Journal of a Voyage Around the World: A Year on the Ship Helena(1841-1842).

King, Thomas Worthington. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Although not strictly Antarctic bound or a circumnavigation, this voyage did round Cape Horn and reached almost 59 degrees south. King was a recent Harvard graduate when he took this voyage from New York to Canton, and after brief work there he continued on another ship back to New York. He was a fast reader and regular in his comments about reading. What follows is taken verbatim from the journal of his voyage.

Melville in the South Seas.

Anderson, Charles Roberts. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Melville joined the navy in August 1843, and joined the United States in Honolulu in 1844, spending fourteen months on U.S. naval duty between Honolulu and Boston, arriving there in October 1844.

The Last Voyage of the Schooner Rosamond

Chevalier, Haakon. London: Andre Deutsch, 1970.
  • 1920 Cargo Voyage of Schooner Rosamond.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

A delightful book about two Stanford sophomores who in the spring of 1920, looking for adventure, decided to ship aboard a schooner scheduled to deliver timber from Seattle to Cape Town. Haakon and Don Snedden had no experience as sailors and their assignment turned out to be a ten-month circumnavigation of the world as apprentice seamen. It was an adventure and their story is told with grace, excitement, and candor. For a time they tried to conceal their academic affiliation but it became obvious to the officers and small crew soon enough. Chevalier, even at 18 years at the outset, is among the most intelligent and sensitive readers encountered in my long search for maritime readers.

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
 Preview 

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.

In Search of a Siberian Klondike as Narrated by Washington B. Vanderlip the Chief Actor and Herein Set Forth by Homer B. Hulbert.

Vanderlip, Washington V. New York: The Century Co., 1908.
  • 1896 Russian-Sponsored Overland Expedition by American W. V. Vanderlip in Search of Gold.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

Hard to know whether the charm of this book is to the narrator or amanensis, but it is a delight to read both for its human interactions and its elements of natural history and hunting. These exxcerpts give some flavor of the book, and there are a few comments on language and literature.

Two Voyages to the South Seas. Volume II: Astrolabe and Zélée 1837-1840.

D’Urville, Jules S-C. Translated from the French and edited by Helen Rosenman. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1987.
  • 1837-40 French South Seas Voyage of Astrolabe (Jules d’Urville).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

D’Urville proposed this second voyage to the South Seas but it was the French King who suggested that its first goal should be toward the South Pole as ice permitted. Through the Admiral Minister the King “approved everything I asked for.” This volume is taken from D’Urville’s journals of the second voyage with a great deal of connective commentary and paraphrases by the editor. It is her writing that appears in quotes below and his journals without quotes.

Writing the New World: Imaginary Voyages….

Fausset, David. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

p. 3: the exotic literature of Europe “was most clearly manifested in fiction about the regions that remained unknown the longest….their works, too, would finally be overtaken by history and supplanted by scientific descriptions of the material and social worlds.” (his examples are Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Poe, Lovecraft)

The Lost Men: The Harrowing Saga of Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party.

Tyler-Lewis, Kelly. New York: Viking, 2006.
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An extensive and comprehensive study of the archival and printed sources related to Shackleton’s depot-laying party which had been intended to provide for the final 400 miles of his Trans-Antarctic expedition. This Party succeeded in its depot mission, but Shackleton failed to get there when his ship was frozen and then sank in the Weddell Sea. Tyler-Lewis seems to have a good eye for the reading occasions of the Party.

The Polar Regions.

Richardson, Sir John. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1861.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Richardson worked with Franklin in two overland expeditions much as Edward Wilson worked with Robert Falcon Scott on two Antarctic journeys, the last one fatal to both explorers. Naturalist, surgeon, explorer, and eventually librarian of Haslar Hospital. In this general overview of the [chiefly northern ] Polar Regions, Richardson shows his erudition while summing up his wide experience of the North.

The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 502, on Martin Frobisher’s first voyage: More impressive than the ships was the equipment…. The literature included two works by André Thever: his Cosmographie universelle, just out, and Singularitez de la France antarctique; and Medina’s Arte de Naviguar, one of the best available treatises on navigation. Strangely enough, Frobisher did not carry William Bourne’s more recent Regiment of the Sea (1574). Probably more for amusement than anything else, he had a copy of Sir John Mandeville’s famous book of whoppers. Also, for good measure, a ‘great’ English Bible. This was probably the ‘Bishop’s Bible’ of 1572, whose title page includes a portrait of the Queen, useful to show the natives…. [Can’t tell the source of Morison’s list but he does suggest there was a complete list somewhere—see Stefansson ed. of Best, v. 2, p. 77-78]

With Byrd at the Bottom of the World: The South Pole Expedition of 1928-1930.

Vaughan, Norman D. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1990.
  • 1928-30 First U.S. Antarctic Expedition (Byrd on City of New York).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This is an adulatory, almost pandering book of Vaughan’s participation in the first Byrd Antarctic expedition (1928-30), by Byrd’s principal dog handler. It reads as compellingly as the Boy Scout accounts. His chapter on life in camp was mostly about the dogs, but also on some psychological troubles, nothing about coping other than card-playing and purloined alcohol.