 2005:

Ship’s Libraries; Their Need and Usefulness.

Pierson, John S. New York: American Seamen’s Friend Society, 1878. 33 p.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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p. no page: After you’ve done everything to assure the physical and spiritual welfare of the sailor, “the only way left to reach him is by the printed truth—The Bible, the tract, the good book. Just here then comes in the ship’s library with its indispensable offices,--the last important advance made in the line of religious work among seamen,--the ‘missing link,’ I think we may call it, in the chain of evangelical agencies for their benefit.”

The Voyage of the ‘Why Not ?’ in the Antarctic: the Journal of the Second French South Polar Expedition, 1908-1910

English Version by Philip Wash. New York, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911. [Reprinted Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1978].
  • 1908-10 Second French South Polar Expedition (Charcot on Pourquoi-pas?).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Charcot’s is a rather ponderous book about an important expedition, with several historical excurses in which he consistently praises Antarctic explorers, as if to elevate himself.

Diary, Nov 5, 1914 to Dec 1915

[Author?]. SPRI MS 1605/1/2. [in SPRI numbering, this comes after the later 1916 volume described below.].
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 33 Jan 12th 1915: Started reading “Guinea Gold” by Beatrice Grimshaw.

Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas, and Round the World: being Personal Narratives of Attempts to Reach the North and South Poles; and of an Open-boat Expedition up the Wellington Channel in Search of Sir John Franklin and Her Majesty’s ships “Erebus” and “Terror,” in Her Majesty’s Boat “Forlorn Hope,” under the Command of the Author. To which are Added an Autobiography….

M’Cormick, Robert. In Two Volumes. (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1884).
  • Maritime Reading
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The author participated in three polar expeditions, an early 1827 North Pole attempt, the famous James Ross Clark Antarctic expedition on Erebus and Terror (1839-1843), and a Franklin Search expedition searching for the same two ships. The Ross voyage was the circumnavigation of M’Cormick’s title. [See the Anthology of the Antarctic Reading Experience under 1839.]

The Seaman’s Library Manual.

Howe, Herbert L. Prepared by Herbert L. Howe, Librarian. (New York: American Merchant Marine Library Association, 1939). unpaged.
  • Maritime Reading
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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.

Narrative of the Wreck of the ‘Favorite’ on the Island of Desolation [Kerguélen Island]

Nunn, John. London: William Painter, 1850.
  • 1825-26 British Sealing Voyage (from London, with Royal Sovereign and Favorite).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 22: …according to the captain’s promise [the whalers] received their extra allowance of grog, with which they retired to their cabins and wiled away the evening in happiness and joviality, telling merry tales and drinking to their absent wives and sweethearts, a prosperous season in the whale and seal fishery, and a happy return to old England!” [The traditional officer’s toast to “wives and sweethearts, may they never meet,” dated appropriately enough from Nelson’s era until January 2014 when it was banned by the Royal Navy.]

My Life among the Bluejackets.

Weston, Agnes. (London: James Nisbet, 1911).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Agnes Weston initiated the English Sailor’s Rest institutions in Devonport and Portsmouth, where she provided food, lodging, reading and smoking rooms, and evangelical teaching for naval enlisted personnel. Her work here is distinguished by overweening piety, celebration of the heroism and probity of most of the royal navy members, a strong message of teetotalism and salvation. She published tracts and pamphlets such as Ashore and Afloat, and her Monthly Letters.

Edge of the World: Ross Island Antarctica: A Personal and Historical Narrative.

Neider, Charles. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1974.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
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Neider tells much of the history of Antarctic exploration by focusing on the geographic area of Ross Island and the Ross Sea. The book has a good series of maps which helped me understand what I have often found a confusing place. The book itself is highly derivative, including long passages quoted from some very familiar works of the explorers, from Ross onwards, including Scott and Shackleton, but it also recounts the author’s own experiences and near disasters on his Deep Freeze expeditions to McMurdo and travels elsewhere in Antarctica.

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.

Only Yesterday.

Allen, Frederick Lewis. New York: Harper, 1931.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 353, re Byrd: Yet the noble art of ballyhoo, which had flourished so successfully in the nineteen-twenties, had lost something of its vigor. Admiral Byrd’s flight to the South Pole made him a hero second only to Lindbergh in the eyes of the country at large, but in the larger centers of population there was manifest a slight tendency to yawn: his exploit had been over-publicized, and heroism, however gallant, lost something of its spontaneous charm when it was subjected to scientific management and syndicated in daily dispatches. [See also chapter 8, “The Ballyhoo Years,” p. 186ff.]

Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet, 1923.

Grant, Shelagh D. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.
  • 1923 Canadian Murder Trial at Pond Inlet.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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Fascinating book on the introduction of European-based law into a culture that had no reason to understand it, in its communitarian consensual approach to justice. Well-written and badly proofed, but worth the read.

Peter Fidler, Trader and Surveyor, 1769 to 1822.

Tyrrell, J. B. Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. Third Series. VII. Section II (1913) p. 117-27 [Read May 28, 1913].
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 127: Fidler himself was a hard worker, but was of an irascible disposition with comparatively little consideration for the weaknesses and failings of others. He was a diligent student and fond of reading. In the Library at York is a manuscript book of mathematical problems worked out by him, and a large number of printed books in the Library are inscribed with his name and have evidently been contributed to the Library by him. Most of these are on mathematical subjects of some kind, many of them being such books as “The Nautical Almanac,” “The Diary Companion, being a supplement to the Ladies’ Diary,” “The Gentleman’s Diary, or the Mathematical Repository.” Others are on Biblical chronology. In addition to which there is the “Monthly Magazine for a number of years.